It all comes down to this.
The 2025 PGA Tour season comes to a close this week with the RSM Classic, and with it comes a week of immense stress for any of the guys sitting outside of the top 100 of the FedEx Cup standings. With the Tour cutting down the number of cards they hand out from 125 in past years, the squeeze is being felt more and more.
The trip to Sea Island comes with a two-course setup this week, as the first two rounds will be split between the Seaside and the Plantation Courses, with play shifting entirely to the Seaside Course for the weekend.
Both courses top out at 7,000 yards, so neither one of them requires a bomber's skillset to be able to succeed. An emphasis will be put on the players' short game and putting this week, so if you're able to catch a hot putter this week, you should be in for a good weekend.
With this being the last event of the 2025 season, I want to look back at the success of the rankings for this year. In the 40 events I have tried to pick winners for this season, we hit true winners in 17 of them, including Ben Griffin just two weeks ago in Mexico, and that number goes up to 20 if we include honorable mention picks.
Having a baseline of 42.5 percent to try to match for the 2026 season won't be any small feat, but I welcome the challenge and hope to provide the same level of analysis for everyone who has read along with these rankings throughout the year. Let's grab one more win for the road, though.
Honorable Mentions: Harris English, Brian Harman, Matt Kuchar, Mac Meissner, Kevin Roy
9. Daniel Berger
Using this week as a way to keep from rusting up competitively, Daniel Berger is looking to get back to the heights he had once reached on the Tour. We last saw Berger at the BMW Championship, where he withdrew with a broken finger, ending his return to full-time play from his previous back injuries.
Seemingly fully healthy again, Berger is coming back to a course that treated him well in 2024, where he finished T2. His iron play and putting (when he's on) are a great match for Sea Island, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him climbing the leaderboard this weekend.
8. Nico Echavarria
While this fall hasn't reached the same peak as last year, Nico Echavarria has still performed pretty well, with a solo ninth in Japan and a T14 in Cabo. Much like Berger before him, Echavarria is a solid iron player who can catch fire with a putter, which makes his T2 finish at RSM last season make more sense. Coming off a not great week in Bermuda, I expect Nico to find a bounce-back week.
7. Takumi Kanaya
For those of you who have read the previous rankings, you know that I have been high on Kanaya this fall, and I realistically should've had him in the rankings and not just as an honorable mention this past week when he finished T3 in Bermuda.
Allow me to atone for that mistake this week, because I think that Kanaya is going to put together a really strong week, and he'll need it. The 27-year-old currently sits 99th in the FedEx Cup and needs a good finish to stay within the top 100 to keep full status on the PGA Tour. With his short-game skills, the timing of his playing at Sea Island couldn't have worked out better for him.
6. Michael Thorbjornsen
As long as Michael Thorbjornsen finds the fairway this week, there's no reason he shouldn't contend. Possibly another victim of the hype machine that follows all high-performing collegiate golfers, Thor should be able to start finding some more consistent success on the PGA Tour.
His driving alone is simply too much of a strength of his, and if he's able to flash more of the play that he showed at the Baycurrent, then the Wellesley product should be in contention once again at the RSM.
5. Andrew Novak
This feels very much like a boom-or-bust week from Andrew Novak, considering that we haven't seen him in action since the Tour Championship. The 30-year-old is coming off of his most successful season on Tour, and I think that if he plays this week in the same way that he played when he lost to JT in a playoff at the RBC Heritage, then he should find himself at the top of the leaderboard.
Another course that favors a strong short game and putting over distance, Novak should feel very comfortable out on St. Simons Island this week.
4. Thorbjorn Olesen
There's a fun little game within the game for the rankings this week in a battle of the Thors between Michael Thorbjornsen and Thorbjorn Olesen. As is indicated by these rankings, I'm taking Thorbjorn by a nose this week.
Truly the biggest difference is that Olesen is very close to the Top 100 bubble, and needs to find a good week to keep full status on Tour next year. Out of everyone on this list, I'll take the former Ryder Cupper to summon what he needs to play well this week.
3. Pierceson Coody
The windy weekend proved too much to handle for Pierceson Coody in Bermuda, who turned a strong start into a pedestrian T22. However, the shift to more benign conditions in Georgia this week should help the accurate ballstriker.
He missed the cut last year at the RSM, but that was mainly due to a career-worst putting week by strokes gained. Coody has gotten the putter figured out, and I think his overall skill improvement will lead to a great finishing week to his fall.
2. Kevin Yu
The last couple of weeks have not gone according to plan for Kevin Yu, missing the cut in Cabo and Bermuda. One silver lining is that it seems like Yu hit bottom, and there's nowhere to go but up from here.
We've seen how high his ceiling can be, so I'm willing to ride the train for another week, recent results be damned. With a T11 finish last year at the RSM, maybe the 27-year-old can summon the good vibes again and have a strong bounce-back week.
1. Alex Smalley
I am probably looking at Alex Smalley with rose-tinted glasses this week, especially coming off of a hard-fought T3 in blustery Bermuda last week.
I know this past season, we had Ben Griffin to unabashedly root for and follow along with his breakout year, and I have hope that Alex Smalley can provide that same sort of journey for us in 2026 (the DP World Tour guys that earned their cards are all too good and too well known to provide the same rush).
With two top-fives in his last three starts, Smalley's game is peaking at just the right time to take down the season-closing event this week.