Long Live the ’Cuda

After Scottie Scheffler mesmerized golf fans on Sunday, changing the conversation from how many shots he would win by to when it’s appropriate to make peak-Tiger comparisons, Ryan Gerard took command of the Barracuda Championship. A par, birdie, eagle start is what a player sleeping on the overnight lead dreams of; that he did it in a tournament featuring the Stableford system made it all the more timely. After burying a 30-footer for another eagle at the par-5 11th, the tournament became Gerard against himself, much like Scheffler at the Open Championship. He hung on to win his first PGA Tour event, besting 2021 Barracuda champion Erik Van Rooyen by three points.

Gerard winning was the perfect antidote to the commotion around Grant Horvat earlier in the week. I was scrolling through my phone at Phoenix Sky Harbor baggage claim on Tuesday morning, following an unsuccessful ’Cuda Monday qualifier, waiting for my clubs to arrive. After seeing that a YouTube star turned down a spot in a PGA Tour event because he was denied the opportunity to video his week, I realized that somewhere along the way, I made a series of missteps. 

The Reno-Tahoe Open, now known as the ’Cuda, has an impressive list of winners, major champions Collin Morikawa, Gary Woodland and Geoff Ogilvy among them. Gerard now has his name on the trophy, but the tournament’s existence is in peril. It has been reported that the title sponsor, Barracuda Networks, did not renew its contract for next year, and the PGA Tour has filled the tournament slot opposite the 2026 Open Championship with the Corales Puntacana Championship. This is crucial and overlooked when considering the Horvat exemption – the exposure he could have given to the event might have been a lifeline to the ’Cuda. My hope was that an inspiring story could emerge at this year’s ’Cuda, helping the tournament score serious points with a new sponsor. 

Monday qualifying played an important role in Gerard’s story. In 2023, he Monday qualified for the Honda Classic and demonstrated he was more than a flash in the pan with a T-4 finish at PGA National. The following week, Gerard stoked his momentum with a T-11 in Puerto Rico. Six weeks later, he earned special temporary membership at the Valero Texas Open and added a fifth-place finish at the ’Cuda (a sign of things to come).

At the end of the year, Gerard finished outside the top 125 but would have maintained conditional status had he been a full PGA Tour member during the season. But the special temporary membership designation left him in a gray area with minimal status – he wasn’t eligible to be a conditional PGA Tour member and he was relegated to a worse category on the Korn Ferry Tour than every other player outside the top 125. Plus, with only four guaranteed KFT starts, he barely had a place to play in 2024. 

“It’s obviously frustrating because you feel like you played good enough to get your PGA Tour card and keep your PGA Tour card,” Gerard said on the Any Given Monday podcast in 2024. “But in the category I was in, that didn’t apply to me. I have a lot of good people around me that were being positive about the situation and were saying, ‘If you play good golf, you’ll get where you want to be, sooner rather than later.’”

While other players might have complained, Gerard got back to work. He went 12 weeks with only a T-11 and T-25 to show for it before his patience prevailed. Gerard broke through at the BMW Charity Pro-Am on the Korn Ferry Tour, winning by six shots, vaulting him up the season-long standings, where he finished 12th at year’s end. It took him a full year, but he was back on the PGA Tour. Good golf prevailed. 

Whether Gerard leaned on his experience at the BMW on Sunday at the ’Cuda, I can only guess. He put himself in position to run away with his first PGA Tour win the same way he did a year earlier at the BMW. Managing the adrenaline of leading a final round at nearly 6,000 feet above sea level, where a golf ball hangs in the air longer than Michael Jordan at 60 frames per second, tests the deepest recesses of a golfer’s mind. Gerard had been tested often over the past 2 1/2 seasons. On Sunday at Old Greenwood, he controlled his nerves, completed his comeback story and became a PGA Tour winner. Another dream achieved at the ’Cuda.

I am admittedly sentimental about the ‘Cuda. It's where I Monday qualified and made my first PGA Tour cut in 2021. My dear friend and Monday Q Info captain, Ryan French, caddied in both the qualifier and the tournament. Rory McIlroy commented on the Monday qualifier playoff I was in, where my opponent missed a putt slightly longer than a tap-in and clutched his heart in utter shock. “Don’t miss one-footers” was McIlroy’s advice.

I entered the final round of the ’Cuda with an outside chance at a top 10, a spot in the following week’s PGA Tour event - which would have been season-changing - and a brigade of social media followers cheering our unlikely story. I finished T-34, but like I told Ryan as we walked up the 72nd hole, if it was my last tournament ever, I would always be able to say I made the cut in a PGA Tour event. (And Ryan got a caddie bib out of it; OK, he stole it.) 

The ’Cuda became my fifth major, and I received a sponsor’s invitation the following year and made the cut. Ryan and I stayed in a room above a tournament board member’s garage and ate meals with locals, people who walked around in ’Cuda T-shirts with slogans like, “It’s all about the points.” (The event offers the only Stableford format on the Tour schedule.) Tournament organizers spoke of the challenges of operating a small-market PGA Tour event with a modest purse. While some players might have complained about limited options in player dining, I would have rather eaten there than at The French Laundry. We were embraced by the community – me, a journeyman pro trying to beat the odds, and Ryan, an occasional caddie whose day job involves covering stories like mine for a living.

Last week, Gerard teed it up at the Scottish Open, where he made the cut but finished only T-74. As the second alternate at the Open Championship, he thought about hanging around. But he knew he had a spot in the field at the ’Cuda, so a week after flying from the John Deere to Scotland, he hopped a plane back to the States. Turns out he wouldn’t have teed it up at Royal Portrush. 

By virtue of his win, Gerard vaulted to 28th in the FedEx Cup standings, is exempt for two years on the PGA Tour and is guaranteed starts in next year’s PGA Championship and Players Championship. Let’s hope another player gets to discover the magic of the ’Cuda in 2026. 

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