Working-Class Weekend

FARMINGDALE, NEW YORK | There are golf professionals and there are professional golfers and the lines don’t often cross.

Golf professionals sell equipment, give lessons and make sure their members are happy. They make a living from the game, not by playing the game.

Professional golfers play the game for a living, their success measured in birdies, bogeys and par saves.

Every year at the PGA Championship – a major championship run by the PGA of America, an association that counts approximately 29,000 golf professionals as members – 20 of those professionals tee it up against the best golfers in the world.

This week at Bethpage Black, Rob Labritz, Marty Jertson and Ryan Vermeer – golf professionals – did what Tiger Woods, Jon Rahm, Sergio Garcia and others could not.

They made the cut at the PGA Championship.

They were no threat to win, but in a championship that causes some PGA Tour players to complain about club pros taking spots that might otherwise have gone to one of their own, Labritz, Jertson and Vermeer proved...