The bubble is kind and cruel: Woodland, Hubbard, Thompson, others have playoff fates decided

GREENSBORO, N.C. — On Sundays at the Wyndham Championship, where your heart can be broken and unbroken a dozen times in the span of a couple hours, the emotional odyssey facing Mark Hubbard had only just begun when he narrowly missed his birdie putt on the 18th hole to finish at five under. He had a share of second place, but as he told the reporters gathered, there's no playoff for second, so his plan was to hit the bar in the clubhouse, wait, watch ... and pray for the math to work in his favor.

Hubbard had no chance to catch runaway winner Cameron Young, but he did have a chance to make the FedEx Cup Playoffs, which had seemed far-fetched at the start of the week and also at the start of the day. But the brilliant 63 was the best score of the final round, and it had briefly vaulted him from his starting position of 98th in the playoff hunt all the way inside the top 70. If things had ended at that precise moment, he'd be one of those blessed 70 heading to Memphis for the first playoff event, rather than going home on the 8:45 a.m. flight to Reno that he had booked at the start of the week.

As he sat and had a drink—"dealer's choice," he said, when asking for specifics—he had a few rooting interests. He needed to finish in a three-way tie for second, minimum, to stay inside the top 70, which meant that Mac Meissner, tied with him at 15 under at that moment, couldn't get to 16. Additionally, he could afford one of the players lurking at 14 under to tie him (Chris Kirk, Alex Noren), but he couldn't afford two.

And who was his main adversary? Not Meissner, or Kirk, or Noren, but Cam Davis, who had finished at four under and was 71st in the standings. Just as Hubbard was rooting for those multiple outcomes to play out, Davis desperately wanted something to spoil Hubbard's story. Unlike Hubbard, though, he wasn't hanging around. He'd been through this drama too many times, so he was flying to his caddie's house in Nashville and would be content with a text message at the end of the day.

Is your head reeling yet? If you followed along, you knew the reeling had just begun. As it turned out, Hubbard would see one of his two criteria met—only one other player, Noren, would reach 15 under—but the other took a major hit when Mac Meissner played the par-5 15th in clinical fashion, making his three-footer for birdie to seize second by himself and knock Hubbard out of the top 70. Now Hubbard needed Meissner to bogey one of the final three holes, but on 16 and 17, he could only dodge two narrow birdie misses and tap-in pars. That left the difficult par-4 18th, where Meissner blasted his drive to 333 yards and dropped his approach 22 feet from the hole. Hope gave way to desperation—only a three-putt could save Hubbard now—but the lag went just inside two feet, and the par putt was a formality.

Hubbard was out. Cam Davis was in.

If you thought that was heartbreaking, may I introduce you to another Davis—Davis Thompson. His story is far easier to tell; having started 78th in the FedEx Cup standings, he played a brilliant first two rounds, and by the 15th hole Sunday, he was just one birdie from forging his way into the playoffs. He got the birdie on that very hole, pouring in a dramatic 47-footer to reach 11 under:

Now he needed to play the last three holes even and got two-thirds of the way there with stress-free pars on 16 and 17. He reached the green in two on 18 but was 47 feet away—an extremely difficult two-putt. Adrenaline pumping, Davis blasted his birdie try six feet past the hole and watched in agony as the downhill comebacker slid by.

He fell to 71st, and this time the beneficiary was Matti Schmid, who, three groups ahead of Davis, had birdied the final three holes. When he finished, he was still lagging behind in 72nd place and needed the misfortune of both Hubbard and Thompson to sneak in as the 70th player.

The great irony here is that Schmid ended right where he began, in 70th place, and none of the other players mentioned thus far, from Hubbard to Davis to Thompson, moved to the other side of the bubble.

In fact, only two players shifted—Chris Kirk, who finished at 14 under and in a tie for fifth, rose from 73rd to 61st, while Ben An, who missed the cut, fell from 69th to 74th.

Somehow, though, those were the least dramatic bubble stories of the day. Perhaps the most interesting on Sunday morning belonged to Gary Woodland, whose recovery from brain surgery was chronicled on Netflix's “Full Swing” and who began the day projected in 70th place.

"I’m tired," he told CBS' Amanda Balionis after his round on Saturday. "I need to get back into a dark room and just try to turn my brain off as much as I can."

Unfortunately for Woodland, the fatigue showed on the weekend, with dual rounds of 70-70 that nudged him outside the cut line. He made a spirited rally with birdies on 15 and 17, but he couldn't avoid three bogeys at the back, and by day's end he had slipped to 72nd in the standings.

As the tour heads to Memphis for the FedEx St. Jude Championship, other players making the trip near the cut line include Erik van Rooyen, who withdrew after his opening round 73 but only fell to 68th, and fellow cut-missers Kevin Yu and Davis Riley. Players on the wrong side of the bubble include Nicolai Hojgaard, who made the cut but couldn't improve his position past 73rd, Christiaan Bezuidenout, who finished at one under to fall from 74th to 76th, and Keith Mitchell, who entered the week 72nd but missed the Wyndham cut.

Meanwhile, there was a second battle going on, with slightly lower but still significant stakes: The top 50 in the standings at the end of next week's playoff event will make the BMW Championship and earn automatic exemptions into next year's signature events. J.T. Poston improved his position from 54th to 51st with a t-11 position, and Aaron Rai, who finished in a tie for fifth, rose from 58th to 55th. Jordan Spieth started the week at 50th and a 31st-place tie in Greensboro moved him to 48th.

Here is the final FedEx Cup list of the top 70 for the regular season:

1: Scottie Scheffler

2: Rory McIlroy

3: Sepp Straka

4: Russell Henley

5: Justin Thomas

6: Ben Griffin

7: Harris English

8: J.J. Spaun

9: Tommy Fleetwood

10: Keegan Bradley

11: Maverick McNealy

12: Andrew Novak

13: Corey Conners

14: Ludvig Aberg

15: Robert MacIntyre

16: Cameron Young

17: Shane Lowry

18: Nick Taylor

19: Collin Morikawa

20: Brian Harman

21: Hideki Matsuyama

22: Chris Gotteryup

23: Patrick Cantlay

24: Sam Burns

25: Justin Rose

26: Viktor Hovland

27: Lucas Glover

28: Sam Stevens

29: Sungjae Im

30: Daniel Berger

31: Ryan Gerard

32: Ryan Fox

33: Jacob Bridgeman

34: Brian Campbell

35: Thomas Detry

36: Michael Kim

37: Jason Day

38: Taylor Pendrith

39: Denny McCarthy

40: Tom Hoge

41: Matt Fitzpatrick

42: Xander Schauffele

43: Aldrich Potgieter

44: Harry Hall

45: Akshay Bhatia

46: Si Woo Kim

47: Jake Knapp

48: Jordan Spieth

49: Wyndham Clark

50: Min Woo Lee

51: J.T. Poston

52: Kurt Kitayama

53: Bud Cauley

54: Joe Highsmith

55: Aaron Rai

56: Jhonattan Vegas

57: Max Greyserman

58: Stephan Jaeger

59: Mackenzie Hughes

60: Tony Finau

61: Chris Kirk

62: Nico Echavarria

63: Patrick Rodgers

64: Rickie Fowler

65: Davis Riley

66: Kevin Yu

67: Emiliano Grillo

68: Erik van Rooyen

69: Cam Davis

70: Matti Schmid