{"id":315309,"date":"2025-11-26T19:01:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T19:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/315309\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T19:01:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T19:01:08","slug":"in-new-era-matt-kuchar-weighing-money-exemption-vs-conditional-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/315309\/","title":{"rendered":"In new era, Matt Kuchar weighing money exemption vs. conditional status"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga \u2014 Matt Kuchar finished his 19th consecutive season on the PGA Tour and ended it at No. 118 in the FedExCup, which would have been enough to keep his full card any year but this one, with the Tour dropping the cutoff to the top 100 instead of the top 125.<\/p>\n<p>The next step for the 47-year-old Kuchar would seem to be taking one of his exemptions for career money, only it\u2019s not that simple.<\/p>\n<p>This is a different PGA Tour from when he first joined in 2002. There are eight signature events, four majors, The Players Championship and three FedExCup playoff events. Kuchar goes into 2026 not eligible for any of them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know how many starts I\u2019ll get,\u201d Kuchar said after he finished at the RSM Classic. \u201cI don\u2019t know if using an exemption will get me any different starts. It\u2019s a tricky one. It\u2019s not going to get you into any elevated events.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"Link\" aria-label=\"FedExCup movement: Which PGA Tour players rose, fell in points from last season\" href=\"https:\/\/www.golfchannel.com\/pga-tour\/news\/fedexcup-movement-which-pga-tour-players-rose-fell-in-points-from-last-season\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/p>\n<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"Image\" alt=\"GOLF: AUG 23 PGA FedEx Cup Playoffs - Tour Championship\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1764183668_597_\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here is a look at the movement of all 188 players who appeared on each of the past two final FedExCup standings.<\/p>\n<p>The question is whether his conditional status as No. 118 in the FedExCup will get him into roughly the same number of events as taking a career money exemption.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re in somewhat unchartered territory,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m guessing they\u2019ve run the numbers, but I don\u2019t know how well their scenarios work out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>PGA Tour officials estimate that players between No. 101 and No. 110 in the FedExCup \u2014 they keep that ranking all year \u2014 will get into about 16 of the 19 tournaments, and then have all of the FedEx Cup Fall except for Japan.<\/p>\n<p>Kuchar is eight spots below that group, and subject to drop if he doesn\u2019t play well out of the gates.<\/p>\n<p>He has time for his two exemptions. Even in this era of big purses, Kuchar has played so well for so long that he is No. 15 in career earnings at $61,538,738. That\u2019s just over $15.4 million ahead of the player at No. 25, so waiting another year to take the top 25 exemption won\u2019t cost him.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what Kuchar will have to sort out in the next month before the Sony Open in Hawaii.<\/p>\n<p>Kuchar had only one top-10 finish this year, a tie for fifth in the John Deere Classic, but he missed only two cuts in 18 starts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not the 2025 that I hoped for. It was a frustrating year,\u201d Kuchar said. \u201cI think I missed only two cuts, but I didn\u2019t seem to put together the weeks where you hit it well and putt it well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga \u2014 Matt Kuchar finished his 19th consecutive season on the PGA Tour and ended&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-315309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}