PGA Tour's Adam Hadwin finds his game in Bermuda of all places, shoots 65
Adam Schupak- Canadian golfer Adam Hadwin shot a 6-under 65 to take the first-round lead at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship.
- Hadwin is at risk of losing his PGA Tour card after a difficult season, dropping from No. 59 to No. 228 in the world rankings.
- He has been struggling with swing changes made last offseason and has missed seven cuts in his last nine starts.
- Hadwin stated he needs to essentially win or finish in the top two this week or next to secure his tour status.
The Bermuda Triangle is where a number of ships and planes are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Canadian Adam Hadwin flew through this loosely defined region bordered by Bermuda, Miami and Puerto Rico on the way to the PGA Tour’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship earlier this week and had the opposite experience. He seemingly found his game, which has been in the witness protection program for the better part of the last year. On Thursday, Hadwin birdied two of his last three holes to post a 6-under 65 at Port Royal Golf Course in Southampton, Bermuda, to grab the first-round lead over Takumi Kanaya (when play was suspended due to darkness with 15 players still needing to finish their rounds) in the second-to-last event of the FedEx Cup Fall schedule.
Entering the week at No. 147 in the season-long standings, Hadwin, 38, is on the verge of becoming one of the first players to go from being in the top 50 a year ago and exempt at all the signature events to potentially losing his card at the end of the season and having to return to Q-School or face demotion to the Korn Ferry Tour. He's never finished a season worse than No. 107 in the FedEx Cup; this season, the top 100 players in the FedEx Cup Fall standings at the conclusion of next week's RSM Classic will earn exempt status on Tour for the 2026 season
Hadwin has dropped from No. 59 in the Official World Golf Ranking at the end of last year to No. 228, and barely seen a glimmer of hope. He’s missed seven cuts in his last nine starts entering this week, and hasn’t recorded a top-10 finish since the Memorial in June 2024. Could he be saving his best for last?
“I've really got nothing to lose this week. I've got to basically win or top 2 this week or next,” he said.
Hadwin has dealt with pressure all season – mostly cut-line pressure all season. He recalled holing a 12-footer at the last to make the cut on the number at the Rocket Classic in July but far too many times he’s missed by one and slammed his trunk on Friday. “I lived there for so many weeks that it just wears on you,” he said of the Friday cutline.
The ability to score has been the missing ingredient, he said. Hadwin made some changes to his swing last offseason in a quest to develop a consistent miss or go-to shot under the gun. He admitted that the swing changes took longer to master than he expected.
“I’ve battled a two-way miss my entire life and still haven’t sorted through that,” he said. “I’ve been chasing consistency for five, six years and still haven’t found it.”
Hadwin's swing coach is one of the best
Hadwin has worked with one of the best in the business, Mark Blackburn, on his swing since 2021. Previous changes took hold fairly quickly and he played some quality golf in the ensuing years, but he said his game had stalled last year after losing in a playoff at the 2023 Rocket Classic and finishing third at the 2024 Memorial.
“I wasn’t getting any better,” Hadwin said. “Felt I had some better golf ahead of me. I kept plateauing around the 50 mark (in the world). I haven’t been back to the Tour Championship (reserved for the top 30 in the FedEx Cup) since 2017.”
In the endless pursuit of “better,” he began chasing a more consistent release so that his swing was less about hands and more about body.
“Less moving parts," Hadwin explained. "It’s been a struggle. I’ve lost the feeling of the release through this last year and battling that two-way miss."
Other parts of the game haven’t stepped up to cover for him. He’s suffering through his worst putting season in a while. He pushed himself to try to make a late run at the FedEx Cup playoffs, but that backfired as he missed the cut at three of his final four starts to the regular season. He missed the playoffs for the first time after advancing in all 10 prior seasons as a Tour member. But he arrived in Bermuda convinced that he just needed some positive momentum to flip the script.
“I was pretty free for about 13 or 14 holes today and then I felt some nerves that I hadn't felt most of the year from being in a position that I have not been in this year. It's nice to feel that again,” he said. “It's nice to make some really good swings while feeling that.”
Hadwin benefited from playing most of his round under calmer conditions. Afternoon showers killed the wind that was blowing 30 miles per hour during the morning and knocked gusts down to 10-15 mph. Hadwin and the afternoon wave feasted. He birdied the first hole and four of his first eight. He tacked on a birdie at 13 before making his lone bogey of the day at No. 15. He bounced back with birdies at Nos. 16 and 17 to grab the clubhouse lead. With his back against the wall, Hadwin described the day in trying conditions as “fun.”
“In a sick, sadistic way, sure. I think playing in conditions like these can be — are so challenging in itself and you have to sort of dive in and focus into every single golf shot that it kind of takes away from thinking about the bigger picture in a sense because in winds like that, if you're off just a little, every miss is magnified and that much harder,” he said.
Hadwin said his season-long slump has been “a shock to the ego,” and he hasn’t bothered to look yet at what his Q-School options will be. He wasn’t sure he would attempt to play at Second Stage of Q-School if that was his only option, but if he keeps playing like he did in the opening round, he won’t have to worry about that. Hadwin is still searching for answers as to why the swing changes he made with Blackburn a year ago have been three steps back when he expected at least one step forward.
“There has to be reasons why this has been so difficult compared to previous swing changes,” Hadwin said. “We work really well together and I’m impressed with how he coaches and can translate from a technical aspect into a way to play golf, but I’d be remiss to think that there isn’t something missing. It’s been a year. From a technical standpoint, I was doing what we wanted to accomplish in February and March, so something is missing.”
But on Thursday, Hadwin found that old mojo and now the question is can it stick around for three more days?