Ryan Gerard spent the weekend stacking up career-changing results, and by Sunday evening the North Carolina product had turned a strong year into a massive one.
Gerard finished third at the season-ending PGA Tour Championship in Atlanta, four shots behind winner Scottie Scheffler after closing at 12-under par 268. The payday matched the performance: Gerard earned $3,705,000, and the finish locked up a long list of perks for the next stretch of his career, including spots in all four major tournaments for 2027, a fully exempt PGA Tour card for the next two seasons, and exemptions into all eight elevated tour tournaments next year plus the Players Championship.
He entered the final round in position to chase the title, sitting one shot off the lead at 14-under behind Victor Hovland and earning a place in the final grouping. But the day got away from him immediately. A double-bogey on the first hole knocked him a stroke back, and he never quite caught up.
Even so, Gerard showed the kind of resilience that drew praise from the Golf Channel and CBS broadcast crews. He hung around the leaders while trying to sort out his swing, carding pars on the next 13 holes before finally picking up a birdie on No.
- It was his only birdie of the day, and he gave that shot back with a bogey on the next hole.
Scheffler, meanwhile, kept separating with six birdies and a closing four-under 66.
The third-place finish capped a huge season for Gerard, who banked just over $10 million and made the cut in 22 of the 26 events he played. He also piled up four top-fives and seven top-tens.
His year started fast with runner-up finishes in January at the Sony Open in Hawaii and the American Express in Palm Springs. The next real chance came at the Memorial in early June, where he reached sudden death at Jack Nicklaus’s event in Ohio before losing the extra-hole playoff to J.T.
Poston. That remained his closest brush with a victory.
Gerard later posted a ninth-place finish at the Open, his best result in a major this season, and added an eighth-place showing two weeks after that at the Rocket Classic.
The Raleigh native was already a decorated college player at North Carolina, where he earned Second Team All-America honors and was also named First Team All-Atlantic Coast Conference.
Gerard wasn’t the only Tar Heel making noise on the PGA Tour. Ben Griffin finished No. 41 in the FedEx Cup standings and advanced to the first two playoff events in Memphis and St. Louis, where the top 70 and top 50, respectively, qualified.
Griffin is currently projected at No. 8 for the 2026 United States Presidents Cup team. The first six automatic spots are set, and six more selections will come from captain Brandt Snedeker. Those picks will be announced Tuesday afternoon.
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Black is expected to visit several schools, including North Carolina, Texas, Miami and Duke, which gives this race the feel of one that could stretch on for a while. For the Tar Heels, the appeal is obvious: landing a player of that caliber would give Malone a major boost, but for now the bigger story is simply how much traffic this battle is already drawing. [Read more 🡒]