After a hat-trick of frustrating near misses, Cam Davis has no plans on limping in to the PGA Tour’s obscenely rich Tour Championship in Atlanta.
Davis already only scraped in to this week’s BMW Championship, the second round of the $US100 million ($A148 million) FedEx Cup playoff series in Colorado as the 49th of 50 qualifiers.
The 29-year-old joins heavyweight fellow Australians Jason Day and Adam Scott in the scramble to make the elite 30-man field for East Lake, where the winner will pocket a cheque for $US18 million ($A26.7 million).
Even last place in Atlanta will walk away with $US500,000 ($A740,000).
To have any mathematical chance of progressing to the season’s mega-money climax, Davis must finish at least tied for 10th this week.
Realistically, he will need a much higher finish than that.
And after being eliminated at the penultimate stage of the playoffs for the past three seasons, Davis is intent on taking matters into his own hands and simply winning the tournament rather than hoping for a series of scenarios having to fall his way.
“That’s probably the easiest scenario,” he said on a Zoom call from the US on Wednesday.
“I don’t have an exact number. Probably top five, top three would be enough, but setting your sights a bit higher than that would be the best way to go about it.
“I’m going to give everything I’ve got. I know there’s not much to lose at this point.
“The big thing for me was getting through last Sunday and now, yeah, just to be here in Colorado, the golf course is awesome.”
The 2017 Australian Open champion and two-time PGA Tour winner admits he thought he’d blown his BMW Championship hopes at last week’s St Jude Classic in Memphis when he double-bogeyed the last hole after finding the water.
“Honestly when I finished, I didn’t think I’d done enough,” Davis said of his final-round three-under 67 to finish tied 40th in the playoffs opener.
“I kind of set a mark in my own head and thought if I got to five under for the round, I would definitely be safe.
“And to do all the work that I had done up until the 18th hole to get to that number and feel like if I played a good solid last hole, I’d be set.
“So it was very frustrating to finish that way. I did think my season had finished there.”
Whether or not he makes the Tour Championship, Davis says he will finish his year back home after committing to playing the Australian PGA Championship and Australian Open.
“I’m definitely coming back to Australia,” he said.
“I love playing in Australia and I feel like I’m going do my best to come back every single year.”
Sitting in 25th spot in the season-long standings, Day would need a very poor performance in Colorado – and a host of other lower-ranked players to finish above him – to miss the Tour Championship.
Scott is more precariously placed in 41st position.
Mathematically, the former world No.1 needs no worse than a two-way tie for 20th to advance.
Realistically, Scott needs a top-10 result to extend his 2023-24 season.
World No.1 Scottie Scheffler leads the standings after seven wins this year, ahead of two-time 2024 major champion Xander Schauffele, the pair enjoying a big buffer over the chasing pack.
