The odds are not great, and the competition seems to get better every year.

Hope, though, must carry the day, and because hope looks different to everyone, George Bryan IV, 36, will carry his own artist’s rendering of it into this week’s Second Stage of PGA TOUR Q-School presented by Korn Ferry in Valdosta, Georgia.

It’s a composite picture of a tearful Rafael Campos, 36, winning the recent Butterfield Bermuda Championship to keep his PGA TOUR card; plucky Michael Block, then a 46-year-old club pro from Southern California, finishing T15 at the 2023 PGA Championship; and gritty Japan Golf Tour veteran Todd Hamilton, then 38, capturing The Open Championship 2004.

This is Bryan’s tribe: talented, lesser-known pros who found something deep into their careers.

“The late-bloomer thing is real,” Bryan told PGATOUR.COM. “It’s been a dream of mine to play and compete on the PGA TOUR. Not full time, but I feel like my game has gotten better and better as I’ve gotten older. You see a guy like Todd Hamilton or Michael Block, and it’s like, you can still compete at a high level into your late 30s and 40s.”

Bryan is the bespectacled half of Bryan Bros Golf, the YouTube channel in which he and brother Wesley, 34, perform trick shots, give instruction and, yes, show competition at the highest level. Wesley is more golf-famous, having earned a Three-Victory Promotion on the Korn Ferry Tour (George caddied for his first win) before promptly winning the 2017 RBC Heritage.

George, conversely, has not found his groove, competitively speaking. The most recent of his three career PGA TOUR starts, last month’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship, was a microcosm of the brothers’ divergent paths. Wesley, he of the enviable short game, shot a third-round 61 and finished T17. George, he of the enviable swing, shot 75-73 to miss the cut, the low/high point being his half topped/half shanked approach in Round 1.

“I struggle sometimes with like a 3- or 4-iron, some of the longer clubs,” a laughing George said afterward, “especially when I get nervy.”

“He’s good for one top a tournament, for sure,” Wesley added. “Guaranteed.”

It was the kind of exchange that elevates Bryan Bros Golf. What prompted it, though, was the kind of lapse that has bedeviled George, a three-time All-American at South Carolina.

“My senior year in college I was one of the best players in the country, definitely top 30,” he said. “Which is good to be top 30 in anything. And after that it was a steady decline. I’ve had some success on the mini-tours but not on the level I had in college.”

He’s earned another chance, though, over 72 holes at Valdosta’s Kinderlou Forest Golf Club, Tuesday through Friday. Roughly 15% of players from each site will advance to Final Stage at Dye’s Valley Course at TPC Sawgrass, Dec. 12-15. This marks the third time George has made it to Second Stage; he’s never reached Final Stage.

“Get better,” Wesley said in Bermuda.

“Yeah,” George said.

That was two and a half weeks ago. The putter had let him down one year after making his first (and only) TOUR cut at Port Royal (T69). To date, his playing career has been more like this year’s wind-blown struggle than last year’s charmed debut.

“High school and college level it’s, I want to be like Tiger Woods,” George said. “Or Ernie Els or Jim Furyk. My scenario, great college career, the pro thing didn’t pan out. I was a little surprised. I thought it would be a natural progression. At the time, before we started Bryan Bros Golf in 2014, I was like, This is a bummer.”

After all, his dream was not to be a YouTube golfer. (There was no YouTube.) But by becoming one, he and Wesley, who missed the cut at The RSM Classic to fall out of the top 125, can stay in the game while providing a much-needed release from the grind of tournament golf. Meanwhile, they’ve been able to spend more time with family.

It’s been a win-win.

At the Myrtle Beach Classic in May, sponsor exemption George had just been introduced on the first tee when a voice rang out, “Go, Daddy!” It was his 3-year-old daughter, Annie, and he melted before gathering himself to hit the ball. (He missed the cut by three.) He and wife Milsom welcomed a son, George Bryan V, aka G5, later that month.

All of which begs the question: What if Bryan does it this week? What if he reaches Final Stage, guaranteeing himself starts on the Korn Ferry Tour at the very least?

He’s not entirely sure what a more robust playing schedule would look like; he just knows he’ll never do 40 weeks a year. At the same time, he’s not ready to walk away.

“I want to see how good I can get and see if I still can hang with some of the best in the world,” he said. “I wish I had had this mindset when I was chasing it fulltime; that sports psychologists, my dad, had told us, ‘Hey, don’t make it something it’s not. It’s just a game. Have fun.’ It’s cool that I’m able to experience this when I kind of thought the dream was dead.”

Tom Watson nearly won The Open Championship at 59; Lucas Glover reignited his career at 43; and Campos, 36, bloomed in Bermuda. “I can’t believe this is happening to me,” Campos said.

You suspect Bryan was watching. Age is just a number, and all it takes is IV good days.