There seems like no better day than today, Monday, Dec. 12, to explain and even rehash the caste system of pro golf.
This Wednesday, Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler will star in the newest TV-focused golf event, the Golf Channel Games — a team-golf enterprise so unserious that it just might work. It is the definition of “silly” golf during what many people — pros included — have called “the silly season.” It will inject some of the most marketable golfers in the world into backyard competition and pray that is entertainment enough for fans to want more of it. (It might be! But if our years of made-for-tv golf iterations are any indication, there’s a ceiling on this product.)
On the other end of the pro golf spectrum — so distant that it feels offensive to call it the same spectrum — we have the results of this past weekend, up Florida’s Atlantic coast in Ponte Vedra: PGA Tour Q-School. Five men earned full status on the PGA Tour, meaning they can enter basically every event they’d like next year, besides Signature Events. For everyone in the field, it was the final chance of 2025 to lock in stability for 2026 — predictably leading to some intense emotions. Take pro golf grinder Spencer Levin as the leading example:
It will be difficult to think about Levin as we lean back and watch McIlroy and Scheffler compete in a glorified drive, chip and putt contest, but that’s what this month of pro golf forces us to consider. This time of year, the ends of the spectrum really define themselves, and ask us, the Golf Viewing Public, what WE want as golf entertainment.
The “Haves” take it easy, compete on Amazon, pick and choose their spots — even traveling the globe with clubs in tow because there’s a seven-figure appearance fee waiting at the destination. The “Have nots” cannot take it easy. They compete on Golf Channel if they’re lucky — where basically no one is watching — with pressure only they could understand. The pressure Shane Lowry played under during the Skins Game? It’s so non-existent that we actually could relate to it. The pressure that Dylan Wu felt Sunday as he entered a playoff for complete and total clarity of his playing schedule next year? There isn’t a thing in life akin to that. (Write a better email, quicker than your coworker, and you’ll avoid working holidays next year!)
These paragraphs should not dissuade you from enjoying the Golf Channel Games. Rather, they should help remind us that the new offseason pro golf’s biggest names are growing accustomed to is filled with silly golf. And layers beneath the silly season, playing out in the background, is the grind season — one big amalgamation of the FedEx Cup Fall, the DPWT Playoffs, the Top 50 Masters Pursuit, the Korn Ferry Tour Finals and, where Levin and Wu played (with more emotion than we’ll see for months), PGA Tour Q-School.
The increasingly high barriers to entry on the PGA Tour only imply that Grind Season will inflate in a way that continually entertains us, so long as we pay attention. What used to be a show-up-and-make-a-buck-if-you’d-like time of year for most has become more cutthroat … and entertaining. Each successive year will bring extra names slipping into that dark place that necessitates fall starts, emergency trips to compete in Europe, or, in the case of Ryan Gerard, a much lengthier trip.
Gerard has almost everything lined up for 2026. He’ll play in all the Signature Events, but is not yet qualified for the first major of the year. His missed cut at the RSM Classic dropped him from 49th in the World Golf Ranking to 53rd, just outside the all-important top-50 threshold that earns Masters invites at year-end. Gerard has never played in the Masters, and he’ll now have to win his way in next spring to drive down Magnolia Lane … unless he plays really well on an island in the Indian Ocean.
Gerard’s travels are expertly explained by Ryan French, who specializes in stories on the lower ranks of pro golf, but in short it’s right here: the 26-year-old is flying 10,000 miles to play in the Mauritius Open, on the other side of Africa, because it’s the only place on earth where one can earn enough World Ranking points this week to crack the top 50. If he finishes top 4, Gerard’s mailbox will receive some precious calligraphy from the folks at Augusta National.
He’s the highest-ranked player in the field — which makes it damn plausible, and isn’t that all we really sign up for as golf fans … plausibility? Any golf event which offers some plausible magic to happen — for one player’s life to be changed forever — has our attention, right? (If you’re human, you’re either rooting for Gerard, or you’re Sam Stevens or one of Sam Stevens’ best friends. He’s currently ranked No. 50 and will be very interested in Gerard’s weekend on the other side of the world.)
Now is the time to think about exactly that: the golf we give attention to once the main season ends. There is too much emotion involved — see Levin, Wu, Camilo Villegas, et al — to not offer it a more distinctive nickname than “silly season.” Nine months from now, when the FedEx Cup comes to a close and we stretch ourselves to get up for the Presidents Cup, we can’t forget that the majority of fall golf is grinding, yearning, wistful golf. It’s not hard to look at it and see prizes that feel less about money and much more about starts, status and rank. And whatever freedom of the mind that comes from all of that.
Got a good nickname for this new fall season of pro golf? Send it along to the author at sean.zak@golf.com.
