For several years, the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, served as the end of the regular season on the PGA Tour, and it inevitably fell on a sweltering August weekend just before the start of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. That changed in 2023, when the drama shifted to the FedEx Cup Fall, and the last fireworks began to explode at Sea Island Golf Club on the coast of Georgia. It became the new place where players fought for full and conditional status, admission into signature events and various other prizes before the holiday break.
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That continues in 2025 with this week’s season-ending RSM Classic, but with a weight of added pressure: because of the significant format changes set to begin next year, particularly smaller field sizes, there are now fewer cards than ever available to the year-end grinders. This year, only the top 100 on the FedEx Cup Fall standings gain full tour status for 2026, while the influx of qualifiers from the Korn Ferry Tour, DP World Tour, Q-School and other exemption categories seems poised to make life much harder for those who can secure only conditional status in positions 101 to 125.
That battle for the top 100 is probably the most dramatic theatre we’ll see at Sea Island, but there are a few other intriguing things at stake over the next few days. So let’s take a quick look to preview the best storylines for the final official event of the 2025 PGA Tour season.
As noted above, it’s become incredibly crucial to stay within the top 100, and last year’s King of the Bubble, Joel Dahmen, is back, with his work seriously cut out for him. In 2024, he shot a dramatic final-round 65 at Sea Island to keep his card, but that week he started on the right side of the bubble (124th, back when 125 cards were given), so the climb wasn’t as steep. This time around, Dahmen [below] is 117th, 17 spots behind the cutoff, which means he’ll have to finish exceptionally high to have any hope. Adam Schenk proved it could be done last week, going from 134th to 67th with his win in Bermuda, but there’s so little room for error.
Photo: Sam Hodde
Matt Wallace (102nd) and Beau Hossler (103rd) are the other two familiar names on the wrong side of the bubble. The task ahead of them isn’t quite as ominous as the one facing Dahmen, but it’s still a situation where one bad – or even just mediocre – round can doom them to conditional status. On the happy side of the divide, but still at risk, you have guys like Thorbjorn Olesen (96th), Danny Walker (97th) and Takumi Kanaya, who just rode a T-3 in Bermuda to jump from 120th to 99th. They’re all playing at the RSM, none of them have status beyond 2025, and the stakes for these guys are outrageously high. And as if more incentive was needed, making the top 100 also secures a spot in the Players Championship field, which will shrink to just 120 players in 2026.
The Push for the Signatures: Jake Knapp, Patrick Rodgers, Adam Schenk
The “Aon Next 10”, by which we mean the players who finish in positions 51 to 60 on the FedEx Cup Fall standings, earn entry to the first two signature events of 2026: Pebble and Riviera. That’s a big deal, and it can become huge for those who truly take advantage of it. Maverick McNealy is the posterboy on that front after he made the Aon Next 10 in 2024 and then finished T-2 at Riviera, sparking a season in which he cracked the world’s top 10 and made the Tour Championship.
Jake Knapp is one of those players who seems to be on the verge of breaking into the next tier of tour pros, but at 59th in the standings, he needs to hold on for dear life to maintain his position and get in those early signature events. Below the cutoff, guys like Patrick Rodgers (63rd), Joe Highsmith (65th) and last week’s winner Schenk (67th) will be trying hard to put up a great week and make the top 60.
Photo: Ben Jared
There are a few interesting names right around the cutoff who will not be in Georgia this weekend, including Jordan Spieth. At 58th, he may be secure in the fact that sponsor’s exemptions will save him even if he slips outside the top 60, but the same can’t be true for Kevin Yu (60th) and Matti Schmid (64th), both of whom played last week.
Rookie of the Year Race: Aldrich Potgieter, Michael Brennan, more
At the moment, Potgieter is the clear frontrunner for the Arnold Palmer Rookie of the Year award. Like four other rookies on tour in 2025, he won this year (at the Rocket Classic). Unlike the other four, the 21-year-old South African almost won a second event and made the FedEx Cup playoffs along with jumping into the top 50 in the world ranking. Potgieter is not playing this weekend, but the other four are. If Michael Brennan, Steven Fisk, William Mouw or our own Karl Villips can win the RSM, they have a legitimate chance to pull off a late upset and nab the prize. Brennan is probably the most intriguing of these, mostly because he’s so red-hot; he won three times on PGA Tour Americas this year, and barely had time to enjoy his Korn Ferry Tour status before he got an exemption into the Bank of Utah tour event last month, and won that, too. His impressive closing stretch adds some intrigue to a race that seemed like a foregone conclusion. Nothing short of victory, however, will suffice, making him a significant longshot.
Conditional Status Consolation Prize: Sam Ryder, Lanto Griffin, Seamus Power
At a certain point down the standings list, the only reliable way to break into the top 100 is by winning or finishing outright second, and while everyone in the field has the chance to pull off that feat, realistically there are some who are battling for the conditional tour status awarded to players 100-125 on the FedEx Cup points list.
Sam Ryder (120th) is 35 years old and seems to have been around the tour forever as a true journeyman. He’s fighting for his professional life at the RSM, and though conditional status isn’t as attractive as it once was with next year’s smaller fields, it still beats having to fight it out for five spots at Q-School or grinding all year on the Korn Ferry Tour.
Photo: Jonathan Bachman
One guy who did manage to win the Q-School lottery last year, Lanto Griffin, is in the same boat at 123rd. Unless he can pull off a miracle finish, he’ll be trying to hold on to conditional status.
Seamus Power, the two-time tour winner from Ireland, is below the cutoff at 129th, while Harry Higgs, a year removed from fighting his way into the big leagues via the Korn Ferry Tour, is a few spots below at 132nd.
For those who fail to meet these criteria, there’s Q-School, the Korn Ferry Tour and various points below. But even though the PGA Tour’s year-end schedule has changed, and the power base has moved from Greensboro to Sea Island, one thing remains the same: once you lose your grip on the tour, it’s not easy to climb back. The players in the RSM can save themselves a lot of time and trouble with a good showing this weekend. Of course, they know it, and that’s what makes it so hard.
