Justin Lower holds the 36-hole lead at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship. Can the long-time journeyman finally win?
A win this week would go a long way for Justin Lower, the journeyman pro who has not stopped grinding in professional golf for nearly 15 years.
It took Lower, who attended Division II Malone University in Ohio, 11 years to eventually earn his PGA Tour card. Since doing so ahead of the 2022 season, he has made 56 cuts in 94 events. He also has one career runner-up, which came at the World Wide Technologies Championship last week.
Now Lower has the 36-hole lead at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, thanks to a pair of 65s he carded on days one and two. He sits at 12-under-par and holds a two-shot advantage over Robby Shelton and Ryan Moore, the latter of whom represented Team USA at the Ryder Cup in 2016. Plenty of other terrific players are in Lower’s rearview mirror, too, including a couple of major champions in Francesco Molinari and Lucas Glover. But Lower also has some bad weather forecasted for the third round, meaning anything can happen.
Yet, after last week’s third round in Mexico, Lower, who is currently 119th in the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR), explained how a win would mean everything to him. No doubt the same mantra applies one week later. A victory in Bermuda would solidify his playing status for two years. It would also validate all the hard work he has put into his craft. Better yet, he would receive invites to Augusta National and the PGA Championship. So, when discussing these prospects of winning last week, he could not help himself but get emotional.
“A win would mean everything. I still have a job to do,” Lower said, fighting back tears on Nov. 9.
“I work really hard in this game, I work really hard at it. Sometimes I think I never would have gotten this far, and I’ve been through a lot in my life and it’s just, I don’t know, it’s just a lot of fun. It’s nothing sad that I’m crying. I don’t know, it’s just joyful. I love being out here. I hate all the changes they’re making, that’s a whole ‘nother subject I could rant about for like an hour. Seems like anytime I do something good they make a change. Yeah, it just means a lot to me. I just want to see how good I can do and prove to myself that I can actually do something in this game.”
Lower, of course, was alluding to the pending changes that the PGA Tour will make ahead of the 2026 season. These changes include limiting PGA Tour membership to the top 100 players from the prior year’s FedEx Cup standings, diminishing field sizes, and eliminating a vast majority of Monday qualifiers, a pathway many journeymen pros—like Lower—use to get into PGA Tour events.
Justin Lower takes the lead with a birdie from just off the 13th green.
Golf Channel | @Bermuda_Champ pic.twitter.com/f6RmNLSqKi
— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) November 15, 2024
But a Lower victory in Bermuda would solidify his membership through 2026, so he would no longer have to worry about those changes. It would also propel him to 51st in the FedEx Cup Fall rankings, thus guaranteeing him a spot in the first two Signature Events of the 2025 season. Those who rank between 51st and 60th after next week’s RSM Classic will comprise the initial Aon Next 10 for 2025, thus sending those players to Pebble Beach and Riviera.
“I’m trying to get into the top 60,” Lower said after his second round on Friday in Bermuda.
“If not, somewhere around the 70 to 80 number to get into Pebble. You’ve got to get in the bigger events, the elevated events. That’s all I’m trying to do.”
He’s also trying to win a golf tournament for the first time.
So, what does Lower like about his game at the moment?
“I like my putting, it’s something I excel at. I work really hard on it,” Lower added.
“The driver’s been nice. It’s something I always struggle with. Honestly, if I could hit it a little better, I think I’d be all right, but it’s such a hard game to be good at all the time. Something I admire about the top guys, like Xander, Scottie, and J.T., is that they just seem to have it every week, and it’s super impressive. So yeah, I’m just trying to figure out how I can do that, how I can get into those elevated events and go from there.”
Perhaps Lower will one day work his way up into the upper echelon of the sport, competing for majors among the likes of Xander Schauffele and Scottie Scheffler.
But for now, he has a tournament to win in Bermuda. He has the talent and the game to get the job done, so it will all come down to the weather, the bounces he receives, and whether he can get most of his putts to fall. He needed only 21 putts on Friday, an incredible number, but it’s also a testament to his strength with the flat stick. And yet, if a win does not come his way on Sunday, one will come soon. He is more than due.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
