Players on the cusp at the Northern Trust
By Bill Felber
74. Brandon Hagy
Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. Of the 10 guys on either side of the magic 70th cutoff point for the BMW, Hagy – at 71.53 – has the worst season-long stroke average.
He’s also missed two of his last three and five of his last nine cuts.
How, then, did Hagy wiggle his way onto the cusp of the big-money championship series? A runner-up finish at the Honda Classic last March certainly helped. A third-round 76 killed Hagy’s chances to actually win, but he shot 69-62-66 the other three days to finish ahead of everybody except Matt Jones, the champion.
Hagy also tied for sixth at the Rocket Mortgage, and finished fifth at the Barracuda.
His season, in other words, has been the kind of non-sensical pattern-less pattern one often sees on Tour: 27 starts, 14 missed cuts, but six top 25s, three of them top 10.
That means Hagy is capable of winning the Northern Trust, bombing out, or doing some sort of middle ground thing.
When he wins, he rides his driver. Hagy ranked 34th on Tour this season in Strokes Gained Off The Tee and 11th in driving distance (311.4 yards).
When he loses, it’s because of that spray gun he uses for irons. He ranks 194th in Strokes Gained Approaching the Green and 174th in Greens in Regulation. His average approach lands 38 ¾ feet from the cup, a distance that ranks 173rd on Tour.