For the first time since 2001, Matt Kuchar found himself on the outside looking in regarding the PGA Tour. Well, sort of.<\/p>\n
The 47-year-old tour veteran finished the 2025 season at 118th on the FedEx Cup points list, with the top 100 retaining full status for 2026. That ended a run of 19 straight seasons in which Kuchar could mostly pick and choose his schedule, during which he has won nine times, including the 2012 Players Championship.<\/p>\n
Kuchar\u2019s FEC finish still allowed him to have conditional status in 2026. However, having earned $61.5 million in his career, he sits No. 13 on the PGA Tour\u2019s all-time career money list. And under tour regulations, anyone inside the top 25 on the career money list can use that status on a one-time basis to retain full exempt status. There\u2019s also a one-time exemption for anybody in the top 50.<\/p>\n
So it was that Kuchar faced a decision: Take one of his money-list exemptions or chance it with conditional status?<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a different PGA Tour from when I first joined in 2002,\u201d he said after his last start at the RSM Classic in November. \u201cI don\u2019t know if using an exemption will get me any different starts. It\u2019s a tricky one.\u201d<\/p>\n
After spending a month researching scenarios\u2014when he wasn\u2019t winning the PNC Championship with son Cameron\u2014Kuchar made the decision to pass on the money-list exemption and take his chances with conditional status. He came to the conclusion in part because it appeared he would only get three or four more starts with full status, which also would not get him into any of the signature events. As a past champion at the upcoming Sony Open in Hawaii, Kuchar is expected to play in next week\u2019s season-opening event.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Kuchar\u2019s place on the money list means that no matter what happened in 2026, he\u2019ll still be inside both the top 25 (Tommy Fleetwood is No. 26 with $43.4 million) and top 50 (Geoff Ogilvy is No. 51 with $30.6 million), allowing him to use those two exemptions in 2027 and 2028, the year he turns 50 and would be eligible to play on the PGA Tour Champions.<\/p>\n
One other PGA Tour veteran, according to the Associated Press, did request\u2014surprisingly perhaps\u2014the use of a career money-list exemption for 2026: Vijay Singh. The World Golf Hall of Famer turns 63 in February and hasn\u2019t played a regular-season PGA Tour event since the 2021 Honda Classic, but he\u2019s sixth on the all-time list at $71.2 million. It\u2019s unclear how much he\u2019ll play on the PGA Tour in 2026, but he is an early commit for the Sony Open in Hawaii.<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time since 2001, Matt Kuchar found himself on the outside looking in regarding the PGA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,755,138747,44,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-400465","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-golf","12":"tag-golf-digest","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}