Power keeps card after Greensboro nailbiter

Seamus Power

Seamus Power kept his PGA Tour card by the skin of his teeth but Graeme McDowell joined Shane Lowry and Pádraig Harrington in losing his at the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro.

While Power joined Harrington and Lowry in missing the cut, results went his way and he finished 125th in the FedEx Cup standings to clinch the final spot in the first Playoff event, the Northern Trust in New Jersey this week which Rory McIlroy has opted to skip.

McDowell failed to secure the top-five finish he needed, closing with a 67 to finish tied 57th on six-under and 144th in the final FedEx Cup standings.

Lowry and McDowell will have conditional status and limited starts in 2019 and Harrington can use a one-off career-money winner's exemption.

But Power (31) will have full status after Sergio Garcia, for the first time in his career, failed to secure the top 20 finish he needed to make the Playoffs.

The West Waterford man came into the week ranked 123rd but after he missed the cut at Sedgefield Country Club, he was reliant on a series of results going his way to avoid a final event KO for the second year running and a return to the Web.com Tour Finals to fight for his card.

In the end, only Nick Taylor (63 for tied eighth) and Harris English (68 for tied 11th) managed to pass Power, who ended up 125th.

The key was Garcia, who was inside the top 125 entering the final round but after going out in one under, he bogeyed the 10th, 12th and 14th to fall-out shots outside the top 12.

He bounced back with birdies at the 15th and 17th but a level par 70 to finish tied 28th on 12 under and 128th in the FedEx Cup standings will not have given European Ryder Cup skipper Thomas BjoCup much comfort.

As for the tournament, Brandt Snedeker (37) turned his opening 59 into a ninth tour win, closing with a birdie for a 65 and a three-shot on 21-under par from Chinese Taipei's CT Pan (66), who drove out of bounds when tied for the lead playing the 18th, and Webb Simpson (62).