Russell Knox is staring at a PGA Tour ‘Last Chance Saloon’ teeing-up in this week’s Wyndham Championship in North Carolina.
This week’s 75th anniversary of the event is the last ‘regular’ Tour event of the 2022/23 wrapround season, and with the leading 125 players on the FedEx Cup standings retaining full membership heading into next months new season.
Scot Russell Knox
Knox, 38, is lying 141st on the FedExCup points list with earnings of just $US 543,673 from his 30 counting 2022/23 season events.
It has been the Scot’s only season over the last decade, and aside from the COVID struck 2019/20 season, Knox has not earned over $US1m a season in a PGA Tour boasting prize-money of some $US 17.6m.
Hurting Knox this past season has been missing the halfway cut in 13 of the 30 events he has contested including siitting out the weekend round in 10 of 11 events between the second week of February to the second week of May.
Knox’s best finish being a T21st in last November’s RSM Classic.
As well, it’s been seven-years this week he last won the PGA Tour in capturing the 2016 Traveler’s Championship.
In contrast, fellow Scot Martin Laird looks safe in retaining his 2022/23 Tour card thanks last week’s second place result at the 3m Championship and with the $US 590,000 prize purse lifthing him to 111th on the money list.
Laird has contested just 24 events this season but much like Knox, the Denver-based Scot missed nine of 10 halfway cuts from the last week in January to the first week of May.
And while the two Scot’s have their own Wyndham Championship agenda, so does Justin Thomas currently lying 79th on the FedEx Cup standings and nine shops shy of making the lucarative Play-Off Series.
As well, Thomas needs to be playing any of the three Play-Off events if he’s to have any last chance of being picked in Zach Johnson’s USA Ryder Cup side.
Thomas said: “I’m very confident, I am. It’s different than trying to win a tournament or making a putt for a Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup, whatever it may be, but it’s still that same feeling.
“I was and am so excited to be playing this week. Like I said, it’s just, it’s a cool opportunity, it’s a great opportunity for me. I just, I mean, I’ve been in the right frame of mind I feel like for the last kind of month or so.
“I’ve been in a lot better head space of just a feeling like really good things are coming, but not as much expecting or saying, you know, when’s this going to be over.
“It’s just making it not as big of a deal as it is and just having an understanding that just having good scoring and doing what I have in the past, and know that any week just one shot, one round, one tournament could flip it and in a month nobody’s talking about it anymore. I just, yeah, I’m excited. I feel like I’m going to play well this week”.
Thomas is teeing-up having missed three of four cuts in the majors this season including last month’s Open.
