ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – With a 6-foot par putt with his job for next year on the line, Joel Dahmen knew he was going to make it.
“I’d come too far, I’d done too much today to 3-putt the last,” he said.
But there was still the matter of making the putt with so much at stake. “Yeah, I was still nervous, still felt like I was going to poop in my pants.”
He buried the putt to cap off a final-round bogey-free 6-under 64 at Sea Island Resort’s Seaside Course to finish T-35 in the 2024 RSM Classic, but earn enough FedEx Cup points to finish No. 124 in the season-long points race and among the top 125 that earn full-exempt status for 2025.
That was the second knee-knocker that Dahmen had made this week that felt as if it was life or death. On Friday, he sank a putt just to make the cut and keep his hopes alive of finishing in the top 125. But an even-par 70 on Saturday, including a costly double bogey at the par-5 seventh, meant his chances were bleak. The drive with his wife, Lona, to pick up their child at daycare was a quiet one, allowing him to as he put it, “grieve.”
“She was letting me just be in my own head,” he said, calling his mood “somber, say, funereal effect.”
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Later that evening, Lona, broke the silence and said her peace. “She’s like, well, you can still play golf tomorrow, right? It’s not over. And that was kind of one of those things, like the switch flipped. It was about two hours after the round probably when the switch flipped for me to be able to kind of pull myself back up for today,” Dahmen said.
“It’s official.” 🥹
@Joel_Dahmen was overcome with emotion after finishing inside the bubble to keep his TOUR card and full status for the 2025 season. pic.twitter.com/QPNKQLKwfv— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) November 24, 2024
Dahmen’s caddie, Geno Bonnalie, said they had a giant mountain to climb but he believed his boss could do it. Dahmen, who started the day T-61 and on the back nine, holed out from 113 yards with a 55-degree wedge on the par-4 13th for eagle. Bonnalie said they had done some TrackMan work with the club earlier in the week and 113 yards was the max his 55-degree would fly.
“When you make something like that, you think I only hole out 3-4 times a year. What are the odds it would happen today?” Dahmen said.
That proved to be a spark and Dahmen reeled off three straight birdies beginning at 15 to turn in 30. He tacked on another birdie at the second…
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