Just $201 separated these 2 pros from playoff bids: ‘1 stinking shot’

While the 2025 FedEx Cup Playoffs ended months ago, another pro-golf post-season is about to begin: the PGA Tour Champions’ Charles Schwab Playoffs. The regular season ended on Sunday at the SAS Championship, the last chance pros had to sneak into the top 72 to earn a spot in the first playoff event.

Former PGA Tour and current PGA Tour Champions players Kirk Triplett and Brandt Jobe ended up on opposite sides of the bubble, at 72 and 73, respectively. It was a tough reality for Jobe, made tougher still by the shockingly low amount of earnings that kept him from a playoff spot: just $201.

Brandt Jobe is Champions Tour playoff bubble boy: ‘Can I cuss?’

Jobe has had a long career on the PGA Tour Champions. He acknowledged as much is his post-tournament press conference on Sunday at Prestonwood C.C. in the aftermath of his painful playoff ouster.

“This is my 10th year, so I’m pretty lucky. Tenth year without really having a clear path and I’ve had a clear path, so I can’t be disappointed,” Jobe said on Sunday. “I remember coming out here saying if you give me five years, that would be great, and I got 10. If next year’s 10 tournaments, 12 tournaments, whatever it is, embrace it and hopefully build on the last couple few months of what I did.”

4 tips on gear (and life) I found on the PGA Tour Champions

By:

Johnny Wunder

His frustration at getting knocked out of the Charles Schwab Playoffs before they even began was more apparent with the first words he uttered in his press conference.

“Can I cuss?”

His mood was understandable. Jobe, who is 60, collected four runner-up finishes and $9 million in earnings during his PGA Tour career. He added two wins on the PGA Tour Champions, most recently at the 2019 Boeing Classic.

But this season, and this week, did not go as Jobe had hoped it would. He played in 17 tournaments in 2025 and earned only one top-10 finish. A T61-finish (eight over) at the SAS Championship left him with $221,861 in official money for the year.

On the PGA Tour Champions, each dollar won accounts for one point in the Charles Schwab Cup standings. So Jobe’s $221,861 equated to 221,861 points. That put him in 73rd place, one spot out of making the first playoff event, next week’s Dominion Energy Charity Classic.

Triplett, the last man in at 72nd, finished with $222,062 in official money, or 222,062 points. Jobe was just $201 dollars short of making the playoffs, a 0.1% difference.

Kirk Triplett narrowly sneaks into PGA Tour Champions playoffs

Triplett, 63, has eight career PGA Tour Champions victories, though he hasn’t entered the winner’s circle since a two-win stint in 2019. In total, he’s pulled in $11,972,995 on the senior circuit.

In his PGA Tour career, Triplett won three times and finished with over $14 million in on-course earnings.

But his winnings in 2025 were minuscule in comparison. In 22 starts, Triplett failed to record a top 10 and took home $222,206. But it was good enough to pip Jobe and make the Charles Schwab Playoffs, and the importance of that achievement was clear from his post-round comments on Sunday.

“I hate to say it, but it’s like the most meaningful golf I played this season,” Triplett said. “I’ve just been 40th, 50th. My best finishes are in the 20s and 30s. I’m not playing well but I’m not managing my game well and I’m not competing well and all of those things are snowballing. I look around, I don’t see too many guys older than me doing it, so you know that here’s a reason, right, because otherwise, whether you get tired — I think it’s just energy. You’ve done it for so long, you’ve been successful.”

Why is the senior tour ‘the hardest tour to keep your card’? Padraig Harrington explains

By:

Jessica Marksbury

The tiny margin by which he overcame Jobe was not lost on Triplett, either, which over the course of the season he said boiled down to “one stinking shot.”

“This is the thing, right?” Triplett said. “You play 22 events. $200? My partner and I are sitting at the team championship and I decide — he says, ‘I’m going to go catch a flight,’ right? I decide to withdraw because it’s just inconvenient, I don’t want to miss my flight. There’s a couple grand right there that would throw me up three places. So the little decisions that you make like that. And if you’re a Monday morning quarterback in this game, man. I tell all these young players I talk to a lot of times, I say, ‘You want to really, really see something interesting? Take one shot off every day’s score and see how much money, what a difference that makes at the end of the year. One stinking shot, one stinking shot.’”

The competition between Triplett and Jobe ultimately came down to Sunday’s final round. Whoever finished higher would take the final playoffs spot, and the other would head home with no chance of earning their PGA Tour Champions card for next season.

“Hey, it’s gritty out there, go out there and whoever gives up first is probably going to lose. I don’t think either Brandt [Jobe] or I gave up,” Triplett said on Sunday. “You should have seen us, we played together on Friday, we did not look like two guys who could break 80 two days in a row. I mean, we were awful. So both of us summoned up something at least coming down the stretch.”

While Jobe’s 2025 campaign is over, Triplett plays on. But he still has plenty of work left to earn his playing privileges for 2026. Triplett will have to play well enough next week to improve his ranking to 54th to qualify for the Simmons Bank Championship, the second playoff event.

The task gets harder from there. Only the top 36 players in the standings will qualify for the playoff finale Charles Schwab Cup Championship and, in doing so, earn their 2026 PGA Tour Champions cards.

Source link