NORTON — Like a golfer who chunks an iron, it has been pounded into our heads that our little piece of PGA Tour turf, the Deutsche Bank Championship, is part of golf’s playoff, the four-tournament FedEx Cup.
That’s great news for local golf fans because it entices the PGA’s best to this neck of the woods without the presence of Tiger Woods. The good news for the golfers is that the FedEx Cup is about as much of a “playoff’’ in the actual sense as Adam Sandler’s fictional golfer Happy Gilmore was an actual PGA player. It’s more like a gradual downsizing.
The top 30 golfers or so entering the playoff series are basically all but assured of playing in at least three of the four playoff events, even if they can’t make the cuts.
Smylie Kaufman is thankful for that. The rookie missed the cut at the first playoff stop, The Barclays, after coming in ranked 26th in the playoff standings. But he still got to tee off at TPC Boston as one of the top 100 players in the memory-foam forgiving FedEx Cup standings (No. 34 to be exact).
Convoluted and contrived playoff aside, Kaufman has been no stranger to elimination, failing to make the cut in his last four tournaments and eight of his prior 11. There was no such danger on Saturday during the Deutsche Bank second round. Kaufman fanned visions of a possible sub-60 round and sent a frisson of Furyk-esque excitement through the air when he was 7 under par after his first seven holes.
Adorned in Louisiana State University purple, he birdied five of the first seven holes and eagled the par-5 second.
With Kaufman in full force Saturday morning, it looked like the TPC devotees might be in for the Full Furyk (a 58), but the kid bogeyed his next two holes and settled for a 5-under 66. That left him tied for fifth at 8 under with Dustin Johnson, who appeared destined to tie for the day’s low round (64) before he butchered the 18th hole with a double bogey. DJ signed off on a 66.
“Yeah, it was pretty difficult to kind of manage because once I got to 7 there were some thoughts of some things that could happen,’’ said Kaufman, alluding to dipping into the 50s. “It has been happening recently.’’
The way the 24-year-old Kaufman has been playing, the most encouraging part of his game wasn’t those first seven electrifying holes that had folks transitioning from “Who is that?’’ to “Who is that?’’ in Norton. It was the way he responded to back-to-back bogeys on No. 8 and No. 9 with steady play. He collected five straight pars.
It allowed him to shoot back-to-back rounds in the 60s — he opened Friday with a 3-under 68 — for the first time since January at the CareerBuilder Challenge.
“It has been difficult this summer. I haven’t had the best summer,’’ said Kaufman. “So, I just tried to manage my thoughts the best I could . . . I’m very pleased with how I kind of hung in there, even when things didn’t go my way. I kind of kept my cool and was able to get up and down when I needed to and hole the big putts when I needed to today.’’
If you want to get an idea of how long the PGA Tour season can be, especially in an Olympic year, Kaufman’s rookie PGA Tour victory came last October.
One of 17 first-time winners on Tour this season, Kaufman won the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas with a 16-under-par effort.
Kaufman shot a blistering 10-under 61 in the final round. On that day, Kaufman was just 1 under through seven holes. He birdied seven of the final 11 holes and carded an eagle on the 15th. His 20-foot birdie putt on No. 18 ended up being the difference.
The kid can putt. It took him just 23 putts to complete the second round Saturday.
“It’s not an easy position to be in — that many under par that early,’’ said Kaufman. “I’ve had some experience and eventually one of these days I feel like it’s going to eventually have to happen, something real, real low. I’m very happy it happened in Vegas this year actually.’’
The Barclays wasn’t a total lost cause for Kaufman. He used the event to get fellow Tour members to sign a golf bag that he planned to auction off to support the victims of the catastrophic flooding in Louisiana. Kaufman said the bag was given to a friend of his grandfather’s who pledged $50,000.
An Alabama native, Kaufman said that he and fellow PGA LSU alums David Toms, Andrew Loupe, and John Peterson are all devoted to aiding folks in the Bayou State.
Kaufman plans to go to Louisiana after the BMW Championship, the third leg of the playoff, to pitch in.
“Yes, it has been very difficult for the folks in Louisiana. They had unbelievable amounts of flood issues in houses and people are homeless,’’ he said. “You know it has affected everybody down there. I think I’ve done the most I can to try to raise awareness.’’
Loss on that level puts Kaufman’s scuffles on the golf course and a wrist injury that hampered his game into the proper perspective. But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t like to finish with a flourish.
Since the inception of the FedEx Cup playoffs in 2007, only seven rookies have advanced to the Tour Championship, the determining event in the playoff, where the players are re-seeded so any of the 30 participants has a shot to win.
The list of names includes Jordan Spieth, Keegan Bradley, Marc Leishman, Brandt Snedeker, and Daniel Berger, who did it last year.
Kaufman has something with a greater payoff and purpose than the PGA’s faux playoff to play for, though. He’s playing to raise some awareness of those affected by rising water.
Christopher L. Gasper can be reached at cgasper@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @cgasper.
