This PGA Championship Already Has Its Ultimate Cinderella Story

The most unlikely player in this week's PGA Championship is the 45-year-old who hadn't won on Tour in eight years, Bob Harig writes. Also, more on LIV Golf's future and how that could affect the DP World Tour.

Brandt Snedeker picked up his 10th PGA Tour win Sunday, ending an eight-year drought. | Raj Mehta/Getty Images

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. — Brandt Snedeker figured to be home in Nashville today, gearing up for a visit later this week to Medinah Country Club outside of Chicago as part of his Presidents Cup captain duties.

Late Sunday, he gladly changed his plans.

Snedeker’s victory Sunday at the One Flight Myrtle Beach Classic meant one of the last spots in the field this week in the PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club—his first major championship appearance since the 2021 British Open and first at the PGA since 2020.

“Changes a lot of things,” Snedeker said after his 5-under-par 66 was good for a one-shot victory over Mark Hubbard, who bogeyed the final hole to miss a playoff. “I’m kind of in a bunch of tournaments I probably wasn’t in before now. All good things. Just kind of get home tonight and reevaluate what we need to do, and kind of figure out a new plan. I’m excited to get to the PGA. I haven’t played in a major in a few years.

“Love the opportunity to play in those big golf courses and playing against tough competition. It will be fun to get up there and see the guys. I haven’t seen a lot of those guys in a minute. And use it as a scouting trip for Presidents Cup stuff, talk to the guys a little bit.”

Snedeker’s 10th PGA Tour victory came in the opposite-field event—most of the top players were at the Truist Championship in Charlotte, where Kristoffer Reitan was the winner—and means a spot in this week’s PGA as well as next year’s Players Championship along with a full PGA Tour exemption through 2028.

Although it doesn’t mean an automatic spot in the two remaining signature events, Snedeker has put himself in a good position to qualify for the Memorial Tournament next month. (Perhaps the best perk: 250 hours of flying time with the private jet company that is the event’s title sponsor.)

Snedeker, 45, had not won since the 2018 Wyndham Championship and was playing in just his seventh event of the year, having lost his full PGA Tour status and playing out of the category for players who finished outside of the top 125 in FedEx Cup points.

Before Sunday, Brandt Snedeker's most recent win was the 2018 Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club. | Rob Kinnan-Imagn Images

The last few years have been a struggle for Snedeker, who in late 2022 had an experimental surgery due to a rare condition called manubrium joint instability that is normally associated with a person who has been in a severe car crash.

The surgery involved breaking his sternum and reattaching it, which meant months of inactivity. It was more than five months before he could hit balls, and Snedeker returned that spring.

His results have been sporadic since that time as he made just seven cuts in 2024 and last year he made 13 cuts in 25 starts. His priority ranking of 126th meant he would have difficulty getting into many events without invites. He missed four straight cuts before taking the third-round lead at the Valspar Championship, where a final-round 75 meant a tie for 18th finish.

Snedeker played just once since then before the Myrtle Beach start.

“To not have my card the last couple of years, to be struggling to do what I love to still have a passion to play this game the way I want to play it and to show people how I can still do it, especially not playing my best and struggling the way I did to come back and fight, claw my way back and play some great golf this year even though it hasn’t seemed like it to people outside,” he said.

“I knew I was playing well. I just hadn’t been able to put it all together. Hopefully it shows my family, my kids something. Just, you know, 10 wins out here is an accomplishment. Something I’m very proud of.”

Snedeker felt he had lost the tournament when he sprayed his drive at the 18th and made a bogey. But Hubbard, who was trying for his first PGA Tour win, made a late bogey to drop into a tie and then did the same thing on the 18th, failing to get up and down for a par needed to force a playoff.

Warming up on the driving range for the possible playoff, Snedeker was moved to tears when he learned he had won.

“There’s points in the last couple of years I didn’t think I could win again,” he said. “My golf game wasn’t very good. My body wasn’t feeling great. Lots of self-doubt. Lots of, you know, what am I doing?

“I did the only thing I knew how to do, get back to work. I went back to my coach, Todd Anderson. One thing I’ve always been known for is putting the work in and started working. That's all you can do. Quit looking around for solutions and look for answers, that’s what I tell people all the time. I don’t want excuses. I need solutions for problems. The solution was to get back to work and do what I love to do.

“And every time I did it, I kept getting a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better and my confidence started growing, and I felt like I could play. It’s been a long last three years. Eight years since I won, but really since I came back from my sternum surgery, it’s been a long time to feel like this.”

LIV Golf's future, and where players could end up

LIV Golf did its best to try and return to the narrative to the course, with varying degrees of success at the Virginia event won by Australia’s Lucas Herbert. It was going to be impossible not to address the news of the league’s possible demise or at the very least its defunding after the Public Investment Fund had announced it would no longer back the circuit after this year.

LIV Golf Virginia was a place to get everyone on the same page and, for the most part, players spoke the company line espoused by CEO Scott O’Neil, who said he is bullish on his chances of bringing new investment to LIV Golf and seeing it continue into 2027 and beyond.

And while players pledged their faith in O’Neil, several also acknowledged the reality, that there’s a chance the league might not exist or could be greatly diminished.

LIV Golf CEO Scott O'Neil, pictured with President Donald J. Trump at LIV Golf Virginia, is bullish on the league lasting past this year but players are starting to consider their options. | John (Jack) Power-Imagn Images

Jon Rahm—coincidentally or not—said he had reached a deal with the DP World Tour. Bryson DeChambeau, while stumping for LIV and saying he will help recruit investors, nonetheless spoke of his options going forward, as did several others.

And then there are those who have no interest in the PGA Tour.

Anirban Lahiri told the Times of London that he knows of “at least a dozen players who’d rather not play golf than go back to the PGA Tour.”

Some of them might not have a choice.

This, of course, is getting ahead of things. LIV Golf is still playing. And if the league continues into next year, some players will still be under contract, others might very well want to remain where they are playing.

But what if they wanted back? Putting aside the possibility of PGA Tour sanctions, the path to return to the PGA Tour is small via direct exemptions. The social media account @robopz did a deep dive on the various exemptions.

Future "Other Tour" Status for current LIV players

Lots of discussion this week RE where might LIV players go if LIV went away or if they decided (and contractually able) to leave LIV for elsewhere. Seems to me the first part that needs to be answered before discussing any… pic.twitter.com/CyqGiLTXxb

— Robopz (@Robopz) May 9, 2026

Rahm, DeChambeau and Cam Smith would be exempt due to their major victories dating to 2022. But beyond that, players have been gone far too long to have winner’s exemptions still intact.

Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson are considered PGA Tour life members.

Sergio Garcia, Bubba Watson and Charles Howell III would have pathways via the career money exemption for all-time top 25 and top 50 money earners. That pathway would also be available to Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Paul Casey, especially if they wanted to play PGA Tour Champions, which has a career money exemption category. Richard Bland won two senior majors, which would give him exempt status. 

Graeme McDowell, Louis Oosthuizen, Charl Schwartzel and Martin Kaymer also have enough career money to use that path to some degree.

Lahiri, for example, has no status and Joaquin Niemann, who has had a successful run on LIV Golf, would also be very limited.

At least nine players, including Rahm, are DP World Tour members. Tyrrell Hatton is also part of that list.

And what about the DP World Tour?

Although not to the same level as the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour has sought to penalize its members who play for LIV Golf, fining and suspending them for violating its conflicting rights rules. It does allow them to compete, however, and reached agreements with nine LIV players that allows them to play this year without seeking releases.

At the same time, the DP World Tour’s “strategic alliance” with the PGA Tour continues, with the Tour subsidizing purses to the tune of millions a year. The deal began in 2021, just before LIV Golf launched, and has seen the Tour take an ownership stake in European Tour Productions.

Ian Poulter suggested the DP World Tour would be worse off without LIV Golf. | Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

But the Tour can opt out of the arrangement following the 2027 season and the threat of LIV Golf has been viewed as a factor in keeping that arrangement going.

Last week, LIV’s Ian Poulter suggested that the league’s demise might be bad for the DP World Tour.

“I fear for them,” Poulter said in an interview at LIV Golf Virginia. “Even though I resigned, I played for 23 straight years on the European Tour and do actually care about where I learned my trade. I fear that they can’t afford for us [LIV] to go away. Because if we go away, it does not look very good for them. The PGA Tour has underpinned their prize funds and paid out in the last couple of years. We are talking hundreds of millions. Now if that stops ... well, it’s not rocket science.”

While it is unclear to what level the Tour has helped fund the DP World Tour, Poulter’s point is that if LIV goes away, the PGA Tour will have no reason to help the DP World Tour anymore—that it has been doing so to keep it from joining forces with the Public Investment Fund or LIV Golf.

“The PGA Tour now has private equity and they want as much return as possible on their investment,” Poulter added. “So with the European Tour costing all this money... again, it’s not rocket science.”