The PGA Tour’s outdoor season needs a better name. It’s not ‘stupid’ anymore

There seems to be no better day than today, Monday, December 12, to explain and even reiterate pro golf’s caste system.

This Wednesday, Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler will star in golf’s latest TV-focused event, the Golf channel games — a team golf venture so unserious that it just might work. It’s the definition of “silly” golf during what many people – including the pros – have dubbed “the silly season.” It will inject some of the most marketable golfers in the world into backyard competition and pray that this is enough entertainment for fans to want more of it. (It could be! But if our years of made-for-TV golf iterations are any indication, there’s a ceiling on this product.)

At the other end of the professional golf spectrum – so far away that it feels insulting to call it the same spectrum – we have the results from last weekend, along Florida’s Atlantic coast in Ponte Vedra: PGA Tour Q-School. Five men earned full status on the PGA Tour, meaning they can compete in virtually any event they want next year, in addition to Signature Events. For everyone in the field, this was the last chance of 2025 to lock in stability for 2026 – which would predictably lead to intense emotions. Take professional golf sharpener Spencer Levin as a leading example:

It will be hard to think of Levin as we sit back and watch McIlroy and Scheffler battle it out in a glorified drive, chip and putt contest, but that’s what this month of professional 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’ are taking it easy, competing on Amazon, picking their spots and even traveling the world with clubs in tow as there’s a seven-figure entry fee waiting at the destination. The ‘Have nots’ cannot take it easy. If they’re lucky, they’ll be competing on Golf Channel — where no one is actually watching — with pressure only they could understand. The pressure Shane Lowry played under during the Skins Game? It’s so non-existent that we can actually identify with it. The pressure Dylan Wu felt on Sunday when he took part in the play-offs for complete clarity about his playing schedule next year? There is nothing in life quite like it. (Write a better email, faster than your colleague, and you’ll avoid working holidays next year!)

These paragraphs should not deter you from enjoying the Golf Channel Games. On the contrary, they should serve as a reminder that the biggest names among the new golf pros are filled with silly golf during the offseason they’re becoming accustomed to. And layered beneath the silly season, playing out in the background, is the gravel 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 ever-higher barriers to entry on the PGA Tour only imply that Grind season will blow up in a way that continually entertains us as long as we pay attention. What for most was a time of year where you can make money if you want has become cutthroat… and more entertaining. Each subsequent year will see additional names slip into that dark place, necessitating a fall start, emergency travel to compete in Europe or, in Ryan Gerard’s case, a much longer trip.

Gerard has almost everything is lined up for 2026. He will play in all Signature Events, but is not yet qualified for the first major of the year. His missed participation in the RSM Classic saw him drop from 49th in the World Golf Ranking to 53rd, just outside the all-important top-50 threshold that delivers Masters invitations at the end of the year. Gerard has never played in the Masters, and he will now have to win next spring to drive through Magnolia Lane… unless he plays very well on an island in the Indian Ocean.

Gerard’s travels are expertly explained by Ryan Frenchwho specializes in stories about the lower ranks of professional golf, but in short: the 26-year-old is flying 10,000 miles to play in the Mauritius Open, at the other side of Africabecause it’s the only place on earth where you can earn enough World Ranking points this week to make it into the top 50. If he finishes in the top 4, Gerard’s mailbox will receive valuable calligraphy from the folks at Augusta National.

He’s the highest ranked player in the field – which makes it pretty damn plausible, and isn’t that all we really sign up for as golf fans… plausibility? Any golf event that offers plausible magic – changing a player’s life forever – has our attention, right? (If you’re human, you either support Gerard, or you’re Sam Stevens or one of Sam Stevens’ best friends. He’s currently at number 50 and will be very interested in Gerard’s weekend on the other side of the world.)

Now it’s time to think about exactly that: the wave we pay attention to once the high season is over. There’s too much emotion involved – see Levin, Wu, Camilo Villegas, et al. – not to give it a more distinctive nickname than “silly season.” Nine months from now, as the FedEx Cup comes to a close and we stretch to get up for the Presidents Cup, we can’t forget that the majority of fall golf is grinding, longing, and wistful golf. It’s not hard to look at it and see prizes that are less about money and a lot more about starts, status and rank. And whatever freedom of mind that brings.

Do you have a good nickname for this new fall season of pro golf? Send it to the author at sean.zak@golf.com.