Ben Griffin takes a three-shot lead over Carl Yuan into the final round of the Sanderson Farms Championship, providing the 27-year-old the chance to claim his first career PGA Tour win and put the perfect bow on his unusual professional golf journey.
Griffin’s story has been fairly well-chronicled. Upon graduating from North Carolina in 2018 after earning All-American honors, he played his away on to the Korn Ferry Tour in 2019 but struggled. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and mounting expense added up, and the life of an aspiring tour pro didn’t seem like all it was cracked up to be. So in spring 2021, stepped away to become a mortgage loan officer.
But later that summer, Griffin got the itch again, and with the help of some local sponsors, returned to golf, eventually earning a Korn Ferry Tour card for 2022. Solid play there, allowed him to get his PGA Tour card for 2023, and a T-3 finish at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship started giving him the confidence he was on the track he had hoped for from the beginning.
At Mississippi’s C.C. of Jackson, Griffin sits at 20 under, matching the tournament’s 54-hole scoring record. While winning is the priority, a solid finish could help me potentially improve his PGA Tour status for the 2024 season. Griffin entered the week 66th in the FedEx Cup points standings. If he can finish between 51st and 60th at the end of the fall season, he’ll earn spots into two other PGA Tour signature events in the early part of the 2024 season.
Oh, and a victory at the Sanderson comes with a nice financial reward, too. The winner earns $1.476 million for his first-place price money payout. Considering Griffin’s biggest payday on the PGA Tour has been a $357,700 check at the 2022 Wyndham Championship and his career earnings in 35 starts is $2.3 million, the victory will go far in help pay back those sponsors who helped him along the way.
The overall purse in Mississippi is $8.2 million. Here’s the prize money payout for each golfer who made the cut.