Fritsch confident he’ll return to PGA Tour,
Manotick pro confident he’ll regain tour card in qualifying series
Brad Fritsch’s first season as a full PGA Tour member ended sooner than he would have preferred.
However, the 35-year-old pro golfer from Manotick remains encouraged and says he’s looking forward to the new fall qualifying process.
“Rookie year and I missed the FedEx Cup (playoffs) by four spots … it has been all right,” Fritsch said Monday after playing in a pro-am event at Rideau View Country Club, his home course. “I’m not disappointed with the year, I’m disappointed with last week and not being able to make it in but overall, it has been just fine.”
Last week was the Wyndham Championship at Greensboro, N.C., where a disastrous stretch of a half-dozen holes turned what had been a good Thursday round into a 5-over 75 and Fritsch missed the cut after Friday’s round.
That left him No. 129 in Fed-Ex Cup points, four short of the four-tournament playoff series that starts this week near New York City. He was also No. 142 in earnings with $452,184 U.S.
Finishing in the top 125 on either list would have meant full PGA Tour member status again in 2014. His consolation prize is the “conditional” status of those between 126 and 150 in FedEx Cup points, likely worth entry into 10 tourneys in the 2013-14 schedule.
Instead of teeing off in The Barclays, the first FedEx Cup tournament, Fritsch has this week off before starting the four-event, five-week qualifying series for those between 126 and 200 on the PGA Tour money list and an equal number from the affiliated Web. com Tour, where Fritsch last year finished 18th in winnings and earned his PGA card.
There are 25 spots available from the qualifying series.
Fritsch said he drew confidence from knowing he had more FedEx Cup points than most PGA Tour participants in the series that begins at Fort Wayne, Ind., and ends in late September in Jacksonville, Fla. As well, he has previously played on three of the four tournament courses.
“I have to think that, if I continue to play like I have been playing, I’ll be all right,” said Fritsch, the first player from the National Capital Region ever to qualify for the PGA Tour. “I have to be excited about going, that’s the bottom line. I can’t take the mindset that it sucks that I have to go. It kind of does, but I had this past week at Greensboro to make that not happen. I have to be excited to go through (the series) to improve my status.”
A comparison of this year’s PGA Tour rankings and last year’s Web.com Tour money list reveals only eight of 25 “graduates” retained PGA Tour cards by placing in the top 125. That’s 32 per cent, not far off the 40 per cent average cited in a 2012 ESPN.com report.
David Mathis, a 39-year-old American friend of Fritsch and a fellow alumnus of Campbell University in North Carolina, has played on the PGA Tour in four of the past five years, but putting problems left him 171st in earnings ($274,477) and 165th in FedEx Cup points this year.
“At worst, (Fritsch) will get in 10 events out of that category,” Mathis said Monday. “Me, on the other hand, I have to go through the fall qualifying deal to try to improve and to try to get my status back.”
Fritsch withdrew from two tournaments because of back problems, the same reason he pulled out of the RBC Canadian Open at Oakville, Ont., after two rounds. An MRI scan revealed a slightly bulging disc that wouldn’t require surgery, but would necessitate strengthening the area around it.
“I’d tell you we’d address it in the off-season, but there doesn’t seem to be an off-season at the moment, so we kind of have to work around that,” said Fritsch, who lives in North Carolina with his wife, Megan, and their two children.
Because of his tenuous positions on the FedEx Cup and money lists, Fritsch played in virtually every tournament in which he was physically capable and the PGA Tour is changing from a calendar-year schedule to one that starts with a five-event Fall Series, so he could end up playing well over 30 tournaments between January and November. That’s a lot of golf.
Fritsch expressed regret that he hadn’t taken advantage of opportunities to earn more money or FedEx Cup points, allowing him to take occasional breaks. But on the plus side, he was No. 26 in the PGA Tour’s all-around statistical ranking.
“That,” he said, “tells me my game is good enough.”