By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf

The PGA TOUR wraps up its regular season at this week’s Wyndham Championship with many players scrambling to play their way into the top 70 and qualify for the lucrative FedEx Cup playoffs.

The British Columbia trio of Nick Taylor, Adam Svensson and Adam Hadwin have no such worries. All three are well inside the top 70.

Taylor, who is 12th on the FedEx Cup points list, is taking his second straight week off and not playing the Wyndham Championship. Hadwin and Svensson are both in the Wyndham field.

Hadwin, who enters the event 39th on the points list, missed the cut at last week’s 3M Championship in Blaine, Minn. Svensson tied for 37th at the 3M and now stands 37th on the points list.

The playoff structure has changed this year. In past years, the top 125 players qualified for the playoffs and there were four playoff events. This year, only the top 70 make the post-season party and there are just three playoff events. The top 70 get into the FedEx St. Jude Classic in Memphis, which goes Aug. 10-13.

The top 50 players then advance to the BMW Championship, which goes Aug. 17-20 in Olympia Fields, Ill. The top 30 then qualify for the season-ending Tour Championship, which will be played Aug. 24-27 in Atlanta.

TOP-20 FINISH: Vancouver’s Stuart Macdonald followed up his recent win in Ottawa with a top-20 finish at the Osprey Valley Open in Toronto on the PGA Tour Canada circuit. Macdonald closed with a two-under 69 to finish the event at the Heathlands course at TPC Toronto tied for 17th at 11-under par. That was eight shots behind winner Davis Shore of Knoxville, Tenn. Macdonald moved up one spot and now stands fifth on the tour’s Fortinet Cup points list.

The top five on the points list at season’s end earn Korn Ferry Tour status for 2024. Kimberley’s Jared du Toit tied for 21st at 10-under par at Osprey Valley and now stands 26th on the points list. Macdonald and du Toit are both in the field for this week’s Windsor Championship, along with fellow B.C. pros A.J. Ewart of Coquitlam, Chris Crisologo of Richmond, Henry Lee of Coquitlam, Ziggy Nathu of Richmond, Lawren Rowe of Victoria and Jeevan Sihota of Victoria

MOVING UP: Merritt’s Roger Sloan tied for 21st at the Korn Ferry Tour’s NV5 Invitational in Glenview, Ill. Sloan closed with a two-under 69 to finish the event at 16-under par, nine shots behind winner Trace Crowe of Charlotte, N.C. The finish moved Sloan up 19 spots on the Korn Ferry Tour points to list 92nd. Sloan is in the field for this week’s Utah Championship.

RECORD MATCHED: A competitive course record at Capilano Golf & Country Club set 20 years ago by Abbotsford’s James Lepp was matched by Tyson Shelley of Salt Lake City in the final round of the 56th playing of the Pacific Coast Amateur Championship. Shelley’s final-round 62 moved him to 13-under par and got him into a playoff with Jack Buchanan of Australia. Shelley, a junior at Brigham Young University, won that playoff on the second extra hole.

Lepp set the record in the second round of the 2003 Pacific Coast Amateur, which he went on to win by 10 shots. Two-time B.C. Junior Boys champion James Lee of Whistler was the top Canadian at last week’s event, finishing tied for 26th at three-under par. The Morse Cup team competition was won by the Arizona Golf Association. British Columbia Golf had to play a man short when B.C. Amateur champion Cooper Humphreys of Kelowna was forced to withdraw due to injury. The B.C. team of Nolan Thoroughgood of Victoria and Alex Zhang of Richmond finished 11th.

STOUFFER THIRD: Nanoose Bay’s Shelly Stouffer tied for third in defence of her Canadian Women’s Mid-Amateur title. Judith Krynis of Thornhill, Ont., ran away with the championship played at Mad River Golf Club in Creemore, Ont., as she beat the field by 12 shots. Vancouver’s Nonie Marler shot the low score of the final round — a two-over 74 — to finish ninth.

TEAM TITLE DEFENCE: B.C. Women’s Amateur champion Chelsea Truong of Victoria, Jennifer Gu of West Vancouver and Rebecca Kim of Surrey will defend British Columbia’s title in the inter-provincial team competition at this week’s Canadian Women’s Amateur Championship. Twenty-two other British Columbians are also competing in the tournament, which is being played at Ashburn Golf Club in Halifax. They include national team members Angela Arora of Surrey, Lauren Kim of Surrey, Leah John of Vancouver and Michelle Liu of Vancouver.

NextGen (junior) Team members Luna Lu of Burnaby, Martina Yu of Coquitlam, Vanessa Zhang of Vancouver and Yeji Kwon of Port Coquitlam are also competing. Lu finished second at last week’s Canadian Junior Girls Championship at Hampton Golf & Country Club in Hampton, N.B. Eileen Park, a 14-year-old from Red Deer, Alta., won the event by seven shots. Truong was the only other British Columbian to crack the top 10 as she finished solo sixth.

NICE PAYDAY: Langley Golf Centre’s James Allenby eagled the 18th hole to win the Vancouver Golf Tour’s Golden Ears Open at Pitt Meadows Golf Club and earn the $10,000 top prize. Allenby finished the 36-hole event at four-under par and edged three players — Steven Lecuyer of Seymour Creek Golf Centre, Jake Lane of Charlie Lake and David Hansen of The Home Course in DuPont, Wash. — by one shot. The three second-place finishers each took home $2,166.