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:
