Returning to the calendar-year schedule, what does the offseason hold for the PGA Tour’s ironmen?
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OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. – There is more than one way to reach the BMW Championship, home to the 50 best players of the PGA Tour season.
For the superstars, their appearance here at Olympia Fields, in the all-important second playoff event, might as well be their birthright. Scottie Scheffler cleared the eventual top-50 threshold within weeks. Jon Rahm, too. Rory McIlroy is projected fourth in the FedExCup standings despite making just his 17th Tour start.
But those are the chosen few.
On the other end of the spectrum are the four players this week who are making their 32nd appearance of the season – 15 more than McIlroy, and tied for the most on Tour this season. Fifteen more events! Viewed another way, they’ve played nearly four months more tournament golf this season than McIlroy. And here they are, together, sharing the same space.
That aspect of the rolling points system has always rankled the game’s elite in the wraparound era, which began a decade ago but is ending with a return to the calendar-year schedule in 2024. The top players wanted time off in the fall, to rest and recover and reboot, but many couldn’t afford to with a busy fall slate in which everyone else was hoarding points before the winter break. That, in turn, led to criticism that some members were merely accumulators. Stockpilers. Volume shooters.
But fair or not, Tour players aren’t measured by their efficiency; it’s by their point totals in 42 possible weeks.
Their motivations for playing so often differ, as do their paths to success.
These are the stories of the Tour’s 2023 ironmen.
* * *
IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, PATRICK Rodgers’ season will end Sunday, barring the most unlikely of weekend rallies. Out of 49 players remaining in the field (Hideki Matsuyama withdrew), Rodgers is 14 shots off the lead and projected to finish 49th in the FedExCup standings, not nearly enough to clinch a spot in next week’s 30-man Tour Championship.
The wait for Tour victory No. 1 will continue. But if it bothers him this week, in start No. 32, he’s hiding it well.
“It’s natural, given what’s at stake for the top 50, to take a little bit of a deep breath this week,” he said. “I’m finding so far that it’s almost making me slightly less focused than I otherwise would be – that weight lifted off my shoulders. It’s a little less fight-or-flight adrenaline, and that leads to a little less engagement.”
Full-field scores from BMW Championship
That’s understandable, of course. Rodgers is in his 10th year on Tour, and he’s making his 250th career start, but this is the first time he’s reached the second leg of the playoffs. Never was it more important that he do so than this year, with the top 50 all earning a spot in the eight signature events next year that will feature the best players in the world, the most exposure, the most points, the biggest purses and, in most, the guaranteed paydays.
But for Rodgers to lock down the 50th and final qualifying spot, well, it required a lot of time and effort. Sacrifices, too. The BMW is Rodgers’ seventh consecutive start at the tail-end of what was already a heavier workload than most. There’s been plenty of lowlights lately (four missed cuts), but the highlight also happened to be career-changing: His playoff loss last month at the Barracuda Championship was enough to move him back inside the magic number with just a few weeks left.
“Approaching the top 50,” he said, “it almost feels like keeping your card now.”
The difference in scheduling options for No. 50 Rodgers and No. 51 Mackenzie Hughes is immense, and every player understood it. Each signature event will feature $20 million purses, and only three of the eight events will feature a small cut. Even mediocre results in those limited-field events should keep Rodgers from rejoining the usual rat race on Tour.
“It was probably a mental weakness in the past,” he said. “It’s very natural, in the position that I’ve been in, to feel like it’s more events, more points, better opportunity to move forward and get to the place where I want to go. But that’s the wrong mentality, and I’ve learned that the hard way over the course of my career.
“This tour is about playing well, and having chances to win, and winning golf tournaments. That’s where all the reward is. So going forward, my schedule will just be to do what I think gives myself the best chance to win.”
Only once over the past eight seasons has Rodgers played fewer than 27 tournaments, still well above the average for the top Tour pro. But that’s getting harder to stomach now that he’s 31 years old. Now that he has a wife and a 2-year-old. Now that he has another child on the way in October.
“It’s wonderful. The rewards are amazing. I will never sit here and complain about being on the PGA Tour. I’m so fortunate. But a lot of times, my wife is a single parent,” Rodgers said. “I’ll go long stretches without seeing my son, and it’s hard, and it’s just part of the job.
“But I feel like making it through last week was a big step forward, because I feel like we’re always pushing to gain more control. More control over our schedule. More control over our life. I feel like that was a step toward that.”
His family joins him on the road about half the year, but that comes with its challenges, too. Personally, he said, it’s “100 times better”; it’s easier to navigate the ups and downs of a season in which players fail far more often than they succeed. But it’s also simpler for him to compartmentalize his personal and professional life when they’re away. “As long as they’re well looked after,” he said, “then I can play with a nice peace of mind.”
That hasn’t been the case over the past few weeks. During the Wyndham Championship, Rodgers’ wife, Jade, was at a children’s museum in Greensboro when her foot caught in a loose floor tile. Seven months pregnant and holding their son, she turned to protect her stomach and child but twisted awkwardly and broke her leg. They spent all Wednesday of tournament week in the emergency room. She’s at home now, unable to bend or put weight on her injured leg.
“It’s a lot,” he sighed.
But Rodgers will be home soon. Sunday night, most likely.
And the rest of the year? It’s wide open, finally.
When asked how many times he plans to play this fall, he formed a “0” with his fingers. It’s the first time in his pro career that he’s had significant time off in the fall. A real offseason.
His schedule next year is changing, too. He figures he’ll trim about 10 tournaments, year-over-year.
“It feels amazing,” he said, “and I’m even a little bit emotional about it, just to have that time to be together as a family. The feeling of freedom that I feel like it gives me going into next year – it’s just massive.”
* * *
DENNY MCCARTHY KNOWS HE’S on the brink. Close to winning for the first time on Tour. Close to playing his way onto his first cup team. Close, at No. 34 in the standings, to qualifying for his first Tour Championship.
And so, each season, he’s just going to keep playing. Again and again, until his career goals start getting ticked off.
“There’s a lot of places that I feel like I can play well at, honestly,” he said this week, in his 29th start of the season, “and there’s a lot of tournaments that are good opportunities for me to win. I haven’t done that yet, obviously, and I want to get as many chances and get as many opportunities as I can to try and win.
“It’s not easy at all to win out here. When the fields are stacked with these top players, it makes it even harder. I don’t have the luxury of being a Jon Rahm or a Scottie Scheffler or a Rory McIlroy, who every time they go out and play they’re pretty much finishing in the top 5 or top 10. I don’t do that every time I play. I’d like to, but I haven’t quite reached that level yet.”
But McCarthy, now in his sixth season, has never been closer. The numbers validate that: He posted career highs this season in top-10s (six), top-25s (13), money earned ($5.9 million) and FedExCup points. He’s finding his rhythm as a pro, both on and off the course. Spending most of the year on the road, he has discovered that he prefers playing three or four weeks in a row to settle into a familiar pattern: knock off the rust, lock in his feels, capitalize at the back end of the road trip. His time management has improved too, never over-practicing early in the week to conserve his energy for a long season and then sharing houses with friends like Chris Kirk, Brendon Todd and J.T. Poston to get out of the depressing rut of hotel life.
“It’s nice to not lay in your room and think about what your golf was like that day,” he said. “It breaks it up. It feels almost like you’re living a different life.”
But a 29-event season is also a lot of wear and tear on the body of a player who’s listed at 5-foot-9, 165 pounds. Ahead of his first Open Championship, McCarthy was on the range at Royal Liverpool when rain started to fall. Hurrying through his warmup session, he hit an iron shot fat and suddenly felt a jolt of pain in his lower back. He hasn’t been the same since. He shot 76-78 at The Open, missed the cut at Wyndham and tied for last in Memphis, a miserable stretch that sent him tumbling down the FedEx rankings (from 21st to 34th) and eliminated virtually any chance of a Ryder Cup pick.
“My game felt really good going into that,” he said, “so that really sucked. But there’s a lot to play for. So I’m just trying to give it one last push to get back to the form that I had most of this year. I need one last push here.”
One last push to, hopefully, give him one final start.
* * *
OVER THE PAST SIX months, Eric Cole has skipped one full-point FedExCup event for which he was eligible.
That’s not a misprint.
One.
Reminded of that stretch Friday, he said, “I’ve been playing mini-golf for a lot of my life, and you have to play a lot just to make any type of money. So I guessed I’m just used to it.”
He could get used to this life, too. Cole is the only Tour newcomer to reach the BMW, putting him in line for the top rookie award. After playing the first few months of the season without a top-25, Cole started cooking during a spring stretch in which he played 10 consecutive events, highlighted by a playoff loss at the Honda Classic and five other top-25s.
“I didn’t even set off to do that, planning to play this much,” he said. “It just kind of snowballed.”
Every week, it seemed, there was always something to play for. A signature event on Tour. A major. Another major. A deep playoff push. It was a rehash of his former life as a mini-tour legend, only with dramatically higher stakes. So he just played … and played … and played … even if he wound up shrugging at the overall number of appearances.
“It’s really not too bad,” Cole said midway through his 32nd start. “You’re still just playing golf – it’s not the end of the world. And the position that I’m in, not being one of the bigger names, I’m not doing a bunch of media or sponsor obligations. I’m just going to the course, playing 18 holes, a little bit of practice, and then leaving as long as my body feels healthy. It’s really not all that taxing.”
But Cole also has begun to realize that this Tour workload might not be sustainable, either. Older than the other rookies in his class, the 35-year-old Cole is getting married in December – naturally, at the end of the golf season – and something, someday, will likely have to give. He and his fiancée, Stephanie, have been together for seven years, long before he entered the glamorous life of courtesy cars and six-figure paydays, long before he hit the road for nearly the entire year to pursue his Tour dreams.
“She knew what she was signing up for, and she’s been thoroughly vetted,” he said with a laugh. “But for now, it’s definitely a sacrifice to try and make my status out here a little more permanent.”
No one has gone harder, for longer, than Cole this season, and he’s been rewarded with $3 million in earnings and four months off this fall … if he chooses to take it. With the points standings wiped clean Jan. 1, he can’t lose ground in the standings or his lofty position on the priority list – a foreign feeling for a guy who has continually chased bigger and better.
“I definitely want to take a break …,” he said.
But then he started to think. He enjoys the fall opener in Napa. He likes the greens in Jackson for the Sanderson Farms. The course in Vegas suits him. He knows the RSM isn’t that far from his home in South Florida.
“It’s going to be tough to miss those,” he said, “so I might not.”
It’s all he knows. It’s where he’s happiest. The longest he’s gone without touching a club this year has been three days.
“We might set a new record this offseason,” he said. “Well, hopefully. We’ll see.”
* * *
CONGRATULATIONS, ADAM SCHENK IS told: You’re officially a Tour ironman. Start No. 32. Tied for the most on Tour this season.
“Prestigious company,” he said with a chuckle.
In truth, Schenk feels surprisingly good, mentally and physically, at this juncture of the season. He hit it hard early in the year, by design, with the impending birth of his first child in April. He wanted a little wiggle room in the standings. He wanted to enjoy his family without fretting about his status. So with the countdown on, he ripped off 10 starts in a row, somehow saving his best for last, when he finished solo second in Tampa and moved from 72nd to 31st in the standings.
“That was really timely,” he said.
Over the past four years Schenk has lived on the fringes of the Tour, not finishing better than 71st in the FedExCup but never coming close to losing his card either – all while playing an average of 30 events a season.
“This year, and in years’ past, like, I need to play a lot,” he said. “There’s a lot of guys out here that can play less than me and still have more points to make it in the year, and I’m starting to do better.
“Long story short, I’ve played a lot in my career because I’ve had to. But there’s lot of guys like me. I put it together more this year, and that’s why we’re having a better year.”
After nesting at home for a month following the birth of his son, Schenk packed his bags and played another five events in a row, losing in a playoff at Colonial and backing it up a week later with a tie for seventh at the Memorial. All of a sudden he wasn’t just a fringe Tour player anymore; he was up to 52nd in the world. Almost elite.
And so now, like Cole, there was more to chase. Ranked 20th in the FedExCup, he’s played all but three weeks this summer to lock down a spot in the Tour Championship and secure exemptions into three of the four majors next year. At the moment, at least, he appears safe for East Lake.
With his family happy, his body fresh and his potential finally realized, Schenk wasn’t thinking on this day about dialing it back anytime soon.
Thirty-two starts this year … and why stop now?
“They’re giving away a lot of money, and I’m not going to have this opportunity forever,” he said. “I enjoy playing golf. I enjoy the grind.
“I think all of us are sickos, right?”
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