It did not take long on Thursday morning at the Players Championship to realize Danny Walker was out of place.
“That’s Spieth,” whispered one fan ominously from off the side of the 7th green at TPC Sawgrass. “And that’s Wyndham Clark. But who’s … that? Walker???”
The answer was not readily available to the fan, who shrugged and moved on with his day. But then Danny Walker poured in a lengthy birdie putt, and suddenly a whole bunch of fans were applauding for the kid with a tuft of blond hair they did not know.
Players Championship week has a funny way of doing that to the folks of TPC Sawgrass. The PGA Tour has long prided itself on stocking the Players with one of golf’s strongest fields, and that means invitations are sent to all manner of individuals who might otherwise not grace the fairways of a big-time PGA Tour event. Danny Walker is one of those players. A Korn Ferry Tour graduate and PGA Tour first-timer, Walker entered the week a Players Championship long shot. Not just to win the Tour’s flagship event, but to get in the field at all.
But then, 90 minutes before his scheduled 8:46 a.m. tee time on Thursday, Jason Day withdrew from the event, leaving a spot open in one of the Tour’s marquee trios for the opening two days alongside Spieth and Clark. Walker, a Jacksonville native, was first off the pine … or porcelain.
“I was in the locker room in the restroom [when I got the call],” Walker said with a grin on Saturday evening. “Had to take that phone call.”
And take it, he did. Within minutes of getting the ring, Walker was out on the range preparing for his opening round. He’d been at TPC Sawgrass “just in case” he got the call into the field, and the timing of Day’s WD meant he only needed to move back his scheduled warm-up by 20 minutes. Before he headed out to the course, he snuck back to the parking lot for a moment of meditation.
“Wanted to play in this event since I was a little kid, especially living here locally,” Walker said Thursday. “Honestly, I went and sat in my car for a few minutes afterwards and just kind of let it hit me a little bit, maybe let a tear out. But, no, it was all great. I was just excited.”
His tournament suffered an inauspicious start after an opening-round 73 left him on the wrong side of the cutline, but the high-wattage pairing gave Walker an added dose of momentum. He’d hung with the big guns on Thursday, and he could do it again on Friday. When the moment arrived, the Bradenton, Fla., resident answered the bell. He shot 70, and made the cutline on the number. He followed up that performance with his round of the week, a Saturday 66 to vault from one of the final players in the field to one of the field’s final groups.
Facing just the fourth PGA Tour Sunday of his life at one of the game’s toothiest challenges, Walker battled valiantly, shooting a 2-under 70 to push himself further up the leaderboard. When the dust settled, he was T6, good enough for the best finish of his PGA Tour career. A week that started without weekend plans had ended with the largest payday of Walker’s young PGA Tour life, $843,750.
“I would think [it is more than my PGA Tour earnings],” he said with another grin on Sunday night. “Not even a year and a half ago, I had little to no money in my bank account. It’s a big change.”
It was a successful week several ways for Walker, though he left Sunday just a few shots shy of a playoff between Rory McIlroy and J.J. Spaun. Walker will collect nearly three times the standard FedEx Cup point payout for his T6 finish (275 to 100 at a standard Tour event) — receiving a huge boost to his hopes of landing in the all-important top-100 heading into 2026.
It is just the first step of many toward a childhood dream for Walker, the 29-year-old former UVA golfer who briefly flirted with a career as an astrophysicist. But that dream received an unexpected boost in his hometown tournament this weekend.
“I don’t know how else to say it,” he said Sunday, wide-eyed. “Surreal is a good word.”
As he closed in on the end of his round on Sunday, Walker said he noticed a change: The fans had started to recognize him. He smiled once more as he referenced the number of comments on his polo.
“Definitely a lot of comments out there,” he said. “It was strikingly similar to Jaguars colors, which was a good coincidence.”
A week on the PGA Tour can change your life, but as the sun set on Sunday evening at the Players Championship, the most dramatic development had nothing to do with money.
For the first time in his PGA Tour life, Danny Walker belonged.