After some of his best golf in months in Missouri last week Mathew Goggin has a chance to make up for some poor mid season form and play his way on to next year’s PGA TOUR with a good showing at this week’s Web.com Tour event in Tennessee.
After some of his best golf in months in Missouri last week Mathew Goggin has a chance to make up for some poor mid season form and play his way on to next year’s PGA TOUR with a good showing at this week’s Web.com Tour event in Tennessee.
The News Sentinel Classic is one of the
secondary Tour’s oldest events and Goggin will be one of 13 Australians
attempting to join Kim Felton (2005) and Jarrod Lyle (2008) as Australians to
have claimed the crown.
This week is the second last full field
event of the season before a two week break followed by the four tournament
qualifying series for 2016 PGA TOUR cards.
Goggin, who sits 31st on the
money list, will be looking to play his way into the top-25 and be assured of a
return to the main circuit for the 11th time in his career.
A fast start to 2015, with a win at the
first event of the season, looked promising for the Tasmanian before an
inexplicable run of missed cuts and low to mid-field finishes.
But Goggin found something at last week’s
Price Cutter tournament with four sub par rounds, three of them in the 60’s,
signaling a return to the PGA TOUR might yet be on the cards.
Goggin has a best finish at the News
Sentinel of T8 in 2011 and will no doubt be drawing on memories from that
performance as he hunts a big cheque this week.
Also on the verge of joining the top-25 are
Steve Allan and Rhein Gibson. Allan is one place behind Goggin on the money
list and, like his fellow 40-something, would like to add to his multiple years
as a PGA TOUR player.
Allan last played the main circuit full
time in 2009, his eighth year in total, but has been consistent in 2015 with
some flashes of brilliant golf.
Gibson is the polar opposite in terms of
how his career has unfolded, the 29-year-old playing his first full season in
America this year.
With four top-10’s including a second and a
third he is at 30th on the money list and a good result this week
would cap an impressive rookie season.
At the other end of the spectrum Oliver
Goss needs to make the cut each of the next two weeks to have his best chance
to remain in the top-75 who will play for PGA TOUR cards.
The rookie has had mixed results this
season and at 67th on the money list is in danger of missing the
qualifying series.
Needing to play well to earn a berth in the
qualifying series are Bronson La’Cassie (83rd), Brett Drewitt (92nd)
and Aron Price (99th).
James Nitties (104th) is outside
the top-100 who will retain playing rights to the 2016 Web.com Tour as are Ash
Hall (109), Adam Crawford (121), Alistair Presnell (122), Bryden Macpherson
(129) and Nick Flanagan (160).