Just over a handful of rounds remain in the 2026 PGA Tour season as the FedEx Cup Fall nears its end. The fall swing has produced moments of brilliance with winners like Jacob Bridgeman and Michael Brennan adding to their season tallies, while Blades Brown became the youngest winner on the PGA Tour in almost a century.
Players who have displayed excellence and who excellence has been expected from have risen to the occasion, but that is not what the fall is really about, is it? The core mission of the fall portion of the PGA Tour schedule is to identify those players who no longer belong.
As harsh as it sounds, it is true. Bridgeman, Brennan and Brown will be on the PGA Tour for years to come. The same can be said for Austin Smotherman, who has won two tournaments this fall and locked up his status through the 2029 season. But shift your focus from the top of the leaderboard, and instead start to pay attention to those who are battling the proverbial cut line that is the top 100 in the FedEx Cup standings.
There you will find old and new names alike hoping that the next two weeks can wash away the pain and agony of the last year in golf. While some of those players are lucky to have status thanks to previous accomplishments, not all do, and a date with conditional status (the top 125 in the FedEx Cup), or worse, a return to the Korn Ferry Tour or DP World Tour could be in their future should they not find the type of golf that brought them to the PGA Tour in the first place.
Here are the names we are focusing on across the Austin Championship and the RSM Classic as the PGA Tour wraps up its 2027 season these next two weeks.
Bubble boys
| No. 97 | |
| Matt Kuchar's lesson from the 2024 Wyndham Championship appears to only have a shelf life of one year. After a great 2024 campaign, Greyserman notched two more runner-up results in 2025 and looked to be a PGA Tour winner in waiting. The 31-year-old has yet to mirror that form in 2026. He has been much improved in the fall with a T10 and T11 finish to keep his name inside the magic number. | |
| No. 98 | |
| Sat out the summer of 2025 with injury and returned to a full-time schedule this season. The eight-time PGA Tour winner is without an individual top-10 finish this year, but the game turned the corner in the middle of June. Since the Canadian Open, Horschel has four top-15 finishes and a T21 at the Baycurrent Classic. He missed the cut in Cabo, but these next two venues should be better suited for his style of play. | |
| No. 102 | |
| He has been a completely different player in the fall, and as of now, if there were a player to move from out to in over the next two tournaments, Kirk would be a prime candidate. In the FedEx Cup Fall, the six-time PGA Tour winner has four finishes inside the top 21 in his four tournaments played. The iron play that he is known for has returned with a vengeance, and he is starting to look more comfortable on the greens. | |
| No. 113 | |
| The 24-year-old has bounced back beautifully from injuries that sidelined him for most of what would have been his first full-time season on the PGA Tour. He has a pair of top-five finishes this fall and another top 25 from the Bermuda Championship with a good bill of health and impressive driving numbers under his belt. The former PGA Tour University No. 1 will get starts next season, but a strong push the next two weeks seems imminent given form and overall quality in his game. | |
| No. 120 | |
| Surprised with this one. After playing for the European Ryder Cup team at Bethpage Black, Højgaard has largely fallen flat in his second season on the PGA Tour. The picture-perfect golf swing that drew the admiration of Adam Scott has yet to produce the results many expect from a player of his talent level. Even with the drop-off in field quality in the fall, Højgaard's quality has not risen. | |
| No. 122 | |
| There are players and instances when the PGA Tour aims to manufacture a star, and that has been the case with Shipley. In the final-round pairing with Tiger Woods at the Masters and in his appearance on the Netflix show, Shipley has shown his personality plenty of times, but he has yet to show what he can do on a golf course. The PGA Tour rookie did not have a single top-30 finish this year, but he has battled this fall and looked more like himself. Shipley has made all five cuts, notched two top 10s and another top 20, but is it too little too late? | |
| No. 126 | |
| This time two years ago, Clanton looked like a lock to win on the PGA Tour … as an amateur. He finished runner-up a couple of times (including at the RSM Classic) and went on to secure his PGA Tour card with a top-20 finish at the Cognizant Classic in 2025. He turned professional a few months later, and the sledding has been rough, to say the least. Similar to Shipley, he has looked better over the last couple of months with a T7 finish in Utah and T11 result in Bermuda. | |
