This article is part of our The Reshuffle List series.
The start of the United States Open Championship brought along another reshuffle, the next to last one of the 2015-16 PGA Tour season, believe it or not. Now, normally we would have written our Reshuffle List column then, but we had to wait to see what Andrew Landry would do at Oakmont as it could have been one of the all-time performances from a Reshuffle List player. As everyone knows he didn't win, so here's how things stand:
Tour Cards Clinched
Entering the weekend of the Quicken Loans National, the following players had clinched a PGA Tour card for the 2016-17 PGA Tour season. It took 459 points to earn a PGA Tour card last season.
Jamie Lovemark - 861.057 FedEx Cup Points
Roberto Castro - 711.500
Si Woo Kim - 608.343
Harold Varner III - 548.133
Lucas Glover - 505.056
Ricky Barnes - 492.000
Andrew Loupe - 482.821
Since our last update Castro, Loupe, Varner, Glover and Barnes ascended to the likely safe zone.
Castro is up to second in the Reshuffle List on the backs of his playoff loss in Charlotte and a tie for 11th at Memorial. He has two other top-10s this season and at 41st in FedEx Cup points can now focus on the next step in this PGA Tour season: getting his first career PGA Tour victory. He's 16th in driving accuracy, 13th in greens in regulation and 29th in strokes gained–tee to green on the PGA Tour.
Loupe tied for fourth in Charlotte,
The start of the United States Open Championship brought along another reshuffle, the next to last one of the 2015-16 PGA Tour season, believe it or not. Now, normally we would have written our Reshuffle List column then, but we had to wait to see what Andrew Landry would do at Oakmont as it could have been one of the all-time performances from a Reshuffle List player. As everyone knows he didn't win, so here's how things stand:
Tour Cards Clinched
Entering the weekend of the Quicken Loans National, the following players had clinched a PGA Tour card for the 2016-17 PGA Tour season. It took 459 points to earn a PGA Tour card last season.
Jamie Lovemark - 861.057 FedEx Cup Points
Roberto Castro - 711.500
Si Woo Kim - 608.343
Harold Varner III - 548.133
Lucas Glover - 505.056
Ricky Barnes - 492.000
Andrew Loupe - 482.821
Since our last update Castro, Loupe, Varner, Glover and Barnes ascended to the likely safe zone.
Castro is up to second in the Reshuffle List on the backs of his playoff loss in Charlotte and a tie for 11th at Memorial. He has two other top-10s this season and at 41st in FedEx Cup points can now focus on the next step in this PGA Tour season: getting his first career PGA Tour victory. He's 16th in driving accuracy, 13th in greens in regulation and 29th in strokes gained–tee to green on the PGA Tour.
Loupe tied for fourth in Charlotte, one of four top-10s and five top-25s he has in 2015-16. He's seventh in driving distance and 30th in strokes gained-putting this season. He now can focus on getting his first PGA Tour win instead of keeping his card. On the negative side, he's missed his last three cuts and needs to turn that trend around to get into the winner's circle.
Varner, one of the most talked about rookies entering this season, surged the last couple months, rising to fourth in the standings and clinching his card by virtue of tying for ninth at Valero, eighth at Zurich, backing that up with a T24 at Wells Fargo, tying for 57th at the Players and Memorial and finishing 16th in Memphis, further helping his cause toward making it deep into the FedEx Cup playoffs. Stats-wise he's 29th in birdie average, which is impressive considering he's 175th in strokes gained-putting and 93rd in strokes gained-total. Get more consistent in the scoring department and we could see Varner getting a win before this season is out.
Glover is the feel good story of the bunch, as the 2009 U.S. Open champion whose game has come on hard times in recent years and thus found himself having to fight for his card, something seemingly unfathomable for a major champion. He clinched his card via an eighth in Charlotte – a tournament he's won before – where four rounds in the 70s was good enough, showing how tough Quail Hollow played. A 33rd at Memorial padded his margin. Stats wise he's second in greens in regulation, 17th in strokes gained-off the tee and 24th in strokes gained-tee to green this season on the PGA Tour. Unfortunately for him, he's 166th in strokes gained-putting. But, for now, that doesn't matter, he has a place to play in 2016-17.
Barnes tied for ninth at the RBC Heritage and fourth at the Texas Open, and after a run that included several missed cuts, got into the safe zone by finishing T24 at the Nelson and T42 at Colonial. A storied amateur who has yet to win on the PGA Tour, he's 32nd this season in strokes gained-putting and seventh in proximity to the hole from 150-175 yards, both of which are helping propel him to a tour card next season and maybe toward his first victory before this season is out.
On the Cusp
Anirban Lahiri - 454.250 FedEx Cup Points
Tyrone Van Aswegen - 439.373
Brett Stegmaier - 432.562
Mark Hubbard - 411.250
Lahiri is the name that pops out, as the 58th-ranked player in the world has popped up as a sleeper at majors, not just PGA Tour events. Lahiri being on the precipice of a PGA Tour card for next season and ranked eighth on the Reshuffle List is courtesy of a tie for sixth at Colonial. Consistency has been the name of the game this season with just that one top-10 and two top-25 finishes but 13 made cuts in 17 starts. You'll accumulate points fast that way and the 89 earned at Colonial have him this close to a PGA Tour card again. He ranks 99th in strokes gained-tee to green, 69th in strokes gained-putting and 83rd in strokes gained-total, furthering that OK-not-great mentality.
The Andrew Landry Story
Landry came to Oakmont ranked 39th on the Reshuffle List with just 55.040 FedEx Cup points. While his final round sent him backward into a T15 finish and robbed him of much needed points, he still got into triple digits with 114.040 points and can hopefully parlay this experience into a run that gets him a card for next season. As Fox's Joe Buck said multiple times during the week, his best career finish on the PGA Tour was the previous week in Memphis where he tied for 41st. Why such a poor season, that has included just six made cuts in 12 starts? Well, consider that he ranks 195th in strokes gained-approach to the green and 181st in strokes gained-around the green. With those kinds of rankings, even while being 11th in strokes gained-off the tee and 11th in strokes gained-putting, it's just hard to have consistent results.
Biggest Movers in Last Reshuffle
Purely by how poorly his season had gone, Abraham Ancer, who a while back was the last Nothing Man, got the biggest bump in the last reshuffle as he rose six spots to 35th with more than 90 FedEx Cup points. He'll need one huge finish to save his PGA Tour card or he's going to the Web.com Tour Finals. Lahiri and Robert Garrigus gained six spots and got the second biggest bump. Garrigus is at 233.370 points and saw a rise due to a T28 in Charlotte and his T4 at the Byron Nelson where he shot two weekend rounds of 66.
One notable faller was Derek Fathauer, who fell five spots but gained it back with his tie for 23rd at the U.S. Open. Fathauer is now at 395 FedEx Cup points and is basically one top-five or two top-10s away from securing a PGA Tour card for next season. Thomas Aiken also fell five spots.
The Olympics
There is an Olympic subtext for some players on this list. Lahiri is scheduled to represent India while Tim Wilkinson was in the running for New Zealand but has since withdrawn from consideration.