The pro golf offseason needs a better name. It’s not ‘stupid’ anymore

There seems no better day than today, Monday, December 12, to explain and even rework the golf pro caste system.

This Wednesday, Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler will play in golf’s newest TV-focused event. THE Golf Channel Games – as frivolous a team golf enterprise as can be made to work. It’s the definition of “stupid” golf during what many – including the pros – have dubbed the “stupid season”. It will inject some of the world’s most marketable players into the backyard competition and hope it’s entertaining enough that fans want more of it. (Could be! But if our years of made-for-TV golf reruns are any indication, this product has a ceiling.)

On the other end of the pro golf spectrum — so distant it feels insulting to call it the same spectrum — we have the results of this past weekend, on Florida’s Atlantic coast in Ponte Vedra: the PGA Tour Q-School. Five men achieved full status on the PGA Tour, meaning they can enter basically any event they want next year, except the Signature Events. For everyone in the field, it was 2025’s last chance to lock in stability for 2026 – predictably leading to some intense emotions. Take golf pro grinder Spencer Levin as a prime example:

It will be hard to think of Levin as we lean back and watch McIlroy and Scheffler compete in a glorified contest of drives, chips and putts, 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 in love how fun golf is.

The “haves” take it easy, compete on Amazon, pick and choose their venues – even traveling the globe with clubs in tow because there’s a seven-figure appearance fee waiting at the destination. The “have nots” cannot take it lightly. They compete on the Golf Channel if they’re lucky — where basically no one is watching — with pressure only they can understand. The pressure Shane Lowry played under for a long time Game Skins? It’s so non-existent that we can actually relate to it. The pressure Dylan Wu felt Sunday entering the playoffs for full and total clarity on his playing schedule next year? There is nothing like it in life. (Write a better email, faster than your colleague, and you’ll avoid a layoff next year!)

These paragraphs should not deter you from enjoying Golf Channel Games. Rather, they should help us remember that the biggest names in new golf’s offseason are used to being filled with stupid golf. And layered beneath the crazy season, playing in the background, is the season of contention — a big fall amalgamation of the FedEx Cup, the DPWT Playoffs, the Top 50 Masters Chase, the Korn Ferry Tour Finals and, where Levin and Wu played (with more excitement than we’ll see Q-School for months).

The increasingly high barriers to entry on the PGA Tour mean just that Grinding season it will swell in a way that keeps us entertained for as long as we pay attention. What used to be a time of year for show and make money for most has become weirder … and fun. Each successive year will bring additional names that will slip into that dark place that calls for early fall, urgent trips to compete in Europe, or, in the case of Ryan Gerard, a much longer trip.

Gerard has almost Everything is planned for 2026. He will play in all Signature Events, but has not yet qualified for the first race of the year. His missed cut at the RSM Classic dropped him from 49th in the world golf rankings to 53rd, just outside the all-important top-50 threshold that earns invitations to the Masters at the end of the year. Gerard has never played in the Masters, and now he will have to earn his way into next spring to drive Magnolia Lane … unless he plays really well on an island in the Indian Ocean.

Gerard’s travels are expertly explained by Ryan Frenchwho specializes in stories at the lower levels of golf, but in a nutshell it’s right here: The 26-year-old is flying 10,000 miles to play in the Mauritius Open, in the other side of Africabecause it’s the only place on earth where someone can earn enough world ranking points this week to crack the top 50. If he finishes in the top 4, Gerard’s mailbox will receive some precious calligraphy from the folks at Augusta National.

He’s the top ranked player on the course – which makes him believable, and that’s not all we sign up for as golf fans… reliability? Any golf event that offers a believable magic to happen—for a player’s life to change forever—has our attention, right? (If you’re human, you’re either rooting for Gerard, or you’re Sam Stevens or one of Sam Stevens’ best friends. He’s currently ranked #50 and will be very interested in Gerard’s weekend on the other side of the world.)

Now is the time to think about just that: the golf we pay attention to once the major season ends. There are many emotions involved – see Levin, Wu, Camilo Villegaset al – not to offer it a more distinctive nickname than “fat season”. Nine months from now, when the FedEx Cup wraps up and we wake up to get up for the Presidents Cup, we can’t forget that much of fall golf is sharp, fiery, desperate golf. It’s not hard to look at it and see awards that feel less about money and much more about beginnings, status and rank. And whatever freedom of mind comes from it all.

Got a good nickname for this new fall pro golf season? Send the author to sean.zak@golf.com.