The Last Card

Ben Silverman didn’t slam a club or swear. He didn’t argue or look away. He just stood there, staring at the hole, knowing it was over.

A few moments earlier, his long birdie putt had slid just past the right edge. Then Dylan Wu’s 20-footer fell dead center. The scream, the fist pump, the celebration — all of it confirmed what Silverman already knew. The playoff for the final PGA Tour card was over, and he was headed back to the Korn Ferry Tour.

Last Sunday at TPC Sawgrass, modern Q-school produced something it never had before: a playoff for the final PGA Tour card.

Two players stood on that tee — Dylan Wu and Ben Silverman. Wu, fighting to get back to the Tour. Silverman, a longtime grinder with 114 PGA Tour starts who had held full status the previous two seasons, fighting to keep it.

The stakes were as high as anything in professional golf. Win the playoff and earn full PGA Tour status — access to every non-signature event and the security of at least $500,000 in guaranteed earnings. Lose, and you’re back on the Korn Ferry Tour, where nothing is guaranteed, money is tight, and for some players, the road back never comes.

One hole for your season. Maybe your career.

Wu played the playoff hole perfectly.

The 18th at Dye’s Valley is guarded by water all down the left side and a difficult fairway bunker on the right. Wu elected to lay up off the tee, and his short iron from there left a straightforward 20-footer — the putt that would end Silverman’s hopes.

Silverman chose driver. It was nearly perfect, stopping just three inches short of the fairway in the first cut of rough. That mattered. Lift, clean, and place was in effect, but only in the fairway, and his ball had picked up a small speck of mud.

“I’m not sure if it was that,” Silverman told me, “but my gap wedge had flown 140 just a few holes prior. This one just fell out of the sky and went 130.”

The long birdie putt from the front edge nearly fell, sliding just past the hole.

Wu’s putt did not. The celebration punctuated it.

“Shocked. I was shocked,” Silverman told me when I asked what that moment was like. “I had never even considered, until then, that I wouldn’t be back on the PGA Tour.”

Losing in a playoff is brutal in any circumstance. At Q-school, the finality cuts deeper. Silverman walked to the parking lot as the celebrations of the five players who earned their cards carried through the air. There was no escaping the noise.

He spoke briefly with a friend and got choked up. Then he started the four-plus-hour drive home, but he couldn’t bring himself to call his wife, Morgan. Not yet.

The Silvermans homeschool their two boys for one simple reason: so the family can be on the road together. Thirty weeks a year away from home is hard enough. Homeschooling makes it possible for Morgan and the kids to travel with Ben.

That isn’t possible on the Korn Ferry Tour. The purses are too small to justify it. So this playoff loss didn’t just affect his playing career — it meant time away from his family.

Two hours into the drive, he finally called Morgan.

There wasn’t much to say. They were both emotional. But the call also lit something in Ben.

“I was already thinking about what I need to do next year,” Silverman said.

“It still hurts,” he told me Wednesday, days after the playoff loss. But he hadn’t been sitting at home sulking. When I asked what next season on the Korn Ferry Tour looked like, Silverman pushed back on the premise.

“I’m not thinking like that,” he said. “I’m determined to get back full-time to the PGA Tour.”

Silverman finished 140th in points and believes he may get five or so starts based on his conditional status. He’s already writing tournament directors asking for sponsor exemptions. He’s also put together a plan to make it to as many PGA Tour Monday qualifiers as possible.

He will head to the Bahamas in just a few weeks for the opening event of the Korn Ferry season.

It isn’t where Silverman expected to be when the year began, or even when he stood on the tee at TPC Sawgrass, but it’s where the game has sent him for now. One putt changed the direction of his season. What comes next will be decided the same way it always is — one shot, one week, one chance at a time.

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