The PGA Tour’s re-imagined autumn schedule will feature players who finished outside the top 70 in the FedEx Cup fighting for status and priority for 2024 … but not all will be fighting for their tour cards. Justin Thomas missed out on the postseason, but his 2022 PGA Championship win ensures his membership for some time. Ludvig Aberg’s card for next year is secured thanks to the new PGA Tour University programme. And though a number of other notable names like Adam Scott, Billy Horschel and Shane Lowry missed the playoffs this summer, all FedEx Cup points from the 2022-23 PGA Tour season carry over to the autumn, with those inside the top 125 at the end of the autumn earning full status for next season. Meaning, those entering this week’s Fortinet Championship inside the top 100 are almost locks to secure their cards for 2024.

However, a number of notables are also on the bubble. Here are 11 players who are entering the FedEx Cup Fall fighting for full-time tour status.

Maverick McNealy
The No. 1 ranked putter on tour has been out since June due to a left shoulder injury, although he is scheduled to make his return this week in Napa. At No. 108, McNealy’s status should be safe. Luckily, he tends to play well this time of the year, finishing T-18 or better four times last autumn.

Peter Malnati
The 36-year-old — who is consistently named as one of the nicest guys in golf — enters the autumn ranked 116th in the standings. That he’s here despite 18 missed cuts in 29 starts (including five MCs in his last seven outings) is a testament to a T-4 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and a T-9 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic. Malnati, who currently serves on the tour’s Player Advisory Council, does have some hope: The Sanderson Farms Championship, site of Malnati’s lone tour win in 2015 along with a runner-up performance in 2020, is the second stop on the autumn slate.

CT Pan. Gregory Shamus

CT Pan
Pan’s career highs have been high: A win at the 2019 RBC Heritage and appearance on the International Presidents Cup team, a top-10 finish at the 2020 Masters, a bronze medal at the 2021 Summer Games. However, a wrist injury knocked Pan out for five months, translating to just 13 starts on the season. Though he logged back-to-back top-five finishes at the Nelson (fourth) and RBC Canadian Open (T-3), he’ll still need a handful of good showings in the upcoming months to stay inside the top 125.

Jimmy Walker
Walker has finished 158th or worse in each of the last four tour seasons as he’s battled back from Lyme disease. He actually backdoored his way into status this year thanks to a number of LIV Golf defectors allowing the former PGA champ to play on a career money exemption. For the most part it wasn’t a pretty campaign. Walker missed eight for his first 11 cuts and 15 of 25 for the year, and ranked 147th in scoring. Yet he begins the autumn season 124th in the FedEx Cup thanks to a nice spring stretch, with four T-25s in a five-event span, and is a past winner at this week’s Napa stop.

Austin Smotherman
The man is no stranger to the bubble. Last year Smotherman seemingly missed out on his tour card in agonising fashion with a double-bogey on his final hole at the Wyndham Classic … only to receive a reprieve thanks to a number of players leaving for LIV Golf. It was mostly a disappointing sophomore campaign on tour for Smotherman, ranking 144th in strokes gained and 135th in scoring and posting just one top-20 finish on the season. But he made the most of that performance, a T-5 at the Mexico Open, putting him right on No. 125 to begin the autumn.

Scott Piercy. Chris Keane

Scott Piercy
Piercy was limited to just a dozen starts due to injury, but the starts he did make were not pretty, missing the cut in five of his last six starts. Piercy hasn’t finished outside the FedEx Cup top 125 since 2014, and as a four-time tour winner would have some status next season.

Harry Higgs
Higgs missed out on full-time status last year, playing this season off the No. 126-150 eligibility list. He spent most of the year inside the top 125 thanks to a good end to the autumn and a solid winter, but Higgs starts this week at No. 132, missing eight of his last 11 cuts and his last four in a row. For Higgs to make a move over the next seven events he’ll need to figure out Fridays: Despite ranking 35th in Round 1 scoring, Higgs ranks 177th in Round 2 average.

Chesson Hadley
A former PGA Tour Rookie of the Year, Hadley missed eight of his first 11 cuts. After making the weekend at both the Honda Classic and Players Championship, Hadley proceeded to go on another dire stretch, failing to reach Round 3 in six of his next seven starts. So how is Hadley still here? A nice run to end the summer, finishing T-35 or better in five of his last six appearances, highlighted by a T-6 at the Barracuda Championship.

Patton Kizzire
Kizzire hasn’t come close to replicating the success he had at the beginning of the 2017-18 season, where he won the OHL Classic at Mayakoba and Sony Open. He also comes into this part of the season cold, missing five of his past six starts. But the autumn has been when Kizzire has done his best work, with one of his two top 10s this season coming in autumn.

Ryan Moore. Andy Lyons

Ryan Moore
The former Ryder Cupper played on a top 50 career money exemption this season. However, after missing the cut in 17 of 24 events, he’ll need to get something going this autumn to return to full-time status. Three of Moore’s five career tour wins have come in the autumn, although two have come at the now defunct CIMB Classic.

James Hahn
The increasingly outspoken critic of the tour finds himself needing a late-season push to retain full-time status, entering the fall ranked 165th in the FedEx Cup standings. He did have a T-6 at the Barracuda Championship in July, but outside of that showing it’s been tough for Hahn, ranking 130th in strokes gained and 150th in scoring.

The post 11 surprising names fighting for their PGA Tour cards this autumn appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Maybe there was a mix-up with tee times. Maybe people got lost trying to find TPC Twin Cities. Or, maybe it was simply too hot. Regardless of the reason, one PGA Tour pro — a PGA Tour winner, in fact — says no amateurs showed up to play with him in Wednesday’s pro-am ahead of the 3M Open. And now he’s using it as motivation.

Hey, we don’t blame CT Pan one bit. That must have been slightly embarrassing when he was the only golfer on the first tee. We’re guessing defending champ Tony Finau didn’t get stood up like that.

But the 2019 RBC Heritage winner — and 2020 Olympic bronze medallist! — seemed to handle the awkward situation well, flashing a smile in a selfie and offering a two-word phrase to light a fire under himself:

No amateurs showed up to my pro am group. #playbetter @3MOpen pic.twitter.com/MB054k1JGh

— C.T. Pan (@ctpangolf) July 26, 2023

“Play better.” It’s the same hashtag used by JT Poston during his rookie season on tour when someone mistook him for a parking valet at the 2017 Honda Classic. And look at all JT has done since! So this is a great sign for CT.

Again, there must have been some kind of mix-up, but you do you, CT. Also, we know tour pros don’t like playing in pro-ams and giving golf tips to weekend hackers for five hours anyway, so this was a blessing in disguise.

In any event, Pan has two fellow tour pros as playing partners during Thursday’s first round. And at three-under after Day 1, he’s already making good on his new mantra.

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In the moment, C.T. Pan’s decision to WD before the first round of the 2020 Players seemed extreme. In hindsight, it proved prescient

By Dave Shedloski
CT. Pan still remembers the odd looks and sideways glances he and his wife, Michelle, got from fellow passengers whenever they boarded an aeroplane with masks dutifully adorning their faces. This was in February. Of 2020. And at that time, the couple from Chinese Taipei was operating under the assumption that life in their adopted home country was about to become, well … complicated.

The Pans already had stopped dining in restaurants and, if at all possible, avoided staying in hotels. They had purchased a small RV, and by the time the PGA Tour made its annual migration from the West Coast to Florida in March, they drove from their home in Houston to Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., for the Honda Classic, the start of a four-week swing through the Sunshine State.

But by March 12 they were driving back to Texas.

Though it pained him to do so—truly, because the Players Championship is one of his favourite events—Pan withdrew that morning from the tour’s flagship tournament after it became obvious the strange new virus that he had heard about for months not only had gained a foothold in America but now was beginning to rage across the country. The coronavirus pandemic was taking hold.

In the moment, the decision seemed premature. The first round of the Players, conducted before the usual complement of large galleries, was going on as scheduled. But by early afternoon, the tour had shifted to playing on without spectators for the final three rounds. And then that night officials announced the cancelling of the Players and the start of a shutdown that lasted for three months.

“I was surprised that it was cancelled, but not surprised,” Pan said Tuesday by phone from Orlando, where he is competing in this week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational. “I was relieved that it happened because, obviously, I don’t want anyone in our golf community, our colleagues, to get sick. It’s a terrible virus, and they made the right call.”

So did Pan, who hadn’t yet arrived back home when PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan was doing what had to be done to protect players, caddies, fans and officials.

“I chose to withdraw from THE PLAYERS Championship because my wife and I want to protect ourselves from the risk of exposure to the Coronavirus,” Pan wrote that day in a Twitter post at 1:35 p.m. EDT. “We are fine and our families are fine. Our lifestyle is like a circus, travelling from one place to another. We believe this is a time to exercise caution by not playing this week.”

But, again, they had been exercising extraordinary caution for more than a month.

“Obviously, with family at home in Taiwan, my wife and I have a better idea of what goes on in Asia,” Pan, 29, explained. “Taiwan is only about 80 miles away from China, so from our family and from the Taiwan government we heard about this unknown virus that could be very deadly and spreads fast, and while we didn’t know that much about it, we knew in January that people could be asymptomatic but still have it and might spread it.

Gregory Shamus
C.T. Pan lines up a putt during the 2021 Sony Open in Hawaii.

“We were being really careful. The last time we were in the restaurant dining was in San Diego [during the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines], but after we started getting the news about this virus we didn’t go in any more restaurants. We really tried to not go anywhere except for golf. Unfortunately, the rumours were true.”

Developments on the COVID-19 front seemed to happen in rapid fashion between the end of the Arnold Palmer Invitational—the last full tour event with spectators—and the start of the Players, but Pan didn’t see it that way.

“Yes, things happened fast between Arnold Palmer and Players, but to us, given what we had heard, we didn’t think things moved fast enough overall,” he said hesitantly, not wanting to offend or be critical of anyone. “Honestly, it’s hard to track the original time, but it seemed to have started back in November [2019] in China. It took only a few months to really spread with the European countries hit first. No one was really ready for it anywhere. The WHO [World Health Organisation] was not telling us much. All I’m trying to say is that by last year at API it was already here.”

Pan returned to competitive golf in mid-June with the tour’s second rescheduled event, the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head, S.C., where he was the defending champion. The highlight of his career has come since then, when he made his debut in the Masters in November and ended up T-7, by far his best finish in a major championship.

Frankly, he’s just thankful to be playing golf again and earning a living. “The tour has done an amazing job since we’ve been back,” Pan said. “Many parts of the world are still struggling, but here we are still getting to play on the PGA Tour, and we’re just happy to have tournaments.”

After missing the cut in his first three starts of this year, Pan incorporated a new putting technique into his game and finished 65th at last month’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. The next week he improved to T-20 at the Genesis Invitational.

“I like where my game is trending,” he said.

More so, he likes that it is trending as the Players approaches next week.

“For me, I love the Players. It was tough for me to make the decision to WD last year,” said Pan, who will be playing for the third time in his career. “I love going there, so I am really looking forward to going back. Things aren’t back to normal yet, but it will be nice to maybe feel like there is some normalcy returning.”

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