Gonzalo Fernández Castaño will play in the Ellie Mae Classic this week in Hayward, California, second to last tournament on the regular Web.com calendar and,evidently, second to last opportunity to get a good score that will bump him up in the rankings.
The first objective is to maintain his spot within the top 75 of the rankings (he’ll be arriving to California in 68th place), but the Spanish golfer continues to have his sights set high. In the end, it’s still mathematically possible to reach the top 25, although it will be a tremendous challenge.
In that sense, it’s simple to break it down: Gonzalo would make it to the top 25 by winning one of the two tournaments left, or he could finish both in second place, keeping in mind that the prize pool next week (in the WinCo Food Portland Open) is larger than normal. At the same time, and as an approximate point of reference, the combination of a second and third place in both tournaments, and even two sole third places should do the job, but not much lower than that…As you can see, big goals, high aspirations.
The tournament will be held at TPC Stonebrae, in the vast San Francisco Bay, a par 70 course on which German golfer, Stephen Jaeger shattered all the records two years ago when he shot a 58 in the first round of the tournament (he ended up winning the tournament with a seven-shot advantage), where there is high correlation in difficulty level and wind intensity.
