When Ian Poulter missed the cut at the Valero Texas Open last week, it appeared that he also lost his PGA Tour card for the 2016-17 season. Poulter was playing on a major medical extension and was in his final tournament of that extension. It was presumed that he needed to make slightly more than $30,000 to reach the top 125 on the PGA Tour last season in order to keep his card.

What he (and we) didn't know at the time, is that he already had retained his card via FedEx Cup points. In a pretty wild series of events that involve fellow major medical extension golfer Brian Gay digging into a the restructured FedEx Cup points system, even though Poulter fell short on money by a minuscule amount, he'd earned enough points before last week's Texas Open even started.

To boil it down: There are two ways to retain your card when on this extension. The first is money. The second is FedEx Cup points. Both are measured against the top 125 money and points earners in 2015-16, all of which get a 2016-17 PGA Tour card. But the points system was changed from the 2015-16 season to the 2016-17 season. So Poulter actually was earning fewer FedEx Cup points in 2017 than he would have in 2016, even though those points were being measured against the top 125 point earners for 2016.

In other words, Poulter was finishing, say, 30th in a tournament in 2017, but retroactively it looked like he was finishing more like 40th because of the points reduction and because his finishes were being measured using last season's golfers and finishes.

Nobody would have caught this if Gay had not dug into it.

"Ian wrote, 'I freakin' love you.' with a bunch of red hearts," Gay told Golf.com of a text he got from Poulter. "We talked later, and he didn't even know the FedEx points were different this season."

"I'm appreciative of the PGA Tour that it was even brought to their attention," Poulter told PGATour.com, "and they went about making that decision with the players board, they got a unanimous decision to obviously count our points for 2016 as they should."

Gay's wife is humorously petitioning for her husband to get a car or some private jet rides for helping Poulter out. Poulter noted that a gift is on its way.

Both Gay and Poulter are exempt into the Players Championship in May.