Editor’s note: The PGA TOUR is celebrating the start of a new year with Opening Drive, a two-week kickoff to the 2024 season. Players are refreshed and ready to shine, and they’ll need to bring their best from the start because of the season’s condensed time frame. PGATOUR.COM’s preview content will prepare you for the start of the 2024 season by telling you the players and storylines you need to know before the first shot is hit.

Golf’s magic lies in its uncertainty. PGA TOUR pros feel it weekly. That’s why so often a player will follow multiple missed cuts with a victory or rebound from a 76 with a 63. That’s why only two players won more than twice on the PGA TOUR in 2023, and why Tiger Woods’ record 142 consecutive made cuts is so highly regarded by his peers.

Any given week, it’s anyone’s guess as to what could happen.

The PGA TOUR’s reimagined structure for 2024 includes eight Signature Events, where the game’s biggest stars will compete in limited fields on iconic courses like Pebble Beach, Riviera and Muirfield Village.

It’s likely that the TOUR’s biggest stars – the McIlroys, Hovlands and Schefflers – will contend frequently at these events. But for those who think these events will be devoid of underdog stories, think again.

TOUR pros can earn spots in Signature Events via the Aon Next 10 and Aon Swing 5, allowing players to ride the hot hand and “play up” into the next leg of Signature Events. The top 10 players in the FedExCup standings (not otherwise exempt) will be eligible for each Signature Event, as will the five players who earned the most FedExCup points in each “swing” of Full-Field Events between Signature Events.

The top 50 on the 2023 FedExCup standings after last year’s FedEx St. Jude Championship earned a spot in all eight of 2024’s Signature Events. The top 50 features a healthy dose of star power, but there are still some Cinderellas to root for, some Davids to take on golf’s Goliaths. For these players, good showings in the Signature Events will be especially meaningful, demonstrating to themselves, and the greater golf world, that they can beat the best players in the world. One of the beautiful things about professional golf is that it allows players ample opportunity to move up the meritocracy, to elevate their status with their play.

The 2024 PGA TOUR season will do just that. Here are five players with the opportunity to author life-changing weeks in the Signature Events. These are five Signature Cinderellas for 2024.

Adam Schenk

From the sod farm to the Signature Events, Adam Schenk is ready to see how good he can be.

Schenk advanced to the 2023 TOUR Championship, finishing ninth in the FedExCup after a breakout season that included seven top-10 finishes, highlighted by runners-up at the Valspar Championship and Charles Schwab Challenge. Schenk had nearly as many top 10s in 2023 as he’d had in the previous five seasons (nine). His average FedExCup finish in those first five seasons was 103rd.

Schenk’s stats don’t pop off the page – he ranked outside the top 30 in every major Strokes Gained category in 2023 – but his results prove that the whole is greater than the proverbial sum.

The Purdue alum grew up on Schenk’s Sod Farm, which grows corn, wheat, beans and grasses that his family sells to local golf courses. In a world of private jets, the 31-year-old drove from the FedEx St. Jude Championship to the BMW Championship – eight hours from Memphis to Chicago – after securing his spot in the FedExCup’s top 50, which cemented his place in the 2024 Signature Events.

Schenk might rarely be atop a pre-tournament favorites list, but that’s OK. There aren’t many higher when it comes to maximizing one’s inherent talent, a trait he relishes.

“I would have just been tickled to keep my card the first year out, and I did not. Just learned so much over the last six years,” Schenk said at the BMW. “You don’t necessarily get that much better at golf; you just kind of get smarter. Just learning the ups and downs are going to happen, I think, is a big part of growing and getting better at golf.

“Not saying mean things about myself, but there's just a lot of people out here that are just physically better at golf than me, and I have to try and outsmart them, gain any little advantage I can and give up nothing to the field, and that's the way I have to play golf.”

Schenk won’t be changed by success – not that his wife would let him. Kourtney Schenk offers an irreverent tone on X (formerly Twitter), poking fun at the lighter side of the pro game and her husband’s quirks. “Adam saved football channels over the Christmas channels in MY car and I just wanna know where he found the audacity,” she recently shared.

When you turn the channel to a Signature Event this year, you just might find Schenk atop the board.

Eric Cole

Eric Cole’s story has been well told: He’s a mini-tour legend who will play any tournament that will offer him a tee time. He made the most of his first TOUR season, teeing it up in 37 events and racking up 14 top 25s. He’s the son of two touring pros, Bobby Cole and Laura Baugh, and earned his first TOUR card at age 34. After spending most of his career on the mini-tours, he earned more than $5 million in 2023 and finished 43rd on the FedExCup.

Cole was the only 2023 TOUR rookie to finish inside the top 50 on the FedExCup, thereby earning a spot in all 2024 Signature Events. He was even better in the FedExCup Fall, finishing his season with four top fives in his final five starts.

Through a topsy-turvy career, Cole’s competitive edges have been sharpened for this moment. He was diagnosed with Addison’s Disease – an adrenal insufficiency condition – as a college freshman and dropped to 110 pounds. After first earning his Korn Ferry Tour card in 2017, his back went out. It took him three years to regain his card. All the while, he kept winning and winning on the Minor League Golf Tour, earning more than 50 titles overall. While sidelined with his back injury, he gave lessons at Abacoa Golf Club in South Florida. Fast forward to this year, he finished runner-up at The Honda Classic just six miles from Abacoa.

That story will likely be told many times in 2024, and for good reason. When he’s on the leaderboard come the back nine Sunday, he won’t be fazed. Far from it. It’s where he expects to be.

Patrick Rodgers

Patrick Rodgers isn’t your typical Cinderella. His amateur and collegiate career was the stuff of legend. He matched Tiger Woods’ record of 11 wins at Stanford. He swept the Hogan, Nicklaus and Haskins awards as the United States’ top college golfer. He reached No. 1 on the World Amateur Golf Ranking.

Rodgers’ professional career hasn’t struck the same notes. Not yet, anyway. Rodgers, 31, has yet to win in 251 career TOUR starts, and he needed to earn back his card through the 2021 Korn Ferry Tour Finals.

Rodgers’ most recent brush with victory came at the 2023 Barracuda Championship, where he fell to Akshay Bhatia with a bogey on the first playoff hole. It was his fourth TOUR runner-up finish.

That effort wasn’t for naught though, as it launched Rodgers inside the top 50 on the FedExCup standings. He finished No. 49 on the FedExCup to earn a spot in this year’s Signature Events, an added benefit to his career-best FedExCup finish.

“I feel like I'm a veteran out here by now and so I definitely feel like I'm hitting my stride,” Rodgers said this summer. “I have really high aspirations. I would love to be one of the best players in the world. That's what I'm working for.”

Rodgers knows how good he was, and how good he can be. His college accolades stacked up against rivals like Jordan Spieth and Patrick Cantlay, two soon-to-be peers at the Signature Events. He has a full slate of opportunities to prove that his game still shines just as bright.

Denny McCarthy

Denny McCarthy might be the world’s best putter. The rest of his game isn’t far behind.

McCarthy’s competitive fire burns, as evidenced by his heartbreak after finishing runner-up to Viktor Hovland at the 2023 Memorial Tournament presented by Workday – and after finishing No. 33 in the FedExCup at the BMW Championship, missing the TOUR Championship by a razor-thin margin.

McCarthy has been on the doorstep of greatness, and he’ll have a full suite of Signature Events to be great. The Washington, D.C.-area native was a standout high school basketball player, notably a three-point specialist, before playing golf at the University of Virginia.

McCarthy earned his first TOUR card in his second Korn Ferry Tour season (2017) and has continually ascended the FedExCup standings. He ranked outside the top 100 in his first two seasons, then spent two years in the 70-100 range before ranking Nos. 37 and 33 in the last two seasons, respectively. Earning his first PGA TOUR victory is the next step in his progression.

All the while, the flat stick has been his backbone. McCarthy has ranked in the top three in Strokes Gained: Putting in four of his six seasons, and he has never ranked worse than No. 22.

When the rest of his game is clicking, he’ll be tough to beat. It just might happen at a Signature Event.

Nick Hardy

Nick Hardy has proven his mettle at each level of the game. Now he’ll have three chances (at minimum) to do so in Signature Events.

Hardy finished No. 52 in the FedExCup in 2023, narrowly missing a spot in all of 2024’s Signature Events. He teared up during a post-round interview at the FedEx St. Jude Championship after just missing, highlighting his desire to compete and thrive against the game’s best.

That’s what he has done for his entire life. Hardy fell in love with the game at a par-3 course on Chicago’s North Side and the love has never wavered. The results have followed: He was a First Team All-American at the University of Illinois, then needed just one full Korn Ferry Tour season to earn a PGA TOUR card. He earned his first TOUR victory this year, teaming with longtime friend and rival Davis Riley to win the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. His results were uneven at times throughout the season, at one point missing five straight cuts, but his track record has indicated that he will figure it out. He always has.

“I feel like I have gotten better and better year after year since I was a really young kid,” Hardy told Sports Illustrated last year. “Maybe not as fast as I would like, but I kind of progress at my own pace, and I feel like I have understood that for a while now.”

Hardy will open his season at The Sentry (via his Zurich win with Riley) then will play the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and The Genesis Invitational after finishing 56th in the FedExCup Fall standings (Nos. 51-60 in the final FedExCup Fall standings earned spots in those two Signature Events via the Aon Next 10). Then he’ll look to earn more Signature Event starts via either the Aon Next 10 or Aon Swing 5 categories. The opportunities are ample, and he has the game to take advantage.