The PGA Tour’s long season officially concluded Sunday, with plenty of drama at the RSM Classic, if not the star power that the masses unrealistically crave from week to week.
Maverick McNealy, a force at Stanford before turning pro, won for the first time, knocking his approach to 5 feet at the last hole and making the birdie putt to break a four-way tie and win for the first time in 142 PGA Tour events.
Like the other seven winners in what is called the FedEx Cup fall, McNealy, 29, earned a spot in the Masters in April, a perk not previously attained. Their victories will get them other perks as well.
There was plenty of fretting elsewhere on the leaderboard as well, as players sought to attain full exempt status for 2025 via the top 125 in FedEx Cup points.
One of the players McNealy beat with his 18th hole birdie, Daniel Berger, went from outside the top 125 to 100 with his tie for second. Having battled back injuries for a good portion of 2022-23, Berger—a four-time PGA Tour winner—had a chance to win Sunday if not for a cold putter over the closing holes. But he’s got life on the circuit next year, with the stakes even higher.
With the PGA Tour’s recent decision to cut the number of exempt players from 125 to 100—and by decreasing the number of Korn Ferry exemptions from the top 30 to the top 20—there will be a fierce race in 2025 with far more players than spots available.
It’s why getting in the top 125 for someone like Joel Dahmen was so important. And why another such as Hayden Springer will be lamenting the missed opportunity.
Dahmen, 37, shot a final-round 64 at Sea Island to narrowly survive, having been outside of the projected number at the start of the day—and having needed to make a 5-footer for par on Friday to make the 36-hole cut.
Springer, who was exempt this year via the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament, could never quite get on a necessary roll this year. A 63 on Saturday gave him hope, but his 70 on Sunday meant that he moved up just a single spot from 128th to 127th.
All is not lost for someone in his position, it’s just that his fate is far more tenuous as it is more difficult to make a schedule.
Springer played in 25 tournaments this year. Henrik Norlander, who ended up earning his card by moving to 120th in points, did so playing just 20 events out of a conditional category. He was 126th in points last year—basically the same position that Springer now finds himself fighting.
And with more of a keen interest in getting into the top 100 next year, the competition for playing opportunities in 2025 will be that much more intense.
That’s why Dahmen’s Sunday was so important to him. He felt on Saturday he had perhaps blown his opportunity.
“Lona, my wife, did an amazing job of letting me ... I'd say grieve,” he said after his finish on Sunday. “Just like driving, going to pick up my kid thinking, man, it would be really cool if I could pick up my kid for five more years from this daycare thing and maybe not having that opportunity. And the kid's amazing, he doesn't care and he's so much fun. But he was playing and Lona and I were just kind of sitting there and I was just staring off into the wall.
“She was like, ‘Are you OK?’ I’m like, ‘no, I’m not OK, I want this to happen.’ She’s like, ‘well, you can still play golf tomorrow, right? It's not over.’ And that was kind of one of those things, like the switch flipped. It was about two hours after the round probably when the switch flipped for me to be able to kind of pull myself back up for today.”
As it turns out, Dahmen’s testy par putt on the final hole was not necessary. He’d have survived anyway. But he didn’t know that at the time, which made the situation all the more difficult.
This is the second year of the PGA Tour’s rebranded “FedEx Fall” and it really is no longer about the star players showing up this time of year. When the Tour reverted to a calendar-year season in 2023 and rewarded the top 50 for the following year with locked status and signature event starts, it paved the way for those players to either do other things or take time off in the months following the Tour Championship.
That might not be great for sponsors, TV executives and even casual golf fans, but the PGA Tour should have always leaned into the fall as being the place for the grinders, ceding ground to the NFL and college football. It is impossible to compete now, so why try? Let this be about the stories we just saw unfold, and let other parts of the world have their time.
The DP World Tour saw some of its strongest events in the fall with the Irish Open, BMW PGA Championship, Dunhill Links, Spanish Open and its season-ending playoff swing in the Middle East. With its “strategic alliance” with the DP World Tour, it only make senses to allow the European-based circuit to prosper in these slow American months while its rank-and-file members seek a place for the following year.
There has been plenty of conjecture—and will continue to be—about the controversial decision to cut back on playing opportunities and thus the number of exempt spots going forward.
A year from now, instead of fighting for the top 125, players will be grinding for the top 100—although finishing from 101 to 125 won’t be the end of the golf world, as those players will still get plenty of playing opportunities, just not as many as they’d like, perhaps not at the venues they prefer.
And yet, the same players we are talking about here are the ones that many complain clutter too many leaderboards, leading to cries that there is not enough star power and PGA Tour events are bereft of star-studded outcomes.
It’s impossible to have it both ways. That’s why the fall should be viewed for what it is, a chance to improve one’s position.
The regular season starting in January and through to the Tour Championship in August will see eight signature events, four major championships and the Players Championship at a minimum where stacked fields will exist—along with the FedEx Cup playoffs.
With a more competitive landscape expected due to less fully exempt spots, the competition should be keener, meaning players are likely to play more. Is that better? Maybe. There are bound to be unintended consequences that will come into view.
But the stories that we saw Sunday will still be there a year from now. It’ll simply be for a different, more elusive level of exempt status.
Luke Clanton's amazing run
Luke Clanton is still a junior at Florida State. But he’s been playing like a pro golfer, even if not compensated like one.
Clanton could very easily have won the RSM Classic on Sunday, having bogeyed the final hole to drop into a tie before Maverick McNealy birdied the same hole to win by a shot.
The result was a fourth top-10 in eight PGA Tour starts this year, with seven made cuts and two runner-up finishes. Clanton was also second at the John Deere Classic. He is now 93rd in the Official World Golf Ranking.
“It was another good week. (But) It's hard, man. It's a hard loss, for sure,” he said. “I think God's given me a great talent and to be out here in general, just to be in contention again, it's awesome. It's going to be a tough one to definitely take, for sure, after bogeying the last, but I think it's proven to me that out here I can win, so I'll be training for that.”
A victory would have given Clanton a two-year exemption on the PGA Tour, one he could have waited to put into use next spring after his collegiate season is complete (unless he wanted to turn pro in January).
As it stands, he is still in excellent position to earn a PGA Tour card next swing via PGA Tour University Accelerated, where points are earned for various accomplishments, including making cuts on in PGA Tour events.
By making the cut at the RSM, he got one point plus another for a top 10, bringing his total to 17. Getting 20 gives him Tour status and Clanton can get three points for being the Ben Hogan Award winner. He’ll have other opportunities through that pathway as well.
Earlier this year, Nick Dunlap won the American Express Championship, becoming the first amateur to win on the PGA Tour since Phil Mickelson in 1991. Dunlap turned pro soon after. The Tour has not seen two amateur winners in the same year since 1945.
“I'm trying to win, that's it,” Clanton said. “I think it's a great system, of course, to have this opportunity to give us our card and it's amazing. Again, I think every time we step out here, the one goal we have is to win. I think PGA Tour U's been a great opportunity for all of us as college players who have these kind of talents and go pro sooner, so it's awesome.”
Slumbers’s strong outgoing words
Martin Slumbers, who has been CEO of the R&A for nearly 10 years, is stepping down from his position next month, a decision he announced earlier this year.
The Englishman conducted several interviews recently, including one with Golf Digest from his office overlooking the first tee of the Old Course in St. Andrews. Slumbers touched on numerous topics about his tenure, among them his concern for the men’s professional game.
“We’re not at the table,” Slumbers told Golf Digest in response to a question about the negotiations between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, which backs LIV Golf. “The current position of the professional game is very bad. We have created a game that is immensely divisive.
“I’ve talked about the financial unsustainability of the professional game. I still stand by that and keep saying it. That has caused significant problems. The constant dialogue of money has damaged the reputation of the sport, which is one of the reasons why the public is not watching as much golf as they can. I truly hope that peace and stability is reached soon.
“I have no problem with one tour or two tours. I grew up watching a game in which the European Tour was very strong. But there was stability, and the best played each other more than four times a year. I am more frustrated by the lack of progress there than in the other issues we have just discussed.”
Slumbers has discussed previously the difficulty in escalating purses, especially for the R&A, which (like the USGA and the U.S. Open), derives a majority of its revenue from one tournament (the British Open in this case) and funds numerous programs based on it.
“We have increased the Open purse more than we wanted to,” Slumbers said. “But a lot less than anyone else. The prize money has been a massive problem for us, in terms of how much we have had to increase.”
Xander Schauffele made $3.1 million from a total purse of $17 million this year; in 2017, the total purse was $10.25 million when Jordan Spieth won the championship.
Slumbers was asked why he felt the Open needed to increase its purse.
“The prize money has shot up so much in regular golf,” he said. “I was challenged during the Open this year about why the Open ranked No. 28 in prize money. I had no idea we were No. 28. But when you are in a professional game that keeps talking about money, that comes up as an issue.”
Mark Darbon, 43, who is CEO of the Northampton Saints Rugby club and former advisor to the London Olympics, takes over for Slumbers next month.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The PGA Tour's High-Stakes Fall Works and Will Mean Even More Next Year.