Ryan Ruffels Wins Way Back to PGA Tour in Myrtle Beach
Ryan Ruffels is back on the PGA Tour after four years away, earning a start at the Myrtle Beach Classic in South Carolina by winning a YouTube tournament. The return gives the 28-year-old another chance to turn an online platform into a real tour opening.
Ruffels Returns in South Carolina
Ruffels will tee it up at the Dunes Golf and Beach Club, the site of his PGA Tour return. It is his first start on the tour in four years, and it comes after sponsor invites dried up and his ranking points disappeared.
The path back has been anything but direct. Ruffels last played for world ranking points in 2023, when he also tried to qualify for a spot on LIV Golf. He does not have a world ranking anymore, so this Myrtle Beach start becomes his cleanest route back into elite competition.
From Prodigy To Creator
Long before the YouTube win, Ruffels was treated as one of Australia’s brightest young golfers. He turned professional as a 17-year-old prodigy a decade ago, had already played 20 PGA Tour events, and received seven sponsor exemptions as a teenager in 2016.
Golf Australia’s high performance staff regarded him as the country’s best young talent since Jason Day. As a 15-year-old amateur, he made the cut at the Australian Open, then played the final round of the national open alongside Rory McIlroy a year later.
His career then shifted away from the main tour lane. Ruffels played on the Korn Ferry and Latin America Tours without winning a professional tournament, while his Official World Golf Rankings profile suggested he burned out and was lost to the game. Instead of chasing tour starts alone, he also made videos with Day.
The Lads’ Reach
That content now sits at the center of his latest opening. Ruffels and Day are part of The Lads, a group of content creators with 205,000 subscribers on YouTube, recent videos that have drawn more than half a million views, and more than 75,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok.
Short clips from their YouTube work have sometimes generated hundreds of thousands of views, giving Ruffels a profile that extends far beyond his old tournament results. His return at Myrtle Beach shows that visibility from golf content can now open the door back to a PGA Tour event.
