The club pro who earned his senior tour card plans to continue his day job

In what may be the most unlikely story of the year, the 52-year-old club professional Jason Caron just received a coveted 2025 PGA Tour Champions card after playing just nine events.

At the start of the senior tournament’s two-tournament playoff series, Padraig Harrington described the PGA Tour Champions circuit as “the hardest tournament to keep your card in the world”, with only the top 36 players receiving full exempt status for the following year.

In a tournament that includes legends and Hall of Famers like Harrington, Vijay Singh, Bernhard Langer, Retief Goosen and more, getting into their company is a tough ask for any player. But Caron, who played on the PGA and Korn Ferry Tours in the early 2000s and has worked as the club pro at New York’s Mill River Club for the past decade, accomplished the unthinkable over the weekend with a T3 finish at the Simmons Bank Championship. at Arkansas, which was enough to elevate him to 35th on the Charles Schwab Cup scoring list.

“I’m really speechless, to be honest,” Caron said after his final round of 68, which featured birdies on three of his last five holes. “I didn’t have like—you know, it’s just weird to think that I could come this far. I don’t even know what to say.

“I’m in disbelief, to be honest.”

Although it is not uncommon for club pros to earn their way to PGA Tour Champions through Q-School – Caron’s counterpart in the Met-section. Rob Labritz earned his card with a win at Q-School in 2021 – Caron’s rise is particularly remarkable because he worked his way into the playoffs event by event:

-T4 at PGA Senior Championship in May (entry gained through qualifying)
-T31 at the American Family Insurance Championship in June (entered the field as an alternate)
-MC at the US Senior Open in June (entry gained through local qualifiers)
-T3 at the Rogers Charity Classic in August (entered the field as an alternate)
-T47 at Ally Challenge in August (entered the field with last week’s finish)
-T4 in Constellation Furyk & Friends (sponsor exclusion)
-T47 in the SAS Championship (entered the field at the end of last week)
-T26 at Dominion Energy Charity Classic (first PGA Champions Tour playoff event)
-T3 at Simmons Bank Championship (entered the 54-man field as No. 53 on the points list)

In nine events, Caron finished T4 or better an incredible four times. Last weekend, he needed to finish T3 or better at the Simmons Bank Championship to move from No. 53 on the points list to the top 36 — and he did, dropping to No. 35. That means he not only enters next week’s PGA Tour Champions season finale, the Charles Schwab Cup Championship in Phoenix Country Clubbut he also gets a fully exempt PGA Tour Champions card for 2025.

But unlike his card-carrying peers, Caron says he has no intention of giving up his day job at Mill River Club to play the tournament full-time.

“I’m still going to be working, it’s not going to be full-time and every week,” Caron said Sunday. “I will definitely play. I don’t see why we can’t work things out. I know Mill River will be very excited about this.

“At work it will be much easier for me now to sit down with them and I can actually tell them, as they listen, that I can play any event. So you tell me when you’re going to host your events and we’ll make it happen.”

Mill River’s winter closure will also work in Caron’s favor, opening up its schedule during the early part of the year.

“In a dream world I think I’d play until April, wouldn’t I, then it’s back to work,” he said. “I’ll be around. Hopefully I’ll be playing in the PGA, obviously we had a good tournament there this year. Then I was mentioning it to someone else, they said maybe you’ll get into the majors potentially. I don’t know which ones. So that’s what I would focus on until the end of August. At the end of August, my schedule frees up again, so I’ll be able to play more.”

In Mill River, Caron works alongside his wife, Liz, a former LPGA Tour professional. The couple share two young daughters, and Caron said his family is always at the forefront of his mind.

“Like I said at the beginning, chasing the white golf ball down the fairway is not my first priority, my kids are,” he said.

Caron’s 2024 Senior Tour tour ends in Phoenix next week, where there is a $1 million bonus up for grabs. But for the first time, a full schedule awaits in 2025.

“I’m not going to say I didn’t want it to happen, but I just didn’t think it could ever happen,” he said. “Of course I mean the top 36, because that’s ridiculous, it really is.”