Welcome to the Monday Finish, where we’re still choosing which TGL team to dress up as for Halloween. To the news…
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Perseverance.
Tim O’Neal has always loved golf. It hasn’t always loved him back.
At Q-School in 2000 he needed bogey on the final hole to get his PGA Tour card. He made triple. In 2004 he missed by a single shot when his birdie putt at No. 18 burned the edge. There were plenty of eyeballs on O’Neal, a promising black golfer who’d ripped off wins at Jackson State in college and even earned some investment dollars from actor Will Smith. But while he made it to the fringe of golf’s top levels, he could never seem to crack through.
O’Neal played on several iterations of the PGA Tour’s top feeder tour, earning status on the Buy.com Tour, which became the Nationwide Tour, which became the Web.com Tour, which is now the Korn Ferry Tour. He gained and lost that status several times and filled the in-between years in tournaments and mini-tours near home and in far-flung places. There were times he was tempted to quit but he never did; by 2013 he was one of the older players on the PGA Tour Latinoamerica but found some magic that season, winning twice. There were always enough signs that his game was there to keep going, and the last time O’Neal won a PGA Tour-sanctioned event was in 2016 at Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic, which was a PGA Tour Latinoamerica event at the time.
Until Sunday, that is.
O’Neal, who made it through PGA Tour Champions Q-School last year, entered the final round of the Dominion Energy Charity Classic three shots off the lead. He was in good position for his best finish of the season — he’d posted just a single top 10, a T7, in 23 starts in 2024 — but blew past that goal and fired the round of the week instead, a seven-under 65 punctuated by birdies on 16 and 18 to win his first PGA Tour Champions title by two.
O’Neal was emotional in his post-round interview as he tried to process the moment in real-time.
“It only takes one week, right? And this was my week,” he said.
If he struggled to make sense of the accomplishment, that was understandable. O’Neal now has something he’s been chasing for decades: stability. He earned $350,000 for the win. He plowed his way to the next round of the Charles Schwab playoffs. And he locked up his job for next season, too.
“You know, I like all these guys out here and I’ve learned so much the past two years playing out here on PGA Tour Champions,” he said when asked about the players who’d stuck around to congratulate him. “For them to feel that way for me, it means a lot because I feel like now that I’ve won, I feel like I belong.”
Perseverance and reward — that’s golf stuff I like.
Who won the week?
J.T. Poston won the Shriners Children’s Open, his third PGA Tour title and first as a father.
Hannah Green joined elite company with her third win of the season at the BMW Ladies Championship in South Korea, joining Lydia Ko and Nelly Korda in the three-plus group.
Julien Guerrier won the Estrella Damm Andalucia Masters, claiming his first DP World Tour victory nearly 20 years after turning pro. It took a par on the ninth playoff hole to get there.
MJ Maguire won the Asian Tour’s Black Mountain Championship in a playoff.
And Tim O’Neal‘s big win got him to the next round of the playoffs.
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A few guys who didn’t win.
Gary Woodland finished T9 at the Shriners, his second consecutive top-20 and his best result since brain surgery 13 months ago. He’s feeling better, he said, and that’s reflected in his play.
Michael Kim, a Tour winner who’s become well-known for his Twitter presence, fired a Sunday 62 — low round of the day by two — to dramatically increase his chances at keeping full PGA Tour status for 2025. He went from No. 129 to 112 with the T5 finish.
“I mean, it’s awesome. It’s not a huge monkey off my back, but a decent-sized one,” Kim said. Seems pretty huge to me.
In addition to Kim’s Sunday move, Matti Schmid and Rico Hoey shot Sunday 66s to lock up their PGA Tour cards for next year; they went from 105 and 102 to 84 and 83, respectively.
Others making moves: Woodland moved from No. 148 to 137 with his T9 finish. Alejandro Tosti also finished T9 to move from No. 136 to 127. Joe Highsmith jumped inside the number, at least for now, going from No. 133 to 125. Vince Whaley improved his number from 125 to No. 120.
Joel Dahmen fell outside the top 125 after a high-profile penalty-WD combo; he’s now projected at No. 129. And Daniel Berger slipped from 126 to 128 after a T39.
Five things to know, in brief.
1. Could the PGA of America sell the Ryder Cup? Golfweek columnist Eamon Lynch made that case here, suggesting it could fetch more from the newly former PGA Tour Enterprises group now than ever. If that’s a possibility, it’s fair to put on your tinfoil hat and connect the dots to the Cup’s $750 ticket prices. Could proving demand for high prices and generating a ton of revenue have the side-benefit of jacking up the event’s purchase price…?
2. Cognizant is out as the sponsor of the LPGA’s Founders Cup, per reporting from Golfweek’s Beth Ann Nichols. The event was founded in 2011 as a way to honor the legacies of the LPGA’s 13 founders and, with Cognizant’s help, soon boasted a $3 million purse. Now its future is in question. Nichols also writes that the Ford Championship in Arizona and the Portland Classic face sponsorship questions — though Black Desert is expected to add a big-money event to the calendar. Good read here.
3. LIV is looking for a new CEO to replace Greg Norman, per Sports Business Journal; they’ve enlisted an executive search firm to assist in the process. Norman is expected to stay with the league, though his role is not immediately clear. Some high-profile players including PGA Tour pros Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy plus LIV star Jon Rahm have suggested that Norman would need to step aside for negotiations on pro golf’s future to meaningfully progress.
4. TGL released its schedule for early 2025; things will kick off on Tuesday, Jan. 7 on ESPN in primetime with a showdown between New York Golf Club and The Bay Golf Club. Tickets for the 1500-person South Florida arena are going off at $160.
5. Wyndham Clark explained that PGA Tour players have been struggling with the mechanics of LIV pros potentially rejoining the league.
“If we 100 percent knew we could take the money and come back, then we all would have done that,” Clark said on the No Laying Up podcast this week. “Because we all would’ve been way richer and then you come back and actually play at the highest level.”
He intimated that, were it up to him, accomplished pros like Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson would be able to return. But he also didn’t suggest that negotiations are nearing any sort of finish line.
There’s more to life than birdies. Kinda.
J.T. Poston had missed short putts on 16 and 17, cutting his lead over Doug Ghim from four shots to two. Then Ghim birdied 18 and suddenly Poston faced a must-make four-footer.
“Yeah, I told myself this is what you dream of. You got a putt to win on the PGA Tour. Just try and forget about the last two. Didn’t make very good strokes on either of them, but I told myself I’ve made a million of these and just do one more.”
He buried it.
Who’s joining LIV next?
There are more questions than answers when it comes to LIV’s 2025 rosters, but we learned a few more things this week.
Sergio Garcia told GolfMagic that Eugenio Chacarra is not in the team’s plans for 2025; Chacarra finished 39th in LIV’s standings and his next stop is uncertain. Garcia hinted that he’s hoping to add “a little bit of a different profile kind of player,” which suggests there’s a specific target in mind. One rumored possibility: U.S. Amateur champ (and current Arizona State Sun Devil) Jose Luis Ballester. Ballester’s longtime coach is Garcia’s father, Victor, and Ballester has spoken highly of Sergio’s mentorship.
Jon Rahm has a spot to fill on his Legion XIII team after Kieran Vincent was relegated. He told Golf Sin Etiquetas on YouTube that, while he doesn’t yet have a player signed, he has “six or seven in mind.”
Rahm said that one pro he’d been considering was Spanish and in the DP World Tour field this week. He also suggested that a Callaway staffer would be a good fit as he dreams of a sponsored team. Angel Hidalgo, a Spanish pro who edged out Rahm in a playoff a couple weeks ago, seems like one potential candidate; Rahm has seen his game up close (although he plays Cobra and wears Puma).
John Catlin continued his run of stellar play on the Asian Tour with a runner-up finish at the Black Mountain Championship; he’s in position to earn a LIV spot, too, if he maintains his No. 1 International Series ranking.
Michael Greller talks Spieth.
We’ve often heard Jordan Spieth talk to Michael Greller. We’ve even occasionally heard Greller talk to Spieth. But it’s not often we’ve heard Greller talk about Spieth. But then he got some ice cream with our Claire Rogers, which means here’s your chance.
Monday Finish HQ.
Gamble Sands is arguably Washington’s hottest destination-style golf course. Now? It’ll be twice as good. The resort brought David McLay-Kidd back for a sequel and so he and associate Nick Schaan have brought to life “Scarecrow,” the property’s second full 18-hole course (there’s also a 14-hole short course).
The new course is on a more compact footprint, it’s hillier, it has even more expansive views of the nearby Columbia River and, although it’ll still boast generous fairways, small greens could make it tougher than the original. Hope to see you there when it opens in 2025.
But first, I’ll see you back here next week!
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Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.
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