Rickie Fowler was punching his ticket to Atlanta—until he wasn’t. 

With a birdie on the seventh hole in the final round of the 48-player BMW Championship, Fowler moved to No. 30 in the projected season-long FedEx Cup standings, with the top 30 earning a spot in next week’s Tour Championship at East Lake. Things, however, took a turn for the worse late in the round.

The 36-year-old didn’t commit to his approach swing on the par-4 14th and failed to get up and down from the greenside rough. Fowler followed that up by hitting his next drive down the middle, before flying his approach over the green en route to a double. 

Needing a birdie on the final hole to keep his hopes alive, Fowler sent his putt five feet past the hole—and his season was over. 

“Obviously bummed,” Fowler said after his final-round 69. “I knew what I needed to do. Really just made a poor swing. I just needed to give myself a little bit more time and get fully committed to what I was trying to do. Eight-iron into 14, I hung it out, left it out right. Really don’t feel the breeze down there in the fairway, and just got my start line out to the right too much, and I had the ball below my feet. A few variables. So bummer on that one.

"Tried to make a couple (birdies) coming in, but yeah, I wish we were playing next week, but we’ll head off and get to recovery and get ready for next year," he added.

He isn’t the only player who suffered a similar fate. 

Michael Kim is the first man out, finishing at No. 31 after an even-par Sunday at Caves Valley. A bogey on the par-4 15th knocked him back on the outside before a birdie on No. 16 moved him back in. Ultimately, though, Viktor Hovland made a seven-footer for birdie on the last to deny Kim, 32, his first trip to East Lake. 

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom afterward. 

“I’ve never been this close to a Tour Championship in my entire career,” said Kim, who had one final chance at birdie on the last, but hit his approach to 25 feet. “Felt like a small back injury kind of hurt me in the middle of the year. Overall, it was a great season.”

Because of Kim’s shortcomings, Akshay Bhatia can breathe a sigh of relief. He finished on the bubble at No. 30, after entering the week 29th. 

The 23-year-old almost missed out on his second consecutive Tour Championship. He had three consecutive bogeys on Nos. 12 to 14 and another on No. 17. Signing for a 2-over 72, he was projected at No. 32, but the cards fell in his favor with Kim’s and Fowler’s stumbles. 

Therefore, Bhatia’s hole-out eagle and ace in Round 3 proved to be the difference. 

“I just feel like maybe I didn’t do a great job (on the back nine),” Bhatia said. “I think we could have done a better job with the mindset of, again, just trying to play golf and not trying to protect. It felt like that in a way. You know, that’s part of the learning experience.”

The other bubble players joining Bhatia in Atlanta will be Chris Gotterup (No. 29), Sungjae Im (No. 28), Jacob Bridgeman (No. 27) and Harry Hall (No. 26). 

It’ll be Bridgeman’s first Tour Championship after the 25-year-old finished 121st last season. Gotterup, too, is making his maiden start at East Lake thanks to his Scottish Open win last month. The 26-year-old was on his way to having the BMW be his last start of the season, but a final-round 68 kept him alive. 

“We were talking the other day,” Gotterup said, “like if we were a month out and you said you were going to be here with a chance to fight for East Lake, you would have signed for that.”

However, Hall was the only player to move from the outside to the inside of the top 30. The 28-year-old Englishman, who began the week 45th in the FedEx Cup, finished sixth on the BMW Championship leaderboard. And despite bogeys on his 70th and 72nd holes, he put an exclamation mark on his week by chipping in from 44 yards on the par-3 17th. 

“I had just bogeyed 16, and I knew I couldn’t afford to drop a shot coming in,” Hall said. “I hit a beautiful five-iron (on No. 17), just the way I wanted to, and it just rolled a little bit over the back. I’ve been hitting that chip shot on the practice chipping green all week, like the same spot, warming up every day with a 54 (degree wedge) into the grain on an upslope. 

“As soon as I saw the lie, I’m like, ‘I’ve been doing this all week.’ Yeah, I hit a perfect shot.”

But in the FedEx Cup playoffs, someone’s gain is another player’s loss. 

With Hall moving into the top 30, he bumped out Lucas Glover, who entered the week as the last man in, but fell to 36th with a T40 at Caves Valley.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Rickie Fowler Fumbles Tour Championship Berth Late at BMW as Harry Hall Makes it .

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