At age 41, with roughly half his life spent playing golf for money and exactly one win in 408 PGA Tour-sanctioned starts, Spencer Levin is often referred to as a “journeyman.”
But actually he is an ‘everything man’.
He doesn’t shoot far. He has waged wars with his flatstick and tinkered with his stroke by employing a technique used by Happy Gilmore. In his PGA Tour bio, he lists his greatest thrill as “making a putt.” Levin has a sense of humor. He also has a temper. He once knocked over his own golf bag by throwing the flagstick at it. Video montages of his tantrums have gone viral.
In short: Tour professionals aren’t getting much more recognizable. And yet, twenty years after turning pro, Levin continues to do things the rest of us can’t.
On Saturday, for example, in the third round of the Q-School Finals, Levin went lower than anyone in the field and fired a 7-under 63 at Sawgrass Country Club in Ponte Vedra Beach to give himself a chance to win back something he hasn’t had since the end of the 2017 season: a PGA Tour card. Levin’s blistering score, highlighted by five consecutive birdies on the back nine (his first nine of the day), left him at 9 under for the week and tied for sixth, two shots behind co-leaders Ben Kohles and Marcelo Rozo, heading into Sunday’s final round. Only the top five finishers earn full PGA Tour status – a change in format from previous seasons when top five finishers and ties made it.
The math is different this time.
The pressure, however, is familiar to Levin, who made the Q School Finals in 2022 and 2023 and has been in the game since many of his fellow competitors were in diapers.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” Levin said Saturday. “I’ve seen every scenario there is. What you learn is there are no secrets. You just have to go out tomorrow and execute and play well. And that’s it.”
Easier said than done. But Levin has managed to do it often.
Born in Elk Grove, California, Levin starred in baseball as a child but took up golf seriously at age 13, inspired by Tiger Woods’ victory in the Masters in 1997. By PGA Tour standards, his swing has never been in a study of mechanical perfection. But he has long been accurate off the tee and was known early on as a dead-eye putter. A two-time All-American at the University of Mexico, Levin turned professional in 2005, a year after graduating T-13 and earning low amateur honors at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills.
In the two decades since, he has amassed more than $9 million in career earnings and one win on the Korn Ferry Tour (at the 2023 Veritex Bank Championship). But he has never won on the PGA Tour, and once went five years without making any concessions on the game’s top circuit. When he finally broke that drought, he did so in memorable fashion, playing the weekend at the 2022 Shriners Open with a split hand straight out of Happy Gilmore, with his right hockey stick low on the club. Like the Adam Sandler character, Levin enjoys something akin to a cult following. “Who else misses Spencer Levin on Tour?” a Reddit post prompted last year, alongside a compilation of Levin’s antics on the course.
If you missed it too, it’s back. You can see him on Sunday at the Valley Course at TPC Sawgrass. The rankings are pooled, with two shots separating eleven players. Levin is the oldest of the contenders and he has seen the most, both for better and for worse.
Everyone or not, a good round on Sunday could change everything for him again.
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