Schwartzel gives it his all to make FedEx Cup play-offs

CHARL Schwartzel hasn’t had the best of seasons on the PGA Tour but it’s amazing how one good tournament can turn everything around.

In the Wyndham Championship at Greensboro in North Carolina on Sunday, the sweet-swinging South African tied for third on 15under-par 265 following rounds of 67 and three straight, impressive 66s. That was good enough for a cheque of $280 800 – and with the weak rand that equates to about R3,65-million – but, more importantly, he is now among the top 125 players who make it through to the first of the four events that comprise the lucrative end-of-season Fedex Cup play-offs.

The 2012 Masters champion, who turns 31 on Monday, was right on the bubble at 125th in the standings at the start of the Wyndham Championship but with gritty determination he kept his head down and is now in 96th spot going into The Barclays beginning in New Jersey on Thursday.

“I think sometimes in this game when you don’t really have a choice anymore, you really stick in there and give it your all,” he said. “It was like that for me this week as I didn’t want to miss the playoffs.”

Schwartzel will join four other South Africans in the play-offs – Louis Oosthuizen (28th in the standings), Rory Sabbatini (72nd), Retief Goosen (111th) and Tim Clark (120th). Ernie Els misses out while Branden Grace and George Coetzee would have made the grade had they been PGA Tour card-holders, but they are both strong contenders in the European Tour’s Race to Dubai.

Just getting into The Barclays is no guarantee players will advance to the next three play-off events as the Deutsche Bank Championship (September 4-7) is restricted to the top 100 in the standings, the BMW Championship (September 17-20) to the top 70 and the grand finale, the Tour Championship (September 24-27) to just the leading 30 players in the points race.

But Schwartzel will feel that he at least has a foot in the door now and if continues to play well he could go all the way to the Tour Championship and then there’s always the chance of hitting the $10-million jackpot that goes with overall victory.

Davis Love III, meanwhile, shot a final round 64 in the Wyndham to rally from four strokes back to become, at age 51, the third oldest player to win a PGA Tour event. His 17-under-par 263 aggregate was one better than fellow American Jason Gore who was second, and two better than Schwartzel, England’s Paul Casey and Scott Brown of the US who shared third place.

Tiger Woods finished four off the pace and his presence brought record crowds to the tournament, with 143 000 fans passing through the gate for the week.

Back home in South Africa, Jean Hugo took a record 10th win in the Vodacom Origins of Golf series presented by Samsung with a six-under-par return of 210 for the 54 holes. The 39-year-old first won in the Vodacom Series in 2006.

And on the European Challenge Tour, Haydn Porteous and Brandon Stone continued their march towards gaining their European Tour cards for next season by finishing sixth and ninth respectively in the limited field Rolex Trophy in Geneva, Switzerland. That put Stone in ninth and Porteous in 10th on the Challenge Tour Road to Oman rankings – with the top 15 after the final event making it onto The European Tour.