Browsing: pros

At Monday and Tuesday practice rounds on the PGA Tour, it’s almost odd at this point to see a player withoutsome sort of launch monitor device being carried around to measure every shot.

On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, Trackman’s Harry Shih explained what numbers pros and their caddies are actually focusing on when they are on the course using a launch monitor.

Shih said he walks every Tuesday practice round with Xander Schuaffele to help record data from all of his shots.

“It’s really carry and then spin rate are the two things that we’re looking at,” Shih said. “Especially for a guy like Xander, who’s pretty low maintenance when it comes to change.”

That’s not only useful to Schauffele but perhaps more useful to his caddie, Austin Kaiser.

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By:

Johnny Wunder

“For Kaiser, he wants to be able to refine his judgment of wind, what he tells Xander in the practice round, ‘Hey, I think it’s a 180 ball,’ and if it actually goes 175, then he knows maybe if his 5-yard calculation was right,” Shih said. “But then also just seeing just maybe some different things out on the golf course, spin rates, how it’s coming out of a first cut lie versus a fairway lie, ball speed differences, spin rate differences.”

Schauffele isn’t one to change equipment much, but when he does, that’s where Shih will let Kellen Watson and the rest of the Callaway team take over.

That work is also primarily done on the driving range and they are looking at things like peak height and gapping. When they are out on the golf course, the work is more about hitting shots and being able to trust numbers.

“Is it performing the same way on the golf course as it was on the range?” Shih said. “Can we take a little bit off of it? Can we hit it a little bit higher? Things like that. But it’s really, hey, is spin rate and carry where we need it for maybe that week.”

For more from Shih and Fully Equipped co-hosts Johnny Wunder and Jake Morrow, listen to the full episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped here, or watch it below.

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Tommy Fleetwood meditated on meditation.

Playing this week at the DP World Tour’s event in India, he’d been asked whether he still does yoga, and the popular pro said he’d unfortunately stopped. But mental deep-dives, an activity he did as a yogi, were still very much a priority.

Meditation, he said, had helped him during some lean times. And it’s been a factor this year, one of the best of his career.

“I remember I was really struggling with my game and I was in a bad place,” Fleetwood said. “Having the worst period of golf that I had had, I feel like part of — as hard as I worked and all the decisions that I made to try and get my game back at the time, I feel like meditation was a huge part of that. Because I had to sort of really re-wire my confidence and things like that.

“I still do that to this day. I might be a bit sporadic with it, but I really feel like it’s a powerful tool and I feel like it’s very, very important. I think there’s a lot of goals that I set or visualizations that come in in a week or a tournament, or you know, wherever it may be, and I feel like meditation is a big part of that and it helps me a lot.”

Deeper stuff. Which was a theme.

Fleetwood? He also talked about losing. Rory McIlroy? He talked about opinions. Ben Griffin? He talked about stopping. Kudos to the reporters in India for mining out the moments of introspection.

The exchanges are below, with the questions in italics. And some additional thoughts follow the Q&A’s.

Tommy Fleetwood on losing

How do you get up again? I remember watching the St. Jude Classic whenRosey won, and all the top five finishes, but then going on to win the FedExCup, how do you do that?

“I think the obvious first thing is that whatever happens, I mean, what’s the point in letting it have a negative effect on whatever happens next?” Fleetwood said. “I mean, it’s just pointless.

“It’s obvious, but then it’s obviously harder to do. I think always with me, any time I had to do an interview after something like that happened, I felt like it was really important. I feel the same feelings as everybody else. I could have moped or sulked or been angry. But I really wanted to try and rewire as quickly as possible and see the positives because there’s plenty of things that you can kick yourself for. There’s plenty of things that you can get wrong.

“But you’re going to have to play next week or the week after that or the week after that, and there’s absolutely no point in letting anything have negative impact on what happens next. All those times where I came really close, I had a bad week, and then so many people that week — there’s times when I’ve played tournaments and I’ve been really happy finishing 20th because I had a good Sunday. So there’s so much good there, that that’s the stuff you should focus on.

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By:

Alan Bastable

“Of course there’s things that I would want to improve on and things that I know I might have got wrong, and I’ll work on those things. I’m not going to lie to myself and say everything was great. I know I’ve got things wrong.

“But the important thing for me is to give yourself the best chance every time you go out and play, having a positive attitude and a good mindset is very important for that.”

Is it harder now that you’ve won the FedExCup?

“Not really,” Fleetwood said. “I think there’s different challenges for everything. When things are going well, one of the hardest things that any sports person has to deal with is your own expectations. You have to manage your own expectations. Like I say, different things have different challenges.

“You know, I’ve missed out on winning that many times that I always knew that I wasn’t going to let one win change anything. My game is still what it was where, you know, the week before Atlanta. And even on the Sunday, my game is still the same, even when I walked off the 18th green and I know I have to improve to be the best player I feel like I can be, and I just want to keep working on that.”

What to make of the quote:At the FedEx St. Jude Championship earlier this year, Fleetwood led by one shot entering the final round — and he finished one shot back of a playoff won by Justin Rose, leaving Fleetwood again without a win on the PGA Tour. Two events later, though, he broke through.

Now we know at least one reason why.

Rory McIlroy on opinions

Many congratulations on everything you’ve achieved in your career so far. You’re one of the greatest athletes of our generation, and like you said, being treated as a professional — when you talk about the landscape of sport, very different from what it is right now, do you think gone are the days when people watched sport for the pure joy of it, just for the love of it, as opposed to now watching sport to have an opinion about the player, about the coach, about everything that happens? I specifically ask this because obviously after what happened in Ryder Cup and how out of hand the situation got. Do you think the landscape watching sport, enjoying watching sport, has changed to now having an opinion?

“Yeah, so I would say — it’s a great question,” McIlroy said. “I would say that deep down at its core, the essence of watching sport, it’s the realist reality show that we have. We don’t know the outcome. We don’t know what’s going to happen, and that’s amazing. There’s very little content on TV nowadays that can actually do that.

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By:

James Colgan

“So my sport will always be what it is, and I think the majority of sports fans watch it because of that. But yes, there are — you know, you start to see — look, it’s a big business, and big business and money comes from having opinions on things, and the more eyeballs things are ultimately a good thing, if it can be harnessed the right way.

“But yeah, it’s definitely changed. When it’s people watching sport for the gambling aspect and they put money on games, that is something that especially in America, that’s a changing landscape. But I think at its core, watching sport, whatever that is, is still very pure and it’s still pure competition, and I think that’s an amazing thing.

“But yeah, as an athlete and knowing that you’re going to get criticized for your performances, good or bad or whatever it is, I think at this point in time and in this modern world, that’s — I wouldn’t say it’s a price to pay, but yeah, you just — it is what it is.

“I think athletes nowadays have to do a better job of blocking out the noise. So not going on social media, trying not to read anything about yourself — easier said than done. But I think the more athletes in this day and age, if they can do that, I think it’s better. I think it’s better for their performance. I think it’s better for their mental health, and I think it’s better for their longevity in a given sport, as well.”

What to make of the quote:Yes, this is an opinion on an opinion about opinions. With this thought, I still go back to what McIlroy said at the Ryder Cup, in the aftermath of abusive fan behavior, when he noted that while he had heard a lot of negative comments toward him, he didn’t hear much support for the Americans. I think that says a lot.

Ben Griffin on stopping

Your journey in golf, I imagine a fair few Indian golfers are on the cusp of giving up. What lesson can you share?

“It’s important to always chase your dreams,” Griffin said, “but it’s also really healthy to take a break sometimes during those dreams and just take a step back and look at it holistically in a way and be able to learn from what your journey has been.

Tommy Fleetwood’s simple advice to help amateur golfers save strokes

By:

Josh Schrock

“For me, I did quit the game fully. I was working a job for a few months there and it was a great time for me to honestly get my mind completely off of golf. I had no intentions of coming back to golf. And it’s crazy that it’s worked out the way it has. It’s been quite the journey, and you know, I’m just trying to soak it all in, and also at the same time just continue to work hard and let things happen as they come.

“It’s a very difficult challenge making it to the top in this sport. There’s a lot of different pathways and a lot of it is playing golf in tournaments and places all across the world starting out and not making very much money, and then just kind of trusting the process.

“I’m lucky that I had so much support from not only my family and friends but sponsors to give back to golf, and it gave me an opportunity to play not only for myself but felt like I needed to play for them and work hard and make sure I was doing the right things off the golf course to make sure I was doing my best. It was a lot of sacrifices and change in lifestyle, but it’s ultimately, definitely paid off, and it’s been, yeah, quite the journey.”

What to make of the quote: Griffin’s story has been well documented over the past few years — and one of the best stories came from GOLF’s Josh Berhow, which you can read here. But what jumps out to me is that he always answers the questions about his ‘journey’ eloquently. That should tell you something.

Golfers don’t always retire. Not clearly and publicly, at least. Because they don’t need teams to sign them to contracts, because tour status has plenty shades of gray, because the physical demands of the sport are lesser than, say, football, professional golf careers can just…keep going.

We do sometimes get chances to bid farewell to our big-time golf stars, if decades later than we would in other sports; think Arnold Palmer in his final U.S. Open at 64 or Jack Nicklaus in his final Masters at 65. But the rank-and-file players who compose the fields of the biggest tournaments in the world? They might eventually play a reduced schedule, or on a different tour, or set their sights on the senior tour, perhaps slightly less each year until it’s finally time.

And so I found it unexpectedly moving to listen to the post-round interviews of several PGA Tour Champions players after last week’s SAS Championship, the final regular-season event, as they considered the ends of their respective careers. The average NFL career is a little over three years; the longest ones run 15 or so. But most guys on the senior tour have been pro golfers their entire adult life. There’s something that feels bigger about considering the end. And it comes with a mix of gratitude, sadness, peace, longing, acceptance, resistance.

Scott Dunlap was wistful about the passage of time but sounded remarkably grateful for a second phase of his career that exceeded all expectations — even if it still feels a bit surreal.

“You know, when it’s time, it’s time. It’s been a whole lot better run than I ever thought it would be,” he said. “And looking forward to the next thing, which won’t be making three-footers … I mean, you know, you age out. I saw it when I got out here, guys that were near the end, and lo and behold it happened to me.”

It’s hardly all been sunshine and roses — “you know, it’s always fun to compete but it hasn’t been fun to not play well,” he said — but big-picture?

“Well, I feel like I robbed a bank. This post-50 thing has been amazing,” Dunlap added. “Did okay on the PGA Tour, not a great career, had to go to the qualifying school to make it.

“But my time out here has been a blessing … make a whole lot more money playing golf post-50? I can’t think of any other sport where this opportunity avails itself to somebody. I couldn’t be happier. Now it’s time to go have some fun.”

Mark Walkerexpressed gratitude, too, but sounded less at peace with the idea that this could be it.

“What now? Not sure,” he said. “I don’t know what this is going to look like moving forward. May be done, golf may be over. Not sure yet, but we’ll see.”

Here Walker seemed to be referencing the PGA Tour Champions’ latest decision to eliminate Q-School — effectively closing off access to those not otherwise qualified.

“Just because they’re limiting the spots, there’s nowhere to play. It’s just getting harder and harder to even get a start out here,” he said. He’s still clearly a competitor with plenty of self-belief — but the realities of the game have caught up to him.

“I didn’t give up,” he said. “Really struggled with my game, tried to just keep fighting, working on it. For 75 percent of the year I didn’t have my game. Kind of started coming around at the very end, but a little too late. A little too late in the year.”

What would he miss, if this is the end?

“It’s been wonderful,” he said. “[I’ll] just miss the competition, miss the guys out here. Competition, mainly. That’s what gets you up in the morning, waking up and knowing you have a place to compete and test your game.”

Brandt Jobe still has some competitive golf in his future — but he, too, is coming to terms with a more limited schedule.

“You know what, take some time off and reflect a little bit, see next year what tournaments I get in. Obviously I still have the desire to do it, so we’ll see. I don’t know where that’s going to land me or how many opportunities,” he said.

“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 then there’s Kirk Triplett, who said with a warm smile that he’s doing everything he can to resist that final day coming.

“I’ve talked to a few guys that I always try and learn from, the people that came before, and to a man they say, ‘do not stop playing until your eligibility is up because you will miss it.’

“So if I had something to do, like if you need an assistant or you know anybody, right, maybe it would be easier,” he said, addressing the interviewer with a laugh. “But for right now I’m a PGA Tour Champions professional. And when’s the next tournament?”

For Triplett, though, there’s good news: the next tournament is this week. He snagged the final spot in the Schwab Cup’s playoffs, finishing No. 72 on the money list, just a couple hundred bucks ahead of Jobe.

Another start. At a point in his career where they all start to feel a little more precious.

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.”

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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.”

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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.

Earning a PGA Tour card is a tremendously difficult task. But keeping it is no cake walk, either. Harder still? Winning back your card after losing it. Three PGA Tour veterans proved that the hard way on Sunday at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship, where they just missed out on reclaiming their Tour privileges.

After changes to qualification rules in recent years, only the top 20 finishers at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship earned PGA Tour cards for the 2026 season. You can read all about the fortunate few who punched their Tour tickets on Sunday here.

But in this space we’re concerned with the other side of the equation, the players who have lived the life of a PGA Tour pro, fought all year on the Korn Ferry Tour to get back and came up painfully short on Sunday.

The silver lining for these three pros? They all finished high enough in the Korn Ferry standings to earn full status there in 2026, where they’ll mount new campaigns to reclaim their cards.

PGA Tour pros who missed cards at KFT Championship

Justin Suh

Justin Suh, a 28-year-old former PGA Tour pro from San Jose, has played in 90 PGA Tour events in his pro golf career, earning two top-5 and five top-10 finishes.

These 20 Korn Ferry Tour players just earned their 2026 PGA Tour cards

By:

Josh Schrock

Suh played full season of 29 Tour events in 2024. But he only made 12 cuts and failed to record any top 10s. As a result, he finished 162nd in the FedEx Cup standings to lose his playing privileges and drop back to the Korn Ferry Tour.

On the Korn Ferry Tour this season, he won the Argentina Open in March and collected two other top 10s. But it wasn’t enough to move back to the big leagues.

Entering the Korn Ferry Tour Championship at 24th in the standings, just outside the top 20 who earns cards, Suh finished T31 to remain tantalizingly close but, ultimately, short of getting his card back.

Russell Knox

A 40-year-old Scottish pro, Russell Knox played successfully on the PGA Tour for several years, earning two victories at the 2015 WGC-HSBC Championship and the 2016 Travelers Championship.

But his last full season was 2022-23, when he made 23 of 37 cuts to finish 144th in the Fedex Cup standings and lose his Tour card.

He played in 10 Tour events in 2024 and then received three sponsor invites in 2025, missing two cuts and finishing 68th at the Corales Puntacana Championship.

Knox made 21 Korn Ferry Tour starts in 2025, earning a runner-up early in the season at the Bahamas Great Abaco Classic along with three other top 10s.

But a disappointing T55 finish at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship Sunday dropped Knox from 34th to 36th place in the final KFT standings, leaving him 16 spots short of reclaiming his PGA Tour card.

Dylan Wu

Twenty-nine-year-old Oregon native Dylan Wu should be familiar to many golf fans. He played 33 PGA Tour events in 2022-23, finishing 86th in the standings to maintain his card.

But in 28 starts in 2024, Wu only managed one top 10 and dropped to 119th in the FedEx Cup standings, losing his Tour card in the process. Though he got into 13 Tour events this past season and recorded some good finishes, he only got enough points to finish 170th in the standings.

He only played eight events on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2025, so a T31-finish on Sunday could only improve his position from 71st to 69th, well short of the Tour card cutoff.

Brandon Holtz secured the biggest victory of his career by winning the U.S. Mid-Amateur last month, although his title — and the resumes of those who advanced deep into the championship — unfurled a larger conversation in the golf world.

Should former pro golfers be allowed to regain amateur status?

The latest mid-am champ was the guest on this week’s episode of GOLF’s Subpar podcast, and a portion of the conversation focused on that controversial topic.

The U.S. Mid-Am is one of the USGA’s signature championships, and it’s for amateurs 25 years or older with Handicap Indexes of 2.4 or lower. Any professional has the ability to reapply for amateur status — as long as it’s approved by the USGA. Although the fact that 14 of the final 16 players in this year’s mid-am were former pros didn’t sit well with everyone.

But Holtz would like to offer an opinion on those who think former pros should not be granted amateur status.

“The U.S. Mid-Am was basically built for this in my opinion. … I’m a working man, I got a couple of kids, got a wife, like, for me, as far as competition is concerned, what else am I going to play in?” Holtz said. “My Bloomington normal city event, a town of 160,000 people? That’s fun don’t get me wrong and it’s great, but what else can I play in if we don’t have the mid-am?”

Holtz, 38, played college basketball at Illinois State, pursued pro golf for six years and regained amateur status in 2024. He’s now a realtor and lives in Bloomington, Ill.

“If you really want to get into the logistics of it all, 2010 to 2014, I played full time, sure if you want to call it full time — working, traveling on my own, doing everything on my own with a little help from my dad,” he said. “But we are losing money. I kept [my professional status], but I had flexibility in the job that I had to be able to go play in hopes of, ‘Hey, wife, I’m going to go play this weekend; hopefully I can bring a few bucks home.”

There is no one set of rules for every pro trying to regain amateur status though. The USGA reviews each application and makes a ruling based on things like career longevity and success.

Although Subpar co-host Drew Stoltz said that’s not a perfect system either.

“There’s a period of time that goes by where what you did 10 years ago as your job, it does not matter anymore,” Stoltz said. “There’s a point where it’s irrelevant almost. I’m not saying first year out after playing pro you should be able to play amateur events, but once you start working and you have kids and are playing once a week, it’s like, yeah dude, nine years ago I played a lot of golf, but a lot has happened since then.”

Added Holtz: “Rules are rules too, right? Follow the rules and it is what it is.”

Life as a professional golfer can be brutal, isolating and level you with crippling self-doubt. For every star, countless guys are scraping and clawing to get a foothold in the professional game, keep their heads above water and build a career for themselves.

Guys like Steven Fisk.

The 28-year-old PGA Tour rookie had a trying first year on the top circuit. The Georgia Southern product made 13 cuts in 22 starts but only had one top-10 finish, which came at the Puerto Rico Open. The summer was especially tough for Fisk, who carded just one top-30 finish in his final eight starts of the PGA Tour regular season, leaving him well outside the top-100 bubble entering the FedEx Cup Fall Series.

Fisk finished T30 at the Procore Championship, which Scottie Scheffler won as a Ryder Cup tune-up. That left him at 135 on the FedEx Cup points list entering this week’s Sanderson Farms Championship at the Country Club of Jackson in Mississippi. Fisk opened with a two-under 70 but then fired back-to-back seven-under 65s to get within two shots of 54-hole leader Garrick Higgo entering Sunday’s final round.

After a year spent getting a crash course in the realities of professional golf, Fisk knew he had to make the most of Sunday. With the fall season dwindling down and a trip back to the Korn Ferry Tour staring him in the face, the final round in Jackson might be his last, best chance to keep his head above water on the PGA Tour.

Steven Fisk’s final round highlights at Sanderson Farms Championship

Fisk turned in three-under 33 and then birdied the 11th to grab the outright lead. Higgo, a two-time PGA Tour winner, responded with birdies at 13, 14 and 15 to tie Fisk at 21 under. With three holes left and a career-changing win hanging in the balance, Fisk closed in style. He rolled in a 41-foot birdie putt at No. 16 to match Higgo and stay tied at 22 under.

On 17, Higgo hit his approach to six feet, but Fisk stuck it inside him. Higgo’s birdie attempt from three feet slid past the hole, opening the door for Fisk, who tapped in his two-foot birdie putt to take a one-shot lead to the 72nd hole. Fisk striped his tee shot and then stuffed his approach shot to three feet, 10 inches. Higgo’s final birdie attempt didn’t scare the hole, ceding the stage for Fisk to walk through a door that can change everything.

“[I had] an attitude that nothing was going to stop me,” Fisk told Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis after the win. “No matter what happened, no matter what shots I hit. I just felt like I’d be standing right here, right now before today started.”

When asked why he still felt that way after a trying rookie season, Fisk offered a glimpse into the uphill climb he has been attempting and the relief that irrational confidence and four good October rounds in Jackson, Mississippi, can deliver.

“Self-belief. Grit. I know I’m good enough. I thought I could do it,” Fisk said.

“It’s a lifelong dream, honestly. Sometimes you doubt yourself. I don’t know. I knew I could do it. And to have some job security is pretty nice. It has been a long, hard year.”

After rolling in the finishing birdie, Fisk embraced his caddie Jay Green. He then turned to find Edith, who was racing toward the green. She leaped into his arms, and his eyes started to tear up. She started crying, and then so did he. They exited the putting surface toward Green. Edith and Green hugged. The three held each other in a moment of relief and celebration, smiles beaming from all of their faces. The road here had been trying. Team Fisk has traversed a trying year together and endured personal tragedy along the way.

Fisk lost his father, Christopher, earlier this year after a battle with cancer. Green, who started caddying for Fisk last year, caddied for the late Grayson Murray when he won the Sony Open in 2024. After the win, the two will travel to Raleigh for the Grayson Murray Classic.

Fisk is certain that he and Green weren’t alone on their Sunday charge in Jackson.

“I think he nudged a couple of putts in for me for sure, maybe him or Grayson,” Fisk said of his father on Sunday. “I had a couple of helpers out there. I miss him very much, and I know he’d be really proud of how I played all week and especially today to keep my composure and just kind of go about my business the best way I know how.”

This day brought Fisk a two-year exemption on the PGA Tour as well as a spot in the PGA Championship and the Players Championship. Where he started the week worrying about his FedEx Cup points rank and what the future might hold if the putts didn’t start dropping over the next month-and-a-half, Fisk now can exhale. He no longer has to worry about whether or not he can make it on the PGA Tour. With a finishing birdie flurry at the Country Club of Jackson, Steven Fisk did what he and his father always believed he was capable of.

“I’d like to think that he knew this day would happen,” Fisk said.

The game of golf is full of bizarre rules situations, and at the Sanderson Farms Championship on Saturday, viewers got to see a rare ruling play out in real time.

On the par-4 15th hole at the Country Club of Jackson, tournament contenders Garrick Higgo and Eric Cole hit their drives into the front right greenside bunker. When they arrived to hit their second shots, they found their balls nestled together in the sand. What do you do in that situation? Even the players needed extensive direction from the onsite rules official.

According the the information relayed on the broadcast, Higgo was the first to play off the tee. His ball left a track in the bunker before coming to rest. Cole then hit his tee shot to the same place, and Cole’s ball followed Higgo’s track, pushing Higgo’s ball into a more buried lie before settling right next to it.

The rules official directed Higgo to play first, so Cole was able to mark his ball with a tee and then move it one club-length to the side so the tee wouldn’t interfere with Higgo’s shot.

Because Higgo’s ball was moved by Cole’s shot, once Cole marked, Higgo replaced his ball as nearly as possible to where his ball originally ended up — essentially in the position where Cole’s ball came to rest. Once Higgo played his shot, the bunker could be raked, Cole’s ball could be replaced, and he could play his second shot. No penalty was assessed to either player.

“I’ve had the opposite of [the bunker situation on 15] before,” Higgo said after his round. “At Sea Island a couple of years ago, I was playing with Brian Gay on 18, he hit it in the greenside bunker, and I hit it after him in his pitch mark, which is the opposite of this, and I had to play that one because it was already like that before I hit. This one, I hit first, so I apparently was entitled to the lie that I had.”

Garrick Higgo sinks 5-foot birdie putt on No. 15 at Sanderson Farms

For Higgo, the ruling caused zero disruption to his game. He hit the bunker shot to five feet, then drained the putt for birdie. Cole followed with his own bunker shot to 12 feet but missed the birdie putt to settle for a par. Higgo currently leads the tournament by two shots heading into the final round.

The Ryder Cup occurs every two years and pits 12 top American players against 12 top pro golfers from Europe. Both teams are set for the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, but will there be LIV Golf players competing on either team?

Here’s what you need to know.

Are LIV players allowed to play Ryder Cup?

The short answer is yes. Pro golfers who play on LIV Golf are allowed to play in the Ryder Cup. Nothing specifically bars them from automatically qualifying for a Ryder Cup team or being chosen as a captain’s pick.

But it works a little bit different for the two teams.

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Sean Zak

While the American-based PGA Tour has banned LIV pros from playing in its events, the American side of the Ryder Cup is run by the PGA of America. There are no rules prohibiting any LIV Golf pro from playing on the U.S. team. (Brooks Koepka did so at the 2023 Ryder Cup.)

But, if you play on LIV Golf, it’s very hard to qualify for the Ryder Cup. Most Ryder Cup points awarded for automatic qualifier purposes are handed out at PGA Tour events. So U.S. LIV players can only earn points at the majors. But the captain is free to pick any LIV pro for the U.S. team as a captain’s pick.

On the European side, for a LIV Golf player to be eligible for the Ryder Cup team they must be an active member of the DP World Tour and pay substantial fines for playing in LIV Golf events.

If they meet those criteria, they can automatically qualify for the team earning points at majors and DP World Tour events, or they can be selected as captain’s picks.

LIV Golf pros on 2025 Ryder Cup teams

There are multiple LIV Golf pros playing in the 2025 Ryder Cup.

Although, for the American team there is only one: two-time U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau.

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By:

Josh Schrock

Despite playing on LIV, DeChambeau automatically qualified for the U.S. team based on his strong play in the majors.

The European team has a stronger LIV presence at the 2025 Ryder Cup, but not by much. They only have two LIV players on the team.

LIV pro Tyrrell Hatton qualified for the European team automatically after a strong year on the course.

European Ryder Cup veteran Jon Rahm, who played in the 2023 Ryder Cup just before joining LIV Golf, was selected as one of European captain Luke Donald’s captain’s picks.

It was never easy to earn a PGA Tour card through the Korn Ferry Tour. It’s harder now after changes…