Tour Confidential: FedEx Cup Fall drama, best public courses

Check in every week for the unfiltered opinions of our writers and editors as they break down the hottest topics in the sport, and join the conversation by tweeting us at @golf_com. This week, we discuss Maverick McNealy’s first PGA Tour win, the FedEx Cup Fall winners and losers, the best courses you can play and more.

Maverick McNealy closed the 2024 PGA Tour season with the first victory of his career, beating three others by a shot at the RSM Classic on Sunday. What took the former top-ranked amateur so long to get his first title on Tour, and do you expect it to snowball into a breakout 2025?

Jack Hirsh, associate equipment editor (@JR_HIRSHey): That seems like a loaded question. Winning is hard on the PGA Tour. We’ve seen numerous top-ranked amateurs get to the PGA Tour and never win, and we’ve also seen plenty who have gone on to have hall-of-fame careers. While he was dealing with an injury last year, he still played better in 2022 than he did this year, even with the win. I say it’s likely he wins again, but I don’t expect him to suddenly become a top-10 or top-20 player.

Josh Berhow, managing editor (@Josh_Berhow): He’s kind of unique where he’s never been a star but has never really struggled to keep his PGA Tour card. He’s just been… pretty good: solid off the tee, not so great into greens and a very good putter. It was a matter of time. It’s not a fluke he had so much success at the collegiate level. The first one’s always the hardest. He’d definitely be a breakout contender for next year.

Alan Bastable, executive editor (@alan_bastable): Golf’s a funny old game. Mav had six top 10s this season but also 13 missed cuts or withdrawals. Forecasting what players are capable of from one week to the next is nearly impossible. What a month for Mav, though! He helped mastermind the Tour’s recently announced revamp of its FedEx Cup points distribution system, and now he has his first Tour title. If only he’d lobbied the Tour to dole out more points for the RSM…

Last week we found out (officially) that come 2026, only 100 players will earn full-time PGA Tour status. But for 2025, that magic number is still 125, and we learned those players at the season-ending RSM Classic on Sunday. Which player who made it just inside (or outside) that cut line was the most notable to you?

Hirsh: Has to be Joel Dahmen, who put together a Sunday 64 to finish No. 124 in the FedEx Cup. Dahmen has struggled with adjusting to his newfound fame since being a key figure in the Netflix “Full Swing” docuseries. Having him on Tour makes for a much more entertaining, compelling and relatable product, so having him struggle to get into fields under the past champion category wouldn’t have been much fun. I still think his best years are yet to come.

Berhow: Yeah, hard to argue with Dahmen, since he was the biggest name within a few of that No. 125 spot. Two other young former college standouts, Parker and Pierceson Coody, both landed on the wrong side of that line, too.

Bastable: Must say, I didn’t foresee anyone in the Creator Classic field making a run at a Tour card, but that’s what Wes Bryan did, narrowly missing out by three spots. When Bryan took heat for playing in that hit-and-giggle event for influencers earlier this year, he tweeted, “Are there actually ppl mad that I’m playing in this event? I have filmed 100+ long form youtube videos over the last two years…missed almost every cut on the pga tour…and hardly ever practice.” Not exactly a recipe for Tour success. But Bryan still found a way to stay relevant until an MC this week doomed his card hopes.

We’ll spend more time next month unpacking the year that was on the PGA Tour, but off the top of your head, what’s the one big thing you learned or will remember about the 2024 PGA Tour season?

Hirsh: Honestly, that a Tiger-like run is still possible. I think I had started thinking that the generation of kids who got into golf because of Tiger Woods had made the sport too deep for anyone to really go on a run of victories like he did nearly two decades ago. Scottie Scheffler disproved that theory this year. No, he didn’t win multiple majors like Woods did do so often, but until Scheffler’s 2024 no one had won seven times in a Tour season since Woods in 2007. And it’s not like Scheffler’s competition was weak, either. Sure, LIV Golf has taken away Jon Rahm, Cam Smith, Jaco Neimann and others, but Scheffler was winning against Xander Schauffele, who won two majors himself, week in and week out. Let’s not forget about that gold medal win, too.

Berhow: Scottie Scheffler will never go back to Louisville.

Bastable: Yeah, the Scheffler PGA fiasco will go down as the one of the wildest sports stories of all time, but still, this year might be remembered more for what happened off the course. Or, more the point, what didn’t happen. And that will continue to be the case until the PGA Tour and PIF finally strike a deal. The drawn-out negotiations have sucked so much oxygen out of the room. Total bummer.

Also complete is the 2024 LPGA season, with Jeeno Thitikul winning the season-ending CME Group Tour Championship. Nelly Korda tied for fifth to put a bow on a spectacular seven-win campaign. Quick: Will Korda match or surpass that season-win total again in her career?

Hirsh: I’ll go ahead and say it: yes! For as incredible as Korda’s season was, it was also kind of weird. She missed three cuts randomly in the middle of the season that included two majors, she took two months off between her first and second wins, she let chances to win the Open and Olympics slip away and she also dealt with some injury. As long as her mechanics stay intact, I could see her winning in bunches like this for a few more years.

Berhow: Yes. And boy, that sounds crazy to say, but I came to that conclusion in my head pretty quickly. I think she can keep getting better — as Jack mentioned, she had some weird things happen this year too — and I would not be a bit surprised to see her do this again.

Bastable: ​​Buzzkill Bastable says no. Seven wins is staggering, and the tour is only getting deeper, meaning victories will become increasingly harder to come by. As Jack notes, Nelly’s also been prone to injuries; winning in bunches requires staying healthy.

Last week, GOLF released its latest ranking of the Top 100 Courses You Can Play, a list full of superstar layouts accessible to any Average Joe. If you were creating the ultimate public-golf road trip with this list in mind, where are you taking our readers?

Hirsh: I’ve used this space before to shout-out my former hometown of Bend, Ore., and I will do it again. Bend is represented on our latest Top 100 Courses You can Play list with Pronghorn’s two courses, but it has so much more to offer. Sunriver’s Crosswater course once was in the top 15 of our ranking and I believe it is one of the most beautiful inland courses I have ever played. The list goes on and on with Tetherow, Brasada Ranch, Black Butte Ranch and more. Within 90 minutes is an absolutely fantastic hidden gem in the mountains called Tokatee, which is on GOLF’s list of America’s best golf courses for under $100. And while a five-hour drive to Bandon Dunes may seem long, it is one of the most scenic drives you can take.

Berhow: The easy answer is to spend some time kicking around Pebble Beach or Pinehurst, etc., and playing all of those crazy-good — and often spendy — tracks, but I’m gonna use my homer card as well and pick a more Midwestern trip that won’t hurt your wallet quiet as much and isn’t as obvious. Play one of those elite Wisconsin courses (Whistling or Sand Valley or Erin Hills, etc.) but then stop off for a value play at Lawsonia, then head to Minnesota (which I’m surprised didn’t get one nod on our Top 100 You Can Play list) and go way up north and double up at Giants Ridges’ two courses before driving to nearby The Wilderness at Fortune Bay. It’s a great area that is home to three of the better public courses in the state, and unless you are brave enough to travel that far, a lot of out-of-staters don’t even know about it.

Bastable: No, Josh, the easy answer is, in fact, Bandon Dunes, which has five courses in the top 25. Bonus: the only road trip you need worry about is getting to the resort. A less obvious rec: the Tampa, Fla., area. Three Streamsong Top 100s, the new spread at Cabot Citrus Farms and the Copperhead course at Innisbrook are all within two hours of one another. Not a bad haul!