Watney's dismal year turns on a win at Barclays

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Nick Watney always felt the first playoff event for the FedEx Cup was the most important. A good performance in The Barclays could set up a player to reach the Tour Championship, have a mathematical chance at the $10 million bonus and qualify for all the majors next year.

This turned out even better.

Watney now has more than just 10 million reasons to be excited.

Not only did his three-shot victory in The Barclays on Sunday put him atop the FedEx Cup standings and assure that he'll have a good shot at golf's largest payoff, Watney suddenly is in the conversation to play in an event that doesn't pay anything at all — the Ryder Cup.

U.S. captain Davis Love III makes his four wild-card selections after next week's Deutsche Bank Championship outside Boston. Steve Stricker and Jim Furyk are likely to be two of the picks. Based on what happened over four days at Bethpage Black, the other two now are up in the air.

"I don't want to be lobbying. It's his decision," Watney said. "The best way to enter the conversation is to play your way into the conversation."

That's just what he did.

Watney was two shots behind Sergio Garcia when the final round began. He was two shots behind through six holes after he three-putted for bogey from 40 feet. And just like the outlook on his year, it all changed so quickly.

Watney had a two-putt birdie on the par-5 seventh. On the par-3 eighth, with a dangerous pin at the front of the green with a shaved bank toward the water, he took a little off a 7-iron to play it safe and rolled in a bending, 30-foot birdie putt. Garcia tried to hammer an 8-iron, turned it too much into a bunker and had to scramble for bogey. That gave Watney the lead, and he stretched it to three shots on the 10th hole with a gorgeous approach into 4 feet as Garcia three-putted for bogey.

No one got closer than two shots the rest of the way. Watney hit 8-iron to 10 feet for birdie on the 14th, and he added a birdie on the 18th that didn't matter except for the score. He closed with a 2-under 69 and finished on 10-under 278.

"It's been not quite the year I wanted," Watney said. "But this really makes it all forgotten. Winning a tournament is hard, but winning out here and against this field was very, very difficult. I'm kind of still on a high right now."

Love isn't thinking about only Watney, however.

Brandt Snedeker, a winner at Torrey Pines and a contender at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, battled to the end and finished with two big putts for a 70 that put him alone in second place. Garcia, who bogeyed the last hole for a 75, tied for third with Dustin Johnson, who had a 68.

"Ryder Cup is definitely on my mind," Snedeker said. "But I'm not letting it affect the way I play. Try to win every golf tournament. It gives me more motivation to do it, and if I do that, I know I will make the decision easy for them.

"Davis has an extremely difficult choice with a bunch of guys who did not play well enough over the last two years to be on the team. You can't go wrong with any of them. I think that it's certainly helped everybody who played well this week."

The top three names on the leaderboard: Watney, Snedeker, Johnson. All of them are being considered as a Ryder Cup pick. Watney is the newcomer to the list based on his win at The Barclays, the strongest full field of the year except for the majors.