What this former Myrtle Beach resident has to do this week to make the PGA Tour playoffs
Former Myrtle Beach resident Roberto Diaz will have to finish in the top three this week in the Wyndham Championship in order to advance to the PGA Tour’s FedExCup playoffs.
The final event of the PGA Tour’s regular season at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, N.C., is the third and final tour event in the Carolinas this season.
The top 125 players on the FedExCup points list at the conclusion of the $6.2 million tournament will qualify for the first of three playoff events next week, the $9.25 million Northern Trust at Liberty National Golf Club in New Jersey.
Diaz is 161st in FedExCup points with 226, and Alex Noren is currently in the 125th spot with 363 points. This week, the winner earns 500 FedExCup points, the runner-up 300 and the third-place finisher gets 190. A two-way tie for third would get Diaz to 388.5 points and a three-way tie for third would increase his total to 371, so he’d still have a good chance.
The 32-year-old Mexico native and USC Aiken graduate has made 13 cuts in 22 events this season with two top 10s and four top-25 finishes. His best finish is a tie for eighth in the Travelers Championship in June, and he shot a 62 on July 11 to hold the first-round lead in the John Deere Classic before falling into a tie for 74th.
He also tied for second in the ISPS Handa Melbourne World Cup of Golf in Australia in November, which is an unofficial PGA Tour event. He paired with reigning Australian Open winner Abraham Ancer to give Mexico its best finish in the two-person team event, besting a seventh-place effort in 1953.
Diaz is coming off a tie for 18th in the Barracuda Championship – which was played opposite the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational – with a Modified Stableford score of +32 (5-3-8-16) to earn $42,600.
Diaz earned PGA Tour status by finishing 25th on the 2017 Web.com Tour (now Korn Ferry Tour) regular season money list, claiming the final card given to the top 25 on the PGA’s feeder circuit. He retained PGA Tour status with a top-50 finish in the 2018 Web.com Tour Finals series.
He is 158th on the PGA Tour money list with $539,578 in earnings after making just $235,635 as a rookie, when he had just one top-25 finish, and he is 424thin the Official World Golf Ranking.
Diaz lived in Myrtle Beach for seven years after graduating from USC Aiken in 2009 and represented the Greg Norman Champions Golf Academy at Barefoot Resort. He still lists MyrtleBeach as his residence on his PGA Tour profile.
Because the playoffs have been cut from four events to three with this year’s truncated schedule, only the top 70 will advance to the BMW Championship at Medinah Country Club in Illinois, then the top 30 will qualify for the Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta.
If Diaz fails to make the playoffs, he’ll have another opportunity to retain his PGA Tour playing privileges next season through the Korn Ferry Tour Finals.
The 80th Wyndham’s field includes three-time major champion Jordan Spieth, Paul Casey, Hideki Matsuyama, Chez Reavie,Charles Howell III, defending champion Brandt Snedeker, and former Wyndham champions Patrick Reed, Webb Simpson and Si Woo Kim.
This story was originally published July 30, 2019 at 9:35 PM.
