PGA Tour rookies ranked! How we graded the DP World Tour’s Class of 2024

Shall we debate the pros and cons of the top 10 DP World Tour players (who aren’t otherwise exempt) earning PGA Tour exemptions for the following season?

Let’s not.

Instead, with the PGA Tour season over for another year, I thought it would be fun to look at how the Class of 2023 fared in their debut seasons Stateside and dish out report cards accordingly.

Let’s start at the bottom of the class, and it’s detention for…

Adrian Meronk 

Played: 4
Wins: 0
Top 10s: 0
Prize Money: $45,238
FedEx Cup: N/A  

We’ll start with the man who had his PGA Tour membership cancelled within days of earning it. 

Meronk played in all four majors, including becoming the first Pole to tee up in the Masters, but missed the cut in all of them but The Open, where he finished in a tie for 50th. At the Olympics, he finished a mere 20 shots off the podium. 

His debut season on LIV was alright, but that’s not why we’re here. Sorry, Adrian.

Grade: F

—

Alexander Bjork 

Played: 16
Wins: 0
Top 10s: 0
Prize Money: $414,659
FedEx Cup: 179th  

Eight cuts made from 16 tournaments makes the maths nice and easy but it’s not pretty reading for everyone’s second favourite Bjork.  

Of those eight weekends played, only a T11 at the American Express was worth writing home about. (Do people still write home?) His next best was a T33 in Texas.  

A good experience, I’m sure.

Grade: E 

—

Thorbjorn Olesen 

Played: 16 
Wins: 0
Top 10s: 0
Prize Money: $500,887
FedEx Cup: 170th  

When you put Olesen’s PGA and DP World Tour season records side-by-side you can actually see how much his trips across the Atlantic were affecting his form.  

The Christmas trees had barely come down when he won his eighth DP World Tour title, but his stretch of golf on the US circuit from February to August yielded just one top-15 finish and left him well short in the FedEx Cup.   

To the surprise of precisely no one, the Dane then came home and finished so well – including top-three finishes in France and Abu Dhabi – that he actually earned his PGA Tour card for 2025.  

Now, what’s that saying about doing the same thing over and over again…? 

Grade: E

—

Jorge Campillo 

Played: 17
Wins: 0
Top 10s: 1
Prize Money: $605,997
FedEx Cup: 154th  

It was a long old season for Campillo, who played 35 times on either side of the Atlantic between January and November.  

His PGA Tour showing provided a few glimmers – notably a T4 at the Myrtle Beach Classic, which you all missed because some YouTubers were playing, and top-20s at the Mexico Open and Corales Puntacana Championship (the only golf tournament I need to copy and paste).  

Campillo, though, suffered from the DP World Tour taking centre stage in the autumn. While the Spaniard was back on home soil, he fell from 136th in the FedEx Cup, which comes with conditional status for next season, to 154th, which does not. 

Grade: D

—

Sami Valimaki 

Played: 22 
Wins: 0
Top 10s: 1
Prize Money: $1,273,129
FedEx Cup: 123rd  

Valimaki hails from a town called Nokia, in Finland, so it should come as little surprise that his golf is as solid as they come. A little wobble at the end of the season saw him drop from 99th in the FedEx Cup to 123rd after the Fall Series, but he’s inside that magic number and that’s all that matters. 

Grade: C-

—

Ryan Fox 

Played: 24
Wins: 0
Top 10s: 3
Prize Money: $1,378,822
FedEx Cup: 118th  

I interviewed Fox many years ago and he told me playing on the PGA Tour was his “dream growing up”, and he won last year’s BMW PGA Championship to make it a reality.  

He was my pick to do the best out of the Class of 2024, and while that didn’t happen, it wasn’t exactly a nightmare.

The New Zealander will undoubtedly be disappointed with his debut season on the US circuit, but all he’ll care about for now, though, is that he kept his tour card for 2025.   

Grade: C

—

Ryo Hisatsune  

Played: 27 
Wins: 0
Top 10s: 1
Prize Money: $1,637,598
FedEx Cup: 93rd 

Golf’s a funny old sport, isn’t it? Three missed cuts on the bounce at the business end of the season must have left Hisatsune wondering where he would be playing his golf next year, but a top-three at the Wyndham Championship followed by a decent showing in the FedEx Cup Fall Series answered that. 

Grade: C+

—

Victor Perez 

Played: 22 
Wins: 0
Top 10s: 3
Prize Money: $2,068,163
FedEx Cup: 83rd 

The only member of the Class of 2024 to bank $2 million-plus without a win, with top-10 finishes at the Puerto Rico, Canadian and Scottish Opens certainly providing a platform on which to build. 

You’re still thinking about that 4th at the Olympics in his home country, aren’t you?  

Grade: B 

—

Mathieu Pavon 

Played: 19 
Wins: 1
Top 10s: 4
Prize Money: $5,254,412
FedEx Cup: T17th 

If you’re going to lock up your PGA Tour card status for two more years, then doing it within three weeks of landing in the States is pretty baller.  

While I try and think about a “flash in the Pav” pun, let’s look at some more numbers: T7 in Hawaii, 3rd at Pebble, T12 at Augusta, 5th at the US Open, T16 at the Travelers and T17 at the Tour Championship.  

His form was so good he made almost the same amount of money as Robert MacIntyre – who, as you’ll find out about two inches south of here, won twice in 2024 – and from six fewer events. 

I might go as far as saying he actually had a better season than Our Bob, but I can’t be bothered to have you all slagging me off on social media.

Grade: A 

—

So here we go, top of the class goes to…   

Robert MacIntyre 

Played: 25 
Wins: 2
Top 10s: 6
Prize Money: $5,400,384
FedEx Cup: T17th 

If you had just spent the year reading Bob’s interviews and focusing on his body language you’d think he was missing the cut every week.  

But the grumpy Scot image worked for Monty and co before him, and it’s sure as hell working for MacIntyre. 

It was a ropey start as the Oban star failed to settle Stateside, but a T6 in Mexico calmed the nerves and he never looked back, with top-10s at the Zurich Classic and PGA Championship followed by that maiden win in Canada and that win at the Scottish Open he’d dreamed of since he first swapped his shinty stick for a 1-iron. 

MacIntyre went on to finish 17th in the FedEx Cup before returning to the DP World Tour to finish his year off with five more top-25s and another million in the bank.  

At the time of writing, there are officially only 14 better golfers than Bob in the whole world. Imagine telling him that at the start of the year. 

Grade: A+ 

• These amateur stars made an unusual piece of golf history in their PGA Tour debut season

• 10 big names who missed out on a PGA Tour card for 2025

Emirati Dreams

In what can only be described as the most bizarre news of, well, the year, Adrian Otaegui has swapped his national allegiance from his native Spain to the United Arab Emirates.

Whether or not you believe his reasons is entirely up to you, but it means the world number 173 will no longer be eligible for the Ryder Cup.

So it’s one less headache for Luke Donald, at least.

Postman Spat

Speaking of the Bethpage showdown, Ian Poulter has been doing the rounds in the Friends of LIV Golf podcast circles, and he used this opportunity to get his monthly criticism of the DP World Tour in.

But I found the way he talked about Sergio Garcia’s potential return to the European team fold a bit odd.

I can’t quite put my finger on it.

It’s jealousy, isn’t it?

And finally…

Right, let’s end on a positive. Here are some bits from my talented colleagues that made me smile over the past few days.

Michael McEwan leapt to the defence of “Tyrrell f***ing Hatton” in his latest ramble and it’s hard to disagree.

Meanwhile, this pick-up from Ben Parsons on Charley Hull saying she wishes Donald Trump could be the prime minister is everything as mental as you might expect.

And John Turnbull’s story about Lucas Herbert going on the lash after winning the NSW Open in his homeland is great fun. Those Aussies know how to party.

Anyway, it’s cold and wet, so leave your clubs in the garage and kick back with The bunkered Podcast instead.

Alex Perry is the Associate Editor of bunkered. A journalist for more than 20 years, he has been a golf industry stalwart for the majority of his career and, in a five-year spell at ESPN, covered every sporting event you can think of. He completed his own Grand Slam at the 2023 Masters, having fallen in love with the sport at his hometown club of Okehampton and on the links of nearby Bude & North Cornwall.

Associate Editor