Vijay Singh Is Lucky To Have the Work

If you know me, or you’re familiar with my writing, you might feel like I cram Jason Isbell lyrics into my worldview a bit too often. And you might be correct. Nevertheless, there is a line in his song “Something More Than Free” that frequently flutters into my head, so much so that I hung an embroidered pennant of the phrase on the wall of my office. You can spot it sometimes in the background of podcasts when my large Irish head isn’t blocking the view.

Lucky to have the work.

There are people who misunderstand that line, who think it means you ought to be grateful for your employer, or that you owe them fealty or benevolence. I’ve always read it differently, and I think more in line with Isbell’s vision. I think it’s a paean to the idea that there is value in loving your craft, and there is dignity in the toil. There are more important things, of course. Family, friendships, connecting with people you love. In the song, the narrator is expressing gratitude that he has work to give his life purpose, because for the moment, he does not have other things. At night, he dreams that he is drowning. But the work, for now, is an essential piece of his identity.

I thought about all this when news emerged this week that Vijay Singh, the 62-year-old three-time major winner, was entering the Sony Open, the first event on the PGA Tour calendar in 2026. In most professional sports leagues, this kind of maneuver would be unthinkable or viewed as a stunt and a joke. Singh hasn’t played in a PGA Tour event (outside the Masters) since 2021, and the last time he won on the Champions Tour was in 2022. But he is eligible to play on the PGA Tour this season, if he wants, because of his place on the career money list. He is sixth all-time at $71.2 million, and under PGA Tour bylaws, he is entitled to a one-time exemption. Anyone in the top 25 of career earnings can get a PGA Tour card once, regardless of age. No one knows, right now, if Singh is interested in playing in one tournament or in 20.

Singh’s decision has not been received warmly, including by several golf pundits whose perspective I always appreciate. Normal Sport’s Kyle Porter joked that it was like Troy Aikman using a three-time Super Bowl ring exemption to start for the New York Jets. Dan Rapaport of Skratch called it an “outdated concept, cannot imagine this continues.” Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee was even more candid, lambasting the rule that made it possible.

“This is what happens when you give into or give too much power to players," Chamblee wrote on X. "If the PGA Tour is going to claim to be a sport based upon meritocracy, you can't allow players to monetize their performances of a decade or decades ago, through current exemptions. Sport must always answer the question: why are you here rather than someone else? And the answer can never be because I was great ten or twenty years ago."

None of them is wrong, but I cannot help but love that Singh is going to take advantage of the rule and be a thorn in the Tour’s side one last time. Yes, technically someone younger will be getting bumped from every tournament Singh enters. But you know what? You don’t owe your employer the courtesy of a polite goodbye. You are under no obligation to protect them from their own emotional decisions. Vijay Singh earned the right — under the current rules — to play on the PGA Tour one last time. Anyone who does not like it is welcome to try and win 34 times on the PGA Tour, a number that only Scottie Scheffler will likely threaten among the current generation. The reason the Tour exists in its current form, like it or not, is because Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson and Vijay picked up the torch that Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson carried and turned the Tour into a global behemoth that consumed or weakened all other professional golf tours.

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Singh has always been a prickly person, not interested in sentiment or warmth. But he loved to put in the work, hour after hour on the range. He got bored watching television in his hotel room early in his career. Some days he’d often return to the range hours after his round had ended and hit balls until the sun went down. No one gifted him anything. In the prime of Woods’ career, it was Vijay who not only had the audacity to say he wanted to dethrone him as the No. 1 player in the world, he then went out and did it. That alone should get him a lifetime exemption into events. It forced Tiger to get better, to find an extra gear, and the golf world was better for it.

The PGA Tour wants to evolve and be more like the NFL, which is one of the reasons Brian Rolapp left the NFL to become the Tour’s new CEO. No one is less interested in sentiment than the NFL, which is why football has become so woven into the American DNA. Every business listed in the Fortune 500 would love to toss you out on the street the minute they can replace you with someone cheaper — even if you love the work, and even if you helped build the place as Singh did. You don’t have to make it easy on them. You don’t have to surrender in advance.

Vijay Singh loves the work. He always has. Yes, he is lucky to have it, lucky that an antiquated rule will force tournaments to give him a spot for one last ride. But don’t for one second lose sight of the fact that he earned the right to take advantage of that rule. The players who grew the Tour into what it is negotiated that rule in place at a time when the Tour was fat and happy and complacent without competitors.

Singh isn’t taking anything from anyone. He’s just reaping one small reward from the work he put in.