Sepp Straka has four PGA Tour wins, two of them coming in 2025, and has been a member of two Ryder Cup teams. And he worries about keeping his place on the increasingly competitive PGA Tour.
“I mean, every year you’ve got new talent coming out, young guys coming out, that are unbelievably good at golf, and that are way better than I was when I was coming out of college or high school,” said Straka, the defending champion of The American Express in La Quinta this week. “So, yeah, it’s really tough.”
Straka is hardly a worn-out tour veteran. At just 32, Straka might be coming into his own on the tour after a strong 2025 season. But the Austrian native who played his college golf at the University of Georgia knows each year brings more competition.
“It’s going to keep getting younger, and it’s going to keep getting more athletic, faster,” Straka said. “You just don’t know how much longer you’ve got, but you’ve got to just keep trying to get better at golf and hopefully it’s good enough.”
Sponsor’s exemption
Harry Higgs started tournament week as the No. 2 player on the alternate list for the tournament. But Higgs moved into the field without a single player withdrawing. The American Express has four sponsor’s exemptions for the week and had awarded three of those exemptions to Blades Brown, Zach Johnson and Camilo Villegas. Tournament officials then decided to give the fourth exemption to Higgs, a 34-year-old veteran with no PGA Tour wins but three wins on the Korn Ferry Tour.
The tournament also reported that No. 1 alternate Hayden Springer withdrew from the tournament without getting in the field. Springer played in the Korn Ferry event in the Bahamas this week, which would have required him to fly into the desert and be ready for an opening in the desert field that might not happen. That moved Henrik Norlander to the No. 1 alternate spot.
Winning ways
Sepp Straka is one of eight past champions of The American Express in the field this week. The player whose win dates back the longest is Charley Hoffman, the 2007 winner who made a strong run at the 2025 title. Other past winners include Jhonattan Vegas (2011), Jason Dufner (2016), Adam Long (2019) Andrew Landry (2020), Si Woo Kim (2021) and Nick Dunlap, who won the tournament as an amateur in 2024.
13 and holding
The 2026 tournament marks the 11th consecutive year that the course rotation for The American Express consists of the Pete Dye Stadium Course and the Nicklaus Tournament Course at PGA West and La Quinta Country Club. That is by far the longest that any rotation in the tournament has been together. Since the tournament began in 1960, 13 different courses have been played, The original four courses, Thunderbird, Tamarisk, Bermuda Dunes and Indian Wells country clubs, were only together as unit for three years. La Quinta Country Club was first in the tournament in 1964 and has been mostly in the tournament each year, celebrating its 54th year in the tournament this year.
Medical minor
Lee Hodges comes to The American Express with a new lease on tour life. Hodges finished 101st in the FedEx Cup Fall standings, missing out on a full tour exemption by one spot and falling into a category for players 101st to 110th. But by finishing tied for sixth at the Sony Open last week, he earned enough points to complete his minor medical exemption, which moves him one exempt category higher for the tour. He also now has a spot in the Players Championship. Other golfers in this week’s field on medical exemptions are Charley Hoffman, Will Zalatoris, Taylor Moore, Jimmy Stranger and Kevin Streelman.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Straka says PGA Tour competition in the coming years looks younger, stronger
Reporting by Larry Bohannan, Palm Springs Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
