This is one of the rare weeks when the PGA Tour schedule goes dark.
It doesn’t happen often, only a handful of times each year, and with the calendar about to speed past the Halloween candy to the Thanksgiving decorations, the pause between the Zozo Championship last week and the World Wide Technology Championship in Mexico next week feels like the increasingly early sunsets these days with darkness closing in.
Technically, three events remain on the PGA Tour’s 2024 schedule: the WWTC in Los Cabos next week, the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in two weeks and the season-ending RSM Classic at Sea Island in late November.
As destinations go, this may be the most underrated part of the tour’s schedule, landing in three spots where even if you were left with the third pick among friends, you’d be happy to have that option for a getaway.
While the meaty part of the tour season ended with Scottie Scheffler being crowned the FedEx Cup champion at East Lake on Labor Day weekend, the fall portion of the season has done what it’s there to do: give players the opportunity to pocket some cash and set themselves up for 2025.
The five fall winners – Patton Kizzire, Kevin Yu, Matt McCarty, J.T. Poston and Nico Echavarria – may not be the names typically crowding major-championship leaderboards, but their victories locked up their jobs for the next two years. In theory, winning should give them more freedom to play without fear of putting their standard of living in jeopardy.
As the tour heads toward another adjustment in its eligibility standards, cutting the number of players who retain their full privileges from the top 125 to the top 100 (as early as 2026, it appears), the value of winning any event continues to grow.
“It’s just unreal getting into Sentry and the Masters and having a few more opportunities,” McCarty said after winning the inaugural Black Desert Championship in Utah earlier this month. “I think now the focus will switch a little bit of now being in, I guess, three out of the four majors, so just kind of focusing on those weeks and how everything is going, and really looking forward to this challenge and kind of seeing how it feels and also kind of how my game will translate out there.”
The money on the PGA Tour has never been greater, but it’s also fair to say the depth of talent has never been deeper. The success of the PGA Tour University players, most notably Ludvig Åberg, is an obvious indicator of that fact. It’s worth noting that Yu came out of the same program, heading to the Korn Ferry Tour and then on to be a tour winner in two years.
“It’s so competitive out here; there’s so many guys, young guys that are coming up trying to take your job. As my buddy Brian Harman, he says, ‘See that guy over there? He’s trying to take my job.’ I laugh every time he says that, but they are.” – Patton Kizzire
This time of year, while it’s overshadowed by football and softened by the absence of the biggest stars, still produces good and meaningful stories.
Kizzire prevailed at the Procore Championship in Napa, California, almost a year after he was teary-eyed at Sea Island after failing to secure his full privileges for 2024. While Scheffler won eight times this year (winning the Olympic gold medal should count as an official victory), Kizzire probably found his one victory proved to be as deeply satisfying to him as any of Scheffler’s wins.
“It’s so competitive out here; there’s so many guys, young guys that are coming up trying to take your job. As my buddy Brian Harman, he says, ‘See that guy over there? He’s trying to take my job.’ I laugh every time he says that, but they are,” Kizzire said.
“There’s so many good players coming up, and everybody’s training better and getting better. It’s so competitive. The guys are working hard. You’ve got to be on top of your game to win. That’s what makes it so sweet.”
Echavarria went to Japan last week in the 113th spot on the FedEx Cup points list, just close enough to the cut-off line with three events remaining to need a good week. He wound up with a great week.
In the process, Echavarria beat Justin Thomas by one stroke, denying the 15-time tour winner his first victory in 29 months. No one imagined that when Thomas beat Will Zalatoris in a playoff to win the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills, it would be his last victory for more than two years.
But golf is fickle, and Thomas has lived it, fighting his swing and his confidence on the greens, not unlike what his friend Rickie Fowler has been through. Both had top-five finishes last week in Japan, and while they have bigger goals, seeing progress this time of year matters.
“At the end of the day it has been a while, but I’ve still won a pretty good amount of golf tournaments. I know how to win. It’s just a matter of executing and doing it, and that’s really been the biggest difference. There’s a reason there’s only one every week,” Thomas said last week.
“You have to do a lot of things really well, and you have to beat a lot of really good players. I have a lot of faith in myself and my game, but I can’t control what the other guys do. I’ve just got to play the best I can and believe that it will be good enough.”