(This monthly feature takes a brief look at improving players who reached one of three thresholds in the last month: Either the player reached a career-high position in the Hawley Ratings top 50, or made his first career appearance in the top 200, or made his first appearance in the top 400.)

Top 50 and Career High

Francesco Molinari — Molinari has steadily been climbing the Hawley Ratings, hitting a career high of 19th on Jan. 29. He was 12th and 14th, respectively, in the CareerBuilder and Farmers Insurance events. A year ago he was 54th. As recently as early November he was 27th. The 34-year-old is a native of Turin, Italy. He’s played eight or more PGA Tour events every year since 2010 after making his Euro Tour debut in 2005.

Billy Horschel — Billy Horschel reached a career high of 27th in the ratings on Jan. 8. He had a decent 2016 (five top-10s in 20 events), culminating in a runner=up finish in the RSM in November. Horschel is a native Floridian and was a four-time All-American at the University of Florida. He was just another guy on the PGA Tour in 2011 and 2012 before winning the 2013 Zurich Classic and making it really big as winner of the 2014 Tour Championship.

Tyrrell Hatton — Hatton started 2016 ranked 115th and ended it at a career high 46th. He hit another career high of 44th on Jan. 22 after a top-15 finish in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship. He was fifth and 10th in the last two majors, the British Open and PGA, respectively, then put together a nice fall season that started with the win in the Dunhill Links at St. Andrews, Scotland, and included a ninth-place finish in the British Masters, a 10th in the Turkish Airlines Open, and a runner-up finish at Dubai. He’s a 25-year-old from Buckinghamshire, England, just northwest of London.

First Appearance in the Top 200

Grayson Murray — PGA Tour rookie Grayson Murray made his eighth appearance in a rated event at the Farmers Insurance Open. Although he missed the cut, the number of appearances qualified him for the Hawley Ratings and he debuted at no. 105. The 23-year-old native of Raleigh NC had top-10s in eight of 17 events on the Web.com Tour last year. A top-15 finish at the CareerBuilder is his best showing on Tour thus far. Murray, who somehow managed to attend four universities (Wake Forest, East Carolina, North Carolina, and Arizona State) drew some attention at the PGA Tour card ceremony in Portland last fall, per pgatour.com, by showing up in a T-shirt while everyone else was wearing golf shirts, polo shirts, or formal wear.

Aaron Wise — The South African who was NCAA golf champion in 2016 as an Oregon sophomore entered the Hawley Ratings at 123rd on Jan. 29. He has Web.com Tour status for this season but has been playing PGA Tour events as a sponsor exempt player. Wise, 20, was 10th at the Shriners last fall and has a top-40 finish at the CareerBuilder thus far in 2017.

Dominic Bozzelli — Bozzelli, 25, made a big leap to 149th place in the Hawley Ratings on Jan. 22 by finishing fifth in the CareerBuilder. He had a bad MC in the Farmers the next week (83 on Friday) and dropped to 183rd. He’s a two-time winner of the New York state amateur who played at Auburn. He earned his PGA Tour card by finishing in the top 25 earners on last year’s Web.com Tour.

JJ Spaun — Spaun, 26, is another recent graduate of the Web.com Tour who picked up a top-10 early in his PGA Tour career. He stepped up the ratings to 182nd place on Jan. 29 with a ninth-place finish in the Farmers. Earlier this year he posted a top-50 at the CareerBuilder. The Los Angeles native played at San Diego State.

Seamus Power — The Irishman, 29, worked his way up through the mini-tours and eventually through the Web.com Tour after a college career at East Tennessee. A two-week sequence of top-50 at the Sony and top-25 at the CareerBuilder pushed him into the top 200 at 195th place on Jan. 22. He’s back at 214th after a MC at the Farmers. If the name rings a bell, perhaps it is because he was paired with Padraig Harrington as Ireland’s representatives in the Olympics last summer.

Joakim Lagergren — Lagergren, 25, has been up and down between the Challenge Tour and Euro Tour in Europe since his first big-league appearance as a teenager in 2010. His best career finish on the Euro Tour came on Jan. 29 when he was runner-up in the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters. That resulted in his career-high spot at 195th in the ratings. He’s a native of Stockholm, Sweden.

Richy Werenski. Werenski, 25, was born in Massachusetts and played for Georgia Tech. What do you think? Patriots or Falcons? He debuted in the top 200 at no. 197 by finishing nith at the CareerBuilder, then put an exclamation point behind it by jumping up to 142nd with a top-20 finish at the Farmers. Werenski won the Golf Channel’s reality show Big Break The Palm Beaches in early 2015.

First Appearance in the Top 400

Brett Drewitt — Drewitt appeared in the top 400 at no. 309 on Jan. 22 on the occurrence of his eighth appearance in a rated event. The down-side is he is zero-for-two on made cuts in 2017. Last fall he had finishes of fifth in the Web.com Tour Nationwide Childrens Hospital event, top-40 in the Safeway, and top-50 in the Australian PGA. The 26-year-old is an Australian native.