Jacob Bridgeman might not be a household name yet, but his rise on the PGA Tour has begun. The 26-year-old from Inman, South Carolina, won the 2026 Genesis Invitational. But after the intense finish there, he decided to withdraw from the 2026 Cognizant Classic to take a break. Only a few would have thought that after withdrawing from the $9.6 million event, Bridgeman would be racing for $150K.

The PGA Tour winner has surged into contention for the 2026 Jani-King Spring Clean Challenge. In fact, fellow winner and teammate Chris Gotterup is tagging along with him. The two are crowd favorites to win the $150,000 caddie-player bonus race. Their victories from the 2026 season have helped them enter the seven-event series with strong FedEx Cup points momentum.

The Jani-King Spring Clean Challenge is now in its third year. The competition pairs players and caddies for combined FedEx Cup points across seven events. To represent their participation, caddies carry special green towels during these events, which include:

• Arnold Palmer Invitational: March 5–8, Orlando, FL
• Players Championship: March 12–15, Ponte Vedra Beach, FL
• Masters: April 9–12, Augusta, GA
• RBC Heritage: April 16–19, Hilton Head, SC
• Cadillac Championship: April 30–May 3, Miami, FL
• ​Truist Championship: May 7–10, Charlotte, NC
• ​PGA Championship: May 14–17, Nemacolin, PA

The race offers a $150,000 bonus pool. Of this, the winning pair gets $70,000. $30,000 is given to each player in the winning pair and $5,000 to each caddie. Custom trophies are also presented to winners. Last year, Sepp Straka and Greyson Sigg’s “Big Dawgs” won. The duo showed consistency across the events to make it to the top.

This year, the three teams participating are Kings of Clean, Clean Strikes, and Carolina Clean. The Kings of Clean team features Jacob Bridgeman and Chris Gotterup. Tom Hoge and Michael Kim are part of the team Clean Strikes. Meanwhile. the last team includes Andrew Novak and J.T. Poston.

Among the three teams, the Kings of Clean are the clear crowd favorite. This is because both Bridgeman and Gotterup have recently won a PGA Tour event.

Jacob Bridgeman claimed his first PGA Tour title at the Tiger Woods-hosted 2026 Genesis Invitational. He finished 18-under with a nervy final-round par on 18 at Riviera.

Chris Gotterup, on the other hand, has won 4 PGA Tour events, two of them coming in 2026. He started his season with a win at the Sony Open in Hawaii. Then he made it to the top at the 2026 WM Phoenix Open with a score of 16-under par 268.

While Gotterup has already made his name after turning pro in 2022, Bridgeman’s numbers indicate that he is heading there, too.

Jacob Bridgeman’s rise on the PGA Tour

The 2026 Genesis Invitational winner turned pro in 2022. He had a stellar Clemson career before that, where he was a two-time All-American and ACC Golfer of the Year in 2022.

He started playing regularly on the PGA Tour in the 2024 season, and his performance has only improved. In 2024, he had 27 starts and made the cut in 17 of them. However, he had no top 10 finishes. The PGA Tour winner made $1,250,191 in official earnings.

Then in 2025, he made the cut in 19 of the 30 starts. His earnings increased to $4,437,269, thanks to his 5 top 10 finishes, including a runner-up position at the Cognizant Classic. This season, he has made the cut in all the 5 events he played so far. The official earnings are already over last year, and the biggest part of it came from his breakthrough Genesis Invitational win.

Apart from that, he also has a T4 finish at the 2026 Sony Open in Hawaii and a T8 at the 2026 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. In fact, all his finishes in 2026 are in the top 25. He is now taking a break and has decided to withdraw from the 2026 Cognizant Classic.

With his impressive string of top-25 finishes in 2026, Bridgeman has quickly transformed from a promising rookie into a serious contender on the PGA Tour. This momentum now carries over into the Jani-King Spring Clean Challenge, where he and Gotterup have positioned themselves as the team to beat in the $150,000 race.