Welcome to Playing Through, your weekly guide to the world of professional golf. I’m Brendon Elliott, PGA Professional. This week brings us Q-School Finals in Ponte Vedra, where five PGA TOUR cards hang in the balance for 176 players. Meanwhile, the men’s and women’s tours join forces in Naples for the Grant Thornton Invitational, and the DP World Tour touches down in Johannesburg for the Alfred Dunhill Championship. December golf doesn’t slow down just because the calendar year is ending.

PGA TOUR: FIVE CARDS, 176 DREAMS

The Final Stage of PGA TOUR Q-School presented by Korn Ferry

Five PGA TOUR cards will be awarded this week at the Final Stage of Q-School presented by Korn Ferry, going to just the top five finishers. No ties. For the 176 players in the field, this is their final opportunity to lock up full PGA TOUR status.

The field will play two rounds on each course, the Dye’s Valley Course at TPC Sawgrass and Sawgrass Country Club. In a new procedure for 2025, if there’s a tie for fifth place, a hole-by-hole playoff will be conducted to determine the final spot. Previous years awarded cards to the top five and ties.

The Fine Margins

Fred Biondi knows how fine the margins are. He finished second at the 2023 Final Stage in Florida, one spot behind Ludvig Åberg. Åberg headed to the PGA TOUR while Biondi headed to the Korn Ferry Tour. Hopes of joining Åberg were quickly dashed. Over the next year and a half, Biondi made just nine cuts while missing 22.

This year, he managed to play only five times across PGA TOUR Americas and the Korn Ferry Tour. That meant he had to head back to First Stage of Q-School, where he nearly failed to advance. Instead, he holed a 20-foot birdie on the last hole to get through on the number, then comfortably advanced through Second Stage. Now, he’s here, one good week away from a TOUR card that looked incredibly unlikely just weeks ago.

The Decorated Veteran

Ryo Ishikawa could re-earn his PGA TOUR card for the first time since 2017. The 34-year-old was a solid member from 2013-16, playing 71 times and notching nine top-10s. His status fell out of favor in 2017, but Ishikawa didn’t stop playing golf. He returned to Japan and remained a prolific winner on the Japan Golf Tour, with 20 victories on his native tour, most recently winning twice in 2024.

The Former Member

Adam Hadwin lost full TOUR status two weeks ago in the Fall after The RSM Classic. Hadwin represents a subset of players who already have conditional status for 2026 and will use Q-School as a springboard for a handful of TOUR starts on his conditional number. Without full status, he can lay out his schedule but is guaranteed nothing and will have limited opportunities.

Hadwin, 38, had held full TOUR status since 2014. That will end without a top-five finish this week. He showed flashes of form down the stretch, most notably contending into the weekend at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship before fading.

The Local Favorite

Nick Gabrelcik is another former PGA TOUR member, immediately earning Korn Ferry Tour status via PGA TOUR University and already locked up a card for 2026 via the Points List. Then he went to Second Stage of Q-School last week and finished medalist at the Palm Coast, Florida site, beating the field by three strokes.

Gabrelcik enters as one of the favorites this week. His form is sharp, but his upbringing matters more. He played collegiate golf at the University of North Florida, just a stone’s throw away from TPC Sawgrass and Sawgrass Country Club. While the field preps for a tournament designed to make them uncomfortable, Gabrelcik knows these courses intimately. The 23-year-old has nothing to lose and a better PGA TOUR number to gain.

PGA TOUR & LPGA TOUR: MIXED-TEAM MAGIC

The Grant Thornton Invitational

The Grant Thornton Invitational returns to Tiburón Golf Club in Naples, Florida, for its third edition. Stars from the men’s and women’s games will pair up into 16 teams and play three different formats over three rounds.

The Format

Round one features a Scramble format, where each player hits a tee shot and the team selects the ball to be used for the next stroke. Round two uses Foursomes (alternate shot), where each player alternates hitting shots with the same ball until the ball is holed. Round three features a new “Modified Four-Ball” format, where both players tee off, then switch balls for their second shots and play that ball until holed. The lower score of the partners counts as the team score.

Defending Champions Return

Patty Tavatanakit and Jake Knapp return to defend after opening with a sizzling 58 in last year’s first round and holding on to win by one shot. The pair took a two-shot lead into Sunday and held off Corey Conners and Brooke Henderson. The 2023 winners, Lydia Ko and Jason Day, are also back in the field.

Notable Teams

Nelly Korda, who finished 2025 with nine top-10s in 19 starts, teams with Denny McCarthy. Jessica Korda makes her tournament debut after becoming a mom in February 2024, partnering with Bud Cauley. The pair of 21-year-olds (Lottie Woad and Luke Clanton) will become the youngest team in the competition. Woad won in her first professional start on the LPGA this summer, while Clanton earned TOUR status via the PGA TOUR University Accelerated program.

DP WORLD TOUR: BACK TO JOHANNESBURG

The Alfred Dunhill Championship

The Alfred Dunhill Championship returns to Johannesburg 25 years after its first edition. The tournament was originally staged in the city from 2000 to 2004 at Houghton Golf Club. Leopard Creek had an intense summer, hosting both the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the prestigious Africa Amateur Championship. The course now gets a well-earned break to recover.

Royal Johannesburg takes over as host. Its East Championship Course was originally designed in 1939 by Robert Grimsdell and underwent a major update in 2017, featuring new greens and strategic bunkering. It’s widely regarded as one of Africa’s finest courses.

Norris Defends

Last year, home favourite Shaun Norris carded a final-round 67 to come back from six strokes back and win by one shot. Leopard Creek’s difficult closing stretch picked off the chasing pack one by one. It was Norris’s second DP World Tour title and second in his homeland, having won the Steyn City Championship in 2022. Norris came close to a second win on the 2025 Race to Dubai at the Joburg Open, losing out in a play-off.

Inside the Field

Christiaan Bezuidenhout, a champion in 2020, is joined by fellow former winners Louis Oosthuizen, Branden Grace, Brandon Stone, Richard Sterne, Shaun Norris, and Ockie Strydom. Togethe,r they make up seven of the last 12 winners, all looking to become only the third multiple winners in the event’s history.

Pablo Larrázabal leads an impressive list of European challengers seeking to end South Africa’s dominance. The Spaniard was the last European to win in 2019. John Parry finished runner-up last year, going on to finish 11th on the Race to Dubai Rankings and earning his PGA TOUR card for 2026.

December golf doesn’t slow down. While most of the sport takes a breath before 2026, Q-School finalists are grinding through 72 holes that will determine their next year, mixed teams are figuring out scramble strategy in Naples, and South African players are trying to keep their home tournament out of European hands for another year.

Five PGA TOUR cards get handed out this week. Sixteen teams will split a purse in Florida. Someone will hoist a trophy in Johannesburg. Then we’ll do it all again next week.