Bermuda is many things – friendly, charming and blessed with a natural beauty that feels as if you’re living in a flower shop – but there is one thing it is not:
Where visitors typically go to grind away at work.
That’s different this week at the Port Royal Golf Course in Southampton, Bermuda, where the PGA Tour’s penultimate event, the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, comes with the built-in edge of players trying to secure their full-time jobs for next year.
There is something to the adage that “there’s always next week” on the PGA Tour, and that’s true – the RSM Classic at Sea Island is a week away – but that’s the season finale, meaning there are no more next weeks to lock down status for 2025.
While the tour stars are off doing whatever they do during their fall vacations, there are plenty of players chasing what they don’t yet have or trying to hold on to what they currently have.
That means finishing among the top 125 on the FedEx Cup points list to assure full tour status next year. Narrowly missing isn’t the end of the world because Nos. 126-150 get conditional tour status, but that means they take spots in the lesser events and can’t make their own schedules, which makes cracking next year’s top 125 more difficult.
A year from now, only the top 100 will keep their full tour status, assuming proposed changes get passed at a tour Policy Board meeting next week, but let’s stick with what we have at the moment.
For a guy such as Joe Highsmith, he may have done the necessary work last week when he finished fifth in the Worldwide Technology Championship in Mexico to jump from 125th into 112th spot in the points race, probably good enough that he’s secure regardless of how he plays the next two weeks.
The left-hander has used the fall events to his advantage, making the cut in all five of his starts while finishing T16 or better four times, explaining his jump from 160th to 112th.
Hayden Springer sits at No. 125 this week, with Dylan Wu, S.H. Kim and Wesley Bryan immediately behind him.
Among those just inside the top 125 but still needing at least one more good week are Joel Dahmen and Daniel Berger.
Dahmen became a star of sorts through his role in the two seasons of Netflix’s “Full Swing” series, endearing himself to viewers and fans with his personality. He’s an easy guy to pull for, and will be one of the central characters in the Bermuda field this week.
“I think it would mean more this year, just the grind that it’s been. Golf has been relatively easy for me for five years. Haven’t really been in this position before. It would mean a lot. It’s really hard to keep grinding when things aren’t going your way.” – Joel Dahman
He sits at No. 121, up three spots from a week ago, and is up front about what making the top 125 would mean to him.
“I think it would mean more this year, just the grind that it’s been. Golf has been relatively easy for me for five years. Haven’t really been in this position before. It would mean a lot. It’s really hard to keep grinding when things aren’t going your way,” Dahmen said after a T14 in Mexico last week.
“There’s a lot of pressure; the next two coming up, it’s a lot. Finishing 30th might be a good-enough-type thing. That’s almost harder than when you’re in contention. Yeah, it would mean the world.”
Berger has almost no wiggle room, sitting at 124th on the list. A former Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup player with four tour victories, Berger missed more than 18 months due to back issues, sidelining him for the entirety of the 2023 season.
This week will be his 26th week, a good sign for a player overcoming serious back issues, but the spark that helped make Berger one of the tour’s top players for several years has yet to return.
“I’ve tried to dig in and just be patient and just enjoy the process,” Berger said at the Sanderson Farms Championship. “When you miss two years, you don’t come back and see immediate success. It can be challenging. Now I’m just having fun, and that’s when I play my best.”
Meanwhile, there are 10 tour cards available to players on the DP World Tour who aren’t already exempt for the PGA Tour, and that list will be finalized at the end of the DP World Tour Championship on Sunday in Dubai.
With his victory in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship last week, 39-year-old Paul Waring secured one of the 10 PGA Tour cards, prompting an unexpected change in his career path.
“I was quite happy living in Dubai, to be honest with you. It’s going to be a long way to travel, a long commute over to America. But I’m looking forward to that. It’s a new challenge,” Waring said.
It’s also likely that Matteo Manassero, the one-time wunderkind who has rediscovered his lost magic, will be among the 10 DP World Tour players joining the PGA Tour. While not every one of the 10 qualifiers had much success this year, Matthieu Pavon and Robert MacIntyre won on the PGA Tour this year.
In Bermuda and Dubai, the tournament winners this week won’t be the only ones smiling on Sunday.