As the battle for PGA Tour status unfolded last weekend in the Utah Bank Championshipdozens of other pros were fighting for their careers in a different tournament.
At Simmons Bank Championship, 54 PGA Tour Champions players battled it out in what was their last chance to secure a tournament card for the 2026 season.
When the dust settled, Tag Ridings, one of the lucky few to survive the cut, called the senior tour “the hardest tour to go on.”
Here’s why.
Tag Ridings explains the difficult task of making the PGA Tour Champions
While the current PGA Champions Tour features big stars like Couples Fred, Bernhard Langer AND Ernie Elsnot all players are legends with Hall of Fame careers (and earnings) behind them.
The majority of the tour is made up of professionals who play for a living, those who have kept that fight going for decades in pro golf.
Ridings is among them.
The 51-year-old PGA Tour Champions rookie played 239 PGA Tour events during his career, making 122 cuts and earning $4,712,032 in the process.
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But he spent more time on the Korn Ferry Tour, where he took it to 296 tournaments, winning twice at the 2002 Permian Basin Open and the 2020 TPC Colorado Championship.
Ridings did not have full status on the PGA Tour Champions circuit this year. He played in 15 events, sometimes relying on Monday qualifiers to get a spot.
But he made these starts count. He earned a runner-up finish at the Galleri Classic in March to get off to a hot start. But by the fall, he fell to 45th in the Charles Schwab Cup rankings.
This is important because only the top 36 players in the final rankings earn their tour cards for 2026. This is a sharp contrast from the PGA Tour, where the top 100 in the FedEx Cup rankings earn full status for the following season.
Ridings ranked well enough, however, to qualify for the first round of the playoffs. And he did this count too. He finished T5 at the Dominion Energy Charity Classic two weeks ago, moving up to 35th in the standings.
However, he still needed a strong finish in the second playoff event, last week’s Simmons Bank Championship Pleasant Valley Country Club in Little Rock, Ark., to maintain his position and earn his full PGA Tour Champions card for next season.
He did so with ease, going 13 under to earn his second runner-up finish of the season, moving up to 22nd in Charles Schwab Cup Ranking.
But in comments after the final round on Sunday, Ridings revealed there was nothing comfortable about the tough pursuit of a PGA Tour Champions card. In fact, he claimed it was the hardest tournament to join.
“It’s the hardest tournament to start, for sure,” a relieved Ridings said on Sunday.
He used tournament winner Steven Alker, 54, as an example. Like Ridings, Alker played most of his career on the Korn Ferry Tour. But since joining the PGA Tour Champions in 2020, he has amassed 10 wins.
But Alker is the exception, not the norm, as Ridings explained Sunday.
“The last two years on the Korn Ferry Tour, people say, ‘Oh, you’re going to do really well there. Look at Alker, he’s killing it.” I’m like, ‘He is, he shoots about 10 times lower every time he does it.’ I haven’t made that change yet, but maybe.”
The difficulty of the task made his success all the sweeter.
“To come through when you know how hard it really is to do, just ecstatic, really grateful,” said Ridings.
He also compared the pressure he faced in this year’s event to previous attempts to earn his PGA Tour card.
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“Well, the pressure is very similar to what I’ve faced over the years trying to keep my card and get it back through Q-School when I’ve lost my card, fighting for that 25th or 20th position now on the Korn Ferry Tour, which I’ve done a few times and lost by one shot a few times.”
But he identified one key difference: elite competition.
“It’s the same feeling of pressure, except you add the fact that they’re Hall of Famers you’re trying to keep up with. Luckily, I don’t think about it too much,” Ridings joked.
He also revealed that competing against the greats is one of the things that makes the PGA Tour Champions experience so special.
“Luckily they’re all fun to play with. To be honest with you, it’s a great tournament to be out here playing with all these guys. It’s just a good, casual, great feeling out there. They’re all fierce competitors, don’t get me wrong, but it’s all very professional and very sportsmanlike.”
The next and final stop for Ridings and the PGA Champions Tour is the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship, which begins Nov. 13 in Phoenix, Ariz. There, the 36 surviving pros will play for a $3 million purse and bonuses based on their final standings.
Notable pros who missed out on PGA Tour Champions cards for 2026
Among the pros who finished the Simmons Bank Championship in the top 36 are many former PGA Tour stars. Miguel Angel Jimenez is in second place, with leading scorers Stewart Cink and Ernie Els in third and fourth.
Padraig Harrington is sixth, with 1999 US Ryder Cup hero Justin Leonard just behind him in seventh.
Other big winners who make the cut include Retief Goosen, Angel Cabrera, Darren Clarke, Vijay Singh and Bernhard Langer.
All of them will join Ridings in the field at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship.
But there were other notable professionals who did not survive Sunday. Dicky Pride is the guy on the bubble, as a T30 at Simmons Bank left him 37th in the standings. Ken Tanigawa is next on the list at #38.
