Wesley Bryan’s Suspension a Misstep for PGA Tour

By: Jonathan Howard, Staff Writer
April 30, 2025

When Justin Thomas raised the winner’s trophy following last week’s RBC Heritage, it should have been an overwhelmingly positive moment for the PGA Tour. Thomas, one of the Tour’s most popular golfers, had several up-and-down moments in the three-year period between last week’s win and his last victory on Tour – the 2022 PGA Championship. The Easter Sunday viewership provided lots of eyes on both the player and the Tour. But, despite the win for Thomas, and the win for television ratings, it was a player not in attendance that ultimately tainted the event.

Who is Wesley Bryan?

Golf fans who aren’t up on the world of internet golf content creators and influencers might not know the name Wesley Bryan. The 35-year-old South Carolina native has been on Tour for more than a decade and currently holds conditional status. In the past he’s been a regular at Monday qualifiers – a way for golfers to get into PGA Tour golf tournaments that have open slots. In his years on the Tour he’s accumulated more than $5 million in winnings, but has just one win – the 2017 RBC Heritage. However, golf fans who are familiar with golf creators on YouTube know Bryan very well. He and his brother George have over half a million subscribers on their YouTube page, where they are known to collaborate with several other popular creators in the space.

Fans on both sides heard his name in a negative light leading up to this year’s edition of the tournament in which he claimed his one career victory when he was suspended by the PGA Tour for participating in The Duels: Miami, an LIV Golf event that brought together golf creators and LIV Golf professionals in an event that aired on YouTube the week before The Masters.

Why Bryan’s Suspension Matters

The PGA Tour has been very clear about its stance on players on its roster participating in LIV events. Despite his lack of full status on the tour, Bryan was given the punishment the Tour has threatened to any player looking for the big pay day that its competitor offers. And for my money – it was just another example of the PGA Tour holding its players hostage while negotiating the best deal possible for itself. Talks have been on the table for months now between the PGA Tour and Saudi-backed LIV to have the leagues merged, or run concurrently with player pools being able to freely move back and forth. The Duels match wasn’t even a full-field LIV event – rather a collaboration not dissimilar with what the PGA Tour is doing with its Creator Classic (in which Bryan participated in at the TPC Sawgrass event) and The Q at Myrtle Beach. Bryan’s suspension ultimately came because he was applying his trade as a representative of what is honestly his full time profession at this point – an internet golf content creator.

Sure, with the number of viewers who watched one of the game’s most watched players celebrate a win after a long cold streak, it might be easy to look past the suspension of a lesser known player. But the tournament – the one hosted in Bryan’s home state and the one that he has the honor of being known as a past champion – deserved to have its native son at the very least available to participate. Time will tell if Bryan will have the opportunity to play the event again – or if he’ll even want to.