01멕시코 대회 앞두고 거세지는 '버블' 경쟁
PGA 투어가 가을 일정인 페덱스컵 폴 시리즈의 다음 무대인 멕시코 대회를 위해 이동하면서 시즌 막바지 중요한 분기점을 맞이했다.
현재 페덱스컵 랭킹 100위 안팎에 포진한 선수들에게 이번 대회는 차기 시즌 풀 시드권 확보와 플레이오프 진출 운명을 가를 결정적인 기회다.
소위 '톱 100 워치'로 불리는 이 경쟁 구역의 선수들은 컷 통과와 상위 입상을 통해 순위를 끌어올려야 하는 막중한 부담감을 안고 티오프에 나선다.
투어는 이번 멕시코 대회를 기점으로 버블에 걸린 선수들의 희비가 엇갈리는 치열한 순위 다툼이 절정에 달할 것으로 전망하고 있다.
02Original (English) — PGA TOUR
NOTE: For every tournament until the conclusion of the FedExCup Fall, Rob is focusing on four PGA Tour members who are committed to the next one, outside the top 100 of the FedExCup standings and not yet fully exempt for the 2027 season. None appear in his Power Rankings or Sleepers for the same tournament.
Although he’s coming to the end of just his junior year on the PGA Tour, this is unfamiliar territory after qualifying for the FedExCup Playoffs in his first two. He established himself with a combined five runner-up finishes in 2024 and 2025 but managed no better than a T9 at THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson this year. His only other top-10 finish was a T10 at the Biltmore Championship Asheville, but he’s just 1-for-3 since, which includes an early exit at last week’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship due to a sore back. Adding insult to the injury, when the tournament concluded, he was bumped outside the bubble from his previous slot of 99th in the FedExCup. The same malady forced him off Vidanta Vallarta Golf Course during his second round of the VidantaWorld Mexico Open in his only prior appearance in 2024, so those are not the converging trends that anyone prefers.
Unlike Greyserman, this very much is familiar territory for this veteran of 261 PGA Tour starts. Dahmen finished just inside the top 125 of the FedExCup in each of the last two seasons. While it was enough to secure fully exempt status in 2025, the bar was raised in advance of this season, so he’s been going about his business with conditional status. He’s been able to make 23 starts, but only two resulted in top 10s, and both were in his first four events of the season. Reasons to be hopeful this week are twofold. First, the third of his three top 25s this year was on paspalum at the Corales Puntacana Championship in July. It also was at the Corales Puntacana that he broke through for his lone PGA Tour title in 2021. The other favorable factor is that he placed T6 in his only prior trip to Vidanta Vallarta in 2025. To crash into the top 100 this week, he’d need at least a solo third, but anything close would ease the burden with three tournaments remaining.
The pathway to fully exempt status made available through the DP World Tour since 2023 has been as potentially lucrative as it has been positively challenging. This year’s class of 10 is led by Kristoffer Reitan, who won the Truist Championship, one of the Signature Events. He’s among seven PGA Tour rookies in the cohort that includes Neergaard-Petersen, but only three currently rank inside the top 100 of the FedExCup.
The Dane had splashed with some fanfare, too. After finishing T3 at the DP World Tour Championship to conclude the 2025 season, he prevailed at the Australian Open three weeks later. However, his only top-10 finish on his own ball as a PGA Tour member was a T9 at The Open Championship. Fairly consistent statistically but not much better than Tour average, which helps explain his current position in the FedExCup.
If he hasn’t already, the native of Argentina needs to start thinking about swinging for the fence because even a solo second at Vidanta Vallarta wouldn’t lift him into the top 100 of the FedExCup. The philosophy is precisely how he regained his status for both 2025 and 2026, with a respective T4 and T2 in the last two editions of PGA Tour Q-School presented by Korn Ferry. His confidence of connecting also should be higher here than most other sites, given that two of his six career top 10s on the PGA Tour occurred on this course that rewards his threat off the tee. Both were T10s (in 2023 and 2025). He logged another at Corales Puntacana on paspalum last year, and it never hurts to be able to communicate in the native language, as he can in Mexico.
Odds were sourced at DraftKings.
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