SEAMUS POWER WILL have to fight to retain his PGA Tour card for next season after his final Fedex Cup ranking saw him finish five places off earning automatic playing rights for 2018.
The Waterford golfer missed the cut at the Wyndham Championship over the weekend after falling victim to the MDF rule as he dropped out of the top 125 in the Fedex Cup rankings.
Power, who represented Ireland at the Rio Olympics, made the 36-hole cut in North Carolina but dropped out of the tournament after the third round because of the MDF rule, which specifies that if more than 78 players make the initial cut, a second cut will take place after 54 holes.
Sitting on one-over par after three rounds, Power — who came into the week in 123rd place — was one of 11 players to be discarded and subsequently dropped down to 130th overall in the rankings.
The MDF (“made cut, did not finish”) rule was introduced by the PGA Tour in 2008 while the European Tour also adopted a similar secondary cut rule at the start of this season.
Power will now compete in the Web.com Tour finals next month in a bid to keep his card, with a total of 50 cards over four competitions up for grabs.
The 30-year-old earned $646,180 during his debut PGA Tour season, recording one top 10 and four top 25 finishes, but a resurgence in form over the last few weeks wasn’t enough to guarantee him a second year on Tour.
The Web.com Tour finals gets underway on 3 September at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship in Ohio.
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