SC players show it’s difficult to earn full PGA Tour status. Things will only get harder

Climbing toward the top in any endeavor — whether in sports, academics, business ... anything — can be challenging. Each step up the ladder becomes steeper.

Use the guys trying to secure full status on the 2025 PGA Tour for an illustration. Finish No. 125 or better in the FedEx standings after the fall tournaments and you’re in. Drop to 126 and lower, and opportunities dwindle.

Want advice? “Play better,” the philosophers will say.

Going forward, and assuming the PGA Tour adopts the even stricter standards currently under discussion, reaching the mountaintop will be even more exclusive.

Among the topics under discussion are reducing the size of tournament fields and dropping the number to secure full status to the top 100.

Look at today’s players from South Carolina with three tournaments remaining in the fall season and only two — Lucas Glover and Andrew Novak — would qualify for full status next season if the number were 100.

With 125 still the standard for 2025, Carson Young and Jacob Bridgeman would join Glover and Novak, if they can maintain or improve their current spots.

The fall season’s eight tournaments offer the opportunity for golfers who finished outside of the top 50 to improve their position.

Among the state players, Glover has, climbing 15 spots to 63. Wesley Bryan has, too, moving up 18 spots — but still at 138. Conversely, Matt NeSmith has tumbled from “in” at 122 to “needs work” at 136.

The final tournaments begin Nov. 7 in Mexico, with a stop in Bermuda to follow and then the finale at St. Simons Island, Georgia.

Glover will seek to advance into the top 60 and earn a place in the early “signature” events for next season. Novak is safe at 89. Young at 113 and Bridgeman at 118 have no room for error. NeSmith, Bryan and Trace Crowe (141) need strong performances to get inside 125; the others would need to win a tournament or secure a couple of top finishes to make the magic number.

Finishing 126-150 provides at least some status.

There are precedents for strong finishes. Just last week, Nico Echavarria won in Japan to vault from 113 to 65. At the Shriners in Las Vegas, Matt McCarty zoomed from 232 to 95 with a victory. But the odds are long.

The Tour once used the slogan “These Guys Are Good” for a theme, and that has not changed. Just look at the challenge.

Chip shots. Andrew Swanson earned second place individually, leading Clemson’s men to a sixth-place finish in the Steelwood Collegiate tourney in Loxley, Alabama. The Tigers wrapped up their fall season with a pair of 12ths, a ninth and a sixth in four medal-play events. ... Clemson’s women tied for seventh in the Landfall Tradition in Wilmington, North Carolina. Katherine Schuster placed 16th to lead the Tigers. ... Also in the Landfall Tradition, USC’s Sophia Burnett, a graduate student playing as an individual, took fourth place. Her sister, Camila, a sophomore in her first college start and playing as an individual, finished 80th. ... The Lexington team of Caitlyn Gaines and Taryn Smoak won the girls’ division in the SCJGA’s Rick Vieth Junior Four-Ball played at The Fort Club in Ninety Six. Dawson Szabo (Greer) and Owen Kinnunen (Taylors) captured the boys’ title. ... Eloise Fetzer (Charleston) and Shane Strickland (Aiken) earned places in the Drive, Chip and Putt’s national finals in April at Augusta National Golf Club. Fetzer will compete in the girls’ 10-11 age group and Strickland will be in the boys’ 8-9 age group.