The Barclays 2015: Tee times, pairings for Sunday’s final round

The No. 1 player in the FedExCup standings, Jordan Spieth, made an early exit from The Barclays on Friday afternoon. Spieth’s first missed cut since early May means he’ll relinquish his world No.1 ranking to Rory McIlroy, who did not even play this postseason opener, come Monday morning. And he may be about to lose his No. 1 spot in the FEC points race.

Jason Day and Bubba Watson started the week Nos. 2 and 3 in the FedExCup standings, building a nice chunk of points from multiple win seasons. Their impressive totals, however, did not come close to Spieth’s regular season dominance but that won’t matter if either wins this first of four playoff events. The points totals are weighted so heavily for these playoff tournaments — e.g. Spieth won the customary 500 FEC points for winning the Valspar Championship, while this week’s winner will get 2000 points. Spieth is a massive 1,710 points up on Day and 1,762 points ahead of Bubba, but a win by either and we have a new No. 1 in the standings. The PGA Tour would like to hail this as a major development, but because of the resetting of points in Atlanta, the playoffs’ fourth and final event, a lot of this is just inconsequential jostling before that most meaningful season finale.

Day will anchor the tee sheet with Sangmoon Bae in the final tee time of the final round at 2 p.m. ET. They share the 54-hole lead at 11-under, one stroke clear of Bubba and two strokes clear of a world-class trio in Zach Johnson, Henrik Stenson and Ryan Palmer. Day made his big move on Saturday with a 7-under third round 63. We saw what happened last time Day had a lead at this point. Granted, that was a multi-shot cushion over Spieth at the PGA, but the Aussie has to be the favorite over the less experienced Bae going into the final 18 holes.

It’s a bit of a surprise given that Day had to withdraw from Wednesday’s pro-am after injuring his back moving a box under his motorhome and then spent much of Thursday’s first round flinching and grimacing in pain upon impact with the driver. But here he is again back on top of a leaderboard during what should be a career-changing summer.

While Day and Bubba are the big names among those final tee times, the best story would probably be a Palmer win. The Texan lost his father last week, and it was unclear if he’d even play in this week’s event after that tragic car crash. Now he’s in contention and he’ll have everyone rooting for him on Sunday afternoon. He goes with Bubba in the penultimate group at 1:50 p.m. ET.

Here’s the full tee sheet for Sunday’s final round:

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