WGC champ Shane Lowry is now in golf’s top 20, so why hasn’t he qualified for the FedEx Cup yet?

Shane Lowry is probably a very happy man today

It's not only because of the $1, 570,000 (€1.4m) lodgement that will appear the next time he checks his balance, but also the fact that Sunday night's WGC Bridgestone Invitational win means the Irishman is now a major golf star. The Offaly native has continued his rise up the rankings to number 19 in the world ahead of the final Major of the year, the US PGA Championship, which tees off at Whistling Straits on Thursday. Not bad at all for a guy from Clara.   [caption id="attachment_35345" align="alignnone" width="756"] OWGR[/caption]   Victory also nets him valuable PGA Tour membership until 2018, but remarkably Lowry still has work to do to take part in the FedEx Cup play-off series, where the top prize is a staggering $10million. Under normal circumstances, the 550 points awarded to the Bridgestone winner would be more than adequate to make the 125-man cut for the Barclays, but FedEx Cup rules state that points earned by non-members at WGC events cannot be retrospectively applied, meaning Lowry currently only has the 222 points earned from other events, including top tens at the Farmers Insurance Open and the US Open. That will place him about 40 places outside the cut-off mark, meaning Lowry needs another big result at either the US PGA Championship or the following week's Wyndham Championship, the final event before the play-offs. [h/t Golf Channel]