Spencer Levin, 41, has spent about half his life playing golf for money, winning just one of 408 PGA Tour-sanctioned starts and is often referred to as a “journeyman.”
But in reality, I’m just an “ordinary person.”
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He doesn’t fly far. He fought his wars with a flat stick, adapting techniques used by Happy Gilmore and devising his strokes. During his PGA Tour career, he cites “making the putt” as the greatest thrill. Levin has a sense of humor. He also has a temper. He once knocked over a flagpole by throwing a javelin into his golf bag.
In summary, tour pros have never been so approachable. Still, 20 years after turning professional, Levin continues to do things that others can’t.
On Saturday, for example, in the third round of the Q-School final at Ponte Vedra Beach’s Sawgrass Country Club, Levin finished last than anyone else in the field, shooting a 7-under 63 and giving himself a chance to regain something he hasn’t had since the end of the 2017 season: his PGA Tour card. Levin’s incredible score, highlighted by five consecutive birdies on the back nine (the first nine of the day), puts him at 9 under for the week and in a tie for sixth place, two strokes behind co-leaders Ben Coles and Marcelo Loso, heading into Sunday’s final round. Only the top five finishers will earn full PGA Tour status. This is different from last season, when the top five players and tied players advanced.
This time the calculation is different.
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But the pressure is familiar to Levin, who reached the Q-School finals in 2022 and 2023 and has worked hard to compete since many of the other competitors were in diapers.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” Levin said Saturday. “I’ve seen every scenario. What you learn is there’s no secret. You just have to go out tomorrow and execute and play well and that’s it.”
Easier said than done. But Levin has done it often.
Levin, a native of Elk Grove, Calif., was a baseball player as a child, but began playing golf seriously at age 13 after Tiger Woods won the 1997 Masters. By PGA Tour standards, his swing was not a mechanically perfect study. However, he has long been accurate off the tee and was known early on as a dead-eye putter. A two-time All-American at the University of Mexico, Levin turned professional in 2005, a year after finishing T-13 and earning Low Amateur honors at the U.S. Open at Shannecock Hills.
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In the 20 years since then, he has earned more than $9 million in career earnings and has one win on the Korn Ferry Tour, the 2023 Vertex Bank Championship. But he has never won on the PGA Tour and once sat out five years on the top circuit. When he finally broke the drought, he did so in memorable fashion over the weekend at the 2022 Shriners Open, playing with a Happy Gilmore-like split-hand putting grip and placing his right hockey stick low on the club.
Levin will need to use his putter on Sunday and will need to have other clubs in his bag. The leaderboard is a mess, with 11 players separated by two strokes. Levin is the oldest of the candidates and has received the most attention, for better or worse.
Ordinary or not, a good Sunday could change everything for him again.
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