Nearly three years ago, Ben Griffin was just trying to make a name for himself.
As you’ve surely heard by now, he had quit golf, became a mortgage loan officer and eventually gave his golf career one last try before earning a PGA Tour card in 2022. And in October of that year, at the Bermuda Championship, his eighth career Tour start, it appeared his big break was coming.
Griffin held the 54-hole lead and jumped out to a two-stroke advantage in the final round before four consecutive bogeys and a double on the back nine left him T3 when it was all over.
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Would he get that opportunity again?
He became one of the sport’s ironmen, playing nearly every week and posting enough solid results to retain status on Tour. And when 2025 began, he was No. 68 in the world.
Now, 10 months later, he’s in the same conversation as Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy.
By winning the World Wide Technology Championship on Sunday, he claimed his third title of the year, joining Scheffler and McIlroy (the world Nos. 1 and 2) as the only three-time Tour winners in 2025. That will move Griffin to ninth in the OWGR, cracking the top 10 for the first time.
Having won the Zurich Classic (a team event) and Charles Schwab Challenge earlier this year, part of 12 top 10s, Griffin began the final round in Mexico T3, two strokes back of the red-hot Garrick Higgo.
Ben Griffin. Extending the lead to 2 🔥 pic.twitter.com/feM2aEa6q0
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) November 9, 2025
Then, with the many surrounding him on the leaderboard stuck in neutral, or making mistakes that resembled Griffin’s in Bermuda, Griffin snatched the lead with five consecutive birdies on Nos. 8-12. Birding all the par-3s in the final round, the 2025 Ryder Cupper finished at 29 under par, shooting 63 on Sunday, for a two-stroke triumph over Chad Ramey and Sami Valimaki.
The biggest separation between Griffin and the field? Perhaps it’s that he’s been in this position before.
“I got off to a great start, honestly, making some birdies,” said Griffin. “I feel like I’ve done that a lot in final rounds recently when I’ve had a chance to win, so that was nice. But after making a few birdies early, I kind of pushed myself a little bit harder than the past few weeks when I was in contention to kind of keep the pedal down. Fortunately, the putter heated up, made a lot of putts on the back nine. Yeah, it was fun feeling the nerves down the stretch trying to hold things off. It was nice to make a couple down the stretch.”
This marked Griffin’s final start of the year, and he was playing this week simply because he could.
For many others in the field, though, this was the fifth of seven PGA Tour fall events, which marks a final opportunity for players to finish inside the top 100 of the FedExCup standings and earn status for next season.
The runner-ups did what they needed. Ramey jumped from No. 123 to 89 and Valimaki went from No. 103 to 76.
“These last three tournaments, only goal was to kind of keep the playing rights for the next year,” Valimaki, a 27-year-old from Finland, said, “so I think they should be done deal with this finish.”
Added the 33-year-old Ramey: “100% [I was thinking about my FedEx Cup position]. At the end of the year, that’s the goal, keep your PGA Tour card. I know you know Ben’s top-50; he didn’t have to worry about it, but the rest of us out here, that’s on the top of our goals.”
But not too long ago, Griffin was in a similar position as Ramey and Valimaki. And maybe one day, with the playing opportunities they essentially secured for 2026, they’ll boast a similar success story as Griffin.
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