PGA Tour’s sponsor invites are controversial. Here are the results

PGA Tour Sponsor Exemptions

Player rankings (OWGR) at time of event and finishing positions. Bold = Policy Board member at time of event.

Avg. OWGR rank (excl. Tiger Woods): 132.7  Avg. finish (MC/WD = 68, excl. not yet played): 38.3

At this point, no player has gotten more looks than Gary Woodland, who has received seven exemptions. He recently won the Houston Open in March, meaning he could enter the remaining Signature Events for 2026 without needing an exemption. Before that win, Woodland had banked invites into more than a third of the Siggies.

And you know what? The golf world has felt pretty good about those. Woodland has been battling challenges with his health since before his 2023 brain surgery. The 2019 U.S. Open champ is widely considered one of the kindest players on Tour. He recently came forward about his struggles with PTSD following that surgery, too, and remains one of the most impressive stories going, particularly in light of his recent Houston Open victory.

Greater scrutiny has followed exemptions given to players outside the world top 100. While those are the minority, one is happening this week, with No. 441 Webb Simpson getting a nod. It’s not hard to see why Simpson is in the field this week. Simpson has been a PGA Tour policy board member, is among the most beloved figures at the sponsorship level, and also happens to live on the property at Quail Hollow, host of this week’s event.

But just know that not every Tour member on the outside has loved seeing Simpson receive these exemptions constantly. He’s received the second-most exemptions, with six — alongside Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth and Adam Scott — but has never been in the top 200 in the world during any of those tournaments. To his credit, Simpson finished T24 on exemption at the 2024 Truist — but hasn’t fared any better since.

Sixteen of the 76 exemptions to date have been given to players outside the top 150 in the world at that time, and only Brandt Snedeker — ranked 430th ahead of the 2025 Memorial — was able to crack the top 10 the week of that exemption. As with all explanations for who receives these invites, there were plenty of reasons why Snedeker earned that invite, but an obvious connection is embroidered across the front of his hat: Workday, one of Snedeker’s most prominent sponsors, also sponsors the Memorial.

Kevin Kisner (then ranked 526), Michael Thorbjornsen (then 710) and Tiger Woods (893) also all received exemptions while outside the top 500 in the world, but each of those cases was extremely different. Kisner was 40 years old and had gone a full year without a top-30 finish. Thorbjornsen, a Massachusetts native and a top young talent, was invited to the Travelers Championship, widely regarded as the Signature Event of the Northeast. (He was 22 years old then, has since won on Tour and is now ranked 62nd in the world.) And then there’s Woods, who would get any sponsor exemption he wanted if he needed it, but in this case is the host of the Genesis Invitational and received the exemption before the Tour went so far as to manufacture a new, 80-win exemption category for him alone.

As for how these players are performing? The results are all over the place. And maybe that should be the expectation. The average finish for sponsor exemptions has been around 38th to 40th, directly in the middle of these 72- to 80ish-man fields. There have been nine top-10 finishes by sponsor exemptions and 11 who have finished 70th or worse — missed cuts and withdrawals included. Everyone else nets out somewhere in the middle of those two poles, which, again, might be exactly what’s expected. Below is a list of the players who have received exemptions, ranked from most to least.

7 invites: Gary Woodland

6 invites: Webb Simpson, Adam Scott, Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth

5 invites: Billy Horschel

4 invites: Tony Finau, Matt Kuchar

3 invites: Keith Mitchell, Max Homa, Mackenzie Hughes

2 invites: Min Woo Lee, Tom Kim, Shane Lowry, Max Greyserman, Brandt Snedeker

1 invite: Peter Malnati, Maverick McNealy, Harry Hall, Sahith Theegala, Tiger Woods, Will Zalatoris, Nicolai Hojgaard, Rafael Campos, Justin Rose, Chris Kirk, Kevin Kisner, Wyndham Clark, Marco Penge, Alex Noren, Michael Thorbjornsen, Luke Clanton, Joel Dahmen