Why don’t we care when a journeyman or no-name triumphs on tour?

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Golfpocalypse is a meandering collection of words about golf (professional and otherwise) that sometimes, but not always, has a point. Reach out to with your questions or comments on absolutely anything at [email protected]. We’ll publish the best emails here.

Here’s an embarrassing admission: I watched the Sanderson Farms event on TV last Sunday, and more or less enjoyed the tense ending, where Garrick Higgo seemed to be in control with around four holes to play when his playing partner, seeking his first Tour win and looking nervous to the point of imminent collapse, suddenly knuckled down and birdied the last three holes to win the tournament. The problem, as you may have guessed from the weird way I wrote the sentence above, is that when I had the idea to write something about why we don’t care enough about the triumphant journeyman – whose stories, on paper, can be incredible – I could not remember the man’s name.

The poor neurons in my skull grasped, but it was all blank. Normally I would just Google it, but because it seemed so on theme for the optic, I gave myself an exercise – I wouldn’t look it up, and I’d see how long it took for my brain to get the answer. I could picture his face. I had heard his name before the tournament. I could remember the course, I could remember Rasmus Hojgaard finishing tied for third. For God’s sake, I could remember hearing loud blue jay cries on the broadcast. As far as I know, I have no memory issues, and I had spent a couple hours watching the guy four days earlier … and I couldn’t pull the winner’s name. Here’s the transcript from deep inside my brain during that hunt:

Was it Brian? I feel like it was a simple name, with a B. Brian Kemp? No, that’s an American politician. The Georgia guy who Trump hated. But it’s Brian or Billy or something like that, with a last name like Smith or Case. He was definitely American. Sort of plain, big face. Brad? Brad Trent? Brent Price? The answer is going to be something completely different and I’m going to feel like an idiot. Why couldn’t he be named Garrick Higgo? I’d never forget the name Garrick Higgo. How am I not remembering this? Am I dying? Has the internet ruined me? Is this the beginning of the end? F*&%! Wait, is it Zach something? Zach Bolt?

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I let myself do this for 15 minutes before I decided I couldn’t waste any more of my day, and looked it up: Steven Fisk.

Well, I was right about one thing, which is that the real name was nowhere close to where my brain was searching.

As I said, though, I wasn’t too upset, because it proved my point: There’s something in my brain, at least, that just isn’t very interested in the Steven Fisks of the world when they have their breakthrough. That’s not the easiest thing to admit, because I do find it mildly compelling when someone like Fisk is trying to overcome his nerves to accomplish the dream of a lifetime, but the key word is mildly. It’s a nice hook to write about, but those of us at Digest know that when we write about a Fisk type, fewer people will read it (and we’ll feel less of a buzz writing it), and every broadcaster knows that fewer people will watch it. The Fall season is a great theatre for stories like Fisk’s, but it just doesn’t register on the same level, and when announcers or writers try to make a win resonate because of its career-changing nature, it feels a little forced.

Why? Well, what’s odd about this is that in team sports, there’s a clear bias among fans to the underdog, and this has been written about before. There are a couple theories here. Is it schadenfreude, wanting to see the favourites lose? Is it because we want evidence that there is fairness in the world, and that the powerful don’t always win? Is it just super fun to watch an upset?

And most importantly for our purposes, why does this trend fail in golf?

Clearly, things in golf are more complicated. Support for the underdog in team sports is often just as much about their opponent, the big bad Yankees or the Lakers or Duke basketball or whoever, losing. In golf, you sometimes get the classic underdog vs juggernaut head-to-head duel, like Tiger against Bob May, but in a case like the Sanderson last week, it’s often just a case of one underdog against a host of other underdogs. Steven … [checks notes] … FISK wasn’t competing against Scheffler and Rory, but against guys like Higgo, Danny Walker and Vince Whaley. Pretty much anyone who won was going to be some sort of underdog, and that quite obviously takes the bite out of the win.

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Which is why the most memorable “underdogs” in golf are usually the ones with something more going on. When I think of surprise winners in the last few years, I think of Nick Dunlap, who was an amateur, or I think of Grayson Murray, both because of how he overcame alcoholism and depression to win the Sony Open, and how his story ended in tragedy. I can also pull Brian Campbell, because of his age and the fact that he managed to win twice in 2025 after going winless for an entire career. Beyond that, I had to look on Wikipedia for the journeyman or lesser-known types who had won, and when I saw their names, memories came to mind for some – Joe Highsmith wears a big hat and can play piano, Aldrich Potgieter is the large young South African who lost to Campbell in Mexico before winning – and others, like Australia’s Karl Vilips, William Mouw and Ryan Gerard, come with almost no associations attached.

On the flip side, I could name every winner of a signature event or major this year, and not just because half of them went to Scottie Scheffler. It’s because they were almost all won by big names, and in golf, it’s the giants that stand out in our heads, and ultimately, I believe it’s the giants who we want to see win.

It’s hard to pinpoint a precise reason why golf is different, but my pet theory is that it’s about the game’s inherent difficulty, and its lonely nature. Team sports definitely has its bandwagon fans, and there can be something cool about watching a great dynasty succeed, but unless you’re a fan of they dynastic team, it ultimately becomes very annoying to watch someone like NFL coach Bill Belichick grumble his way to a fifth championship (it’s also why it’s so much fun to watch him eat **** at UNC). In golf, though, greatness has a way of adding to itself, as long as the player’s personality isn’t fundamentally rotten. Scottie Scheffler, by his own admission, is not the world’s most exciting man off the course, but I’m not the only one who finds it electric to watch him win majors. Same with Rory, but more so, since Rory (like Tiger before him) is a live wire off the course too.

The first fact any of us learn when we play golf is that it’s stupidly hard, and watching a player’s excellence get stamped and certified with successive wins only adds to the appeal; the private, colossal nature of the win implies all kinds of obstacles beyond the rest of the players, the resilience to overcome these obstacles actually gets more intriguing, not more boring, with repetition. It doesn’t hurt that the more we see them, the more we learn their personalities, and what to look for in the future. Where familiarity breeds contempt in team sports, it breeds something more like love in golf. And on the flip side, a win like Steven Fisk’s feels more like someone getting hot for a weekend, it feels anomalous, fly-by-night, and we instinctively know not to get attached … at least not yet.

This is why the PGA Tour badly wants the top players to appear in fall events, even though it’s a perfect stage for journeymen. We tune in for the repeat winners, because we know them and we appreciate them, and the journeyman doesn’t move our psychological needles to anywhere near the same degree … even if we remember their names.