ATLANTA – Ryan Gerard has dialed in his distance control with his short irons this week at the Tour Championship and the proof is in the pudding. He shot his second straight 5-under 65 at East Lake Golf Club on Friday to share the 36-hole lead at the FedEx Cup finale with Viktor Hovland.
But his short irons aren’t all that Gerard has figured out. The 27-year-old North Carolina Tarheel already reeled in his “white whale,” making it to the field of 30 for the first time in his Tour career, and now he’s seeking a captain’s pick to play for Brandt Snedeker on Team USA at the Presidents Cup.
“It's hard not to think about it a little bit. I think very aware that a good week this week goes a long way to help my chances,” he said. “Just going to go out there
and play good golf, and Sneds is going to decide whatever he thinks is best for the team, and I hope that I can contribute.”
In a previous conversation, he was even more candid: “I want to play in that tournament. I want to be part of the team. I want to play for my country. I want people to want me to be there.”
And he very well may get the chance, as his expectations begin to catch up with his abilities. When he first was chasing a Tour card, those expectations, he admits, didn’t always match with reality. “It took me a little while to figure out I didn’t have it figured out and then it took me even longer to try and figure it out from there,” he said. “I’d like to think I’m getting close to getting a little more consistent but I’m still learning.”
In February, Gerard got his own personal Ted Talk from Ted Scott, caddie for world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, while they played a round together at Cypress Point on the Monday of the week of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
“It was really, really cool,” Gerard said. “He was feeling a little spiritual sitting on the back porch of Cypress and giving me some of the good stuff. He told me your best golf happens when expectations match where your game is.”
The other reason for Gerard’s emergence is that his putting, which had always been a strength of his game had become a weakness in recent years but not anymore. He improved from No. 154 in 2025 to No. 27 this season in Strokes Gained: Putting. Last fall, he began working with putting coach Joey Farrow and he switched from a 36-inch plumber’s neck blade to a lighter, 35-inch Scotty Cameron Phantom 3, a mid-mallet with a single-bend shaft and the weight forward so it feels like a blade.
Gerard improved his speed once he got comfortable with the putter and his tendency to miss left or pull putts has become less frequent. He credited using Grasp Technology’s Smart Putting Gate – “a TrackMan for putting,” he said of the device – for helping him do a better job of starting putts on line.
“I worked hard to make putting a strength again,” he said.
Gerard finished runner up three times this season, most notably losing a playoff to J.T. Poston at the Memorial, and finished behind only Scottie Scheffler at The American Express and Chris Gotterup at the Sony Open in Hawaii. Entering the week, he was one of just four players who hadn’t shot over par in a round during the playoffs. On Friday, he opened with bogey for the second straight day but rallied to make four birdies on the front nine, added another at No. 10 and a nifty sandy at the par-5 18th after leaving his second shot in a horrible lie in the left greenside bunker. But he expertly coaxed it to a near standstill and then gravity took over and it trickled down to 6 feet.
Just a casual 78-footer 🤯
— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) August 28, 2026
Ryan Gerard rolls in a long-range birdie to pull within one of the lead pic.twitter.com/yQMJUtRcTf
Gerard has won just more than $6 million this season without a victory and a combined total of slightly more than $11 million the past two years. He could win $10 million alone on Sunday if can bag his second career Tour title at its biggest payday.
But the leaderboard is stacked. He’s tied with Hovland, who won the FedEx Cup here in 2023, and is finding fairways again all of a sudden. Two-time major winner Collin Morikawa is a shot back, tied with Gotterup, a three-time winner this season. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is lurking two back along with Players Championship winner Cameron Young, hot off a second-round 62.
And three of the four players 3 back have won majors — Matt Fitzpatrick, Justin Rose, Adam Scott — or played in international team competitions (Ludvig Aberg).
“I've won a few golf tournaments in my life,” Gerard said. “I feel comfortable that I'm doing the right things, we're executing the right shots, we have the right mentality to go out and kind of close it and kind of be the dog under pressure. Just go out there and enjoy it.”
Spoken like a man who has things figured out.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: After a pair of 65s, Ryan Gerard shares Tour Championship lead at East Lake
