It’s absolute mayhem at TPC Sawgrass after two rounds of action. The PLAYERS Championship 2026 has been absolutely nail-biting, with the best of the best struggling to battle for the title. While the top two in the world barely made it through to the weekend, a few surprising names missed the cut. We’re here to learn about five of those big names who won’t be moving ahead in the last two rounds of the PGA Tour flagship event.

Shane Lowry

Shane Lowry started the 2026 season really well. He kicked things off with a T3 in the Dubai Invitational. He came to Pebble Beach to grab a T8 in his first PGA Tour appearance of the season. A few weeks later, the Irishman nearly broke his winless streak with a T2 finish in the Cognizant Classic at the PGA National Champion Course.

Unfortunately, things haven’t gone his way since then. On his trip to Bay Hill, Lowry produced his worst performance of the season. A 3-over par was not nearly enough for him to clear the first couple of rounds in the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational. He missed his first cut of the season just a week ago. And the one-time major winner repeated that performance at TPC Sawgrass this week as well.

Lowry shot a 5-over par after two rounds of the PLAYERS Championship. That was not enough for him to make the cut in the PGA Tour flagship event. He crashed out of the second consecutive PGA Tour event for the second consecutive week. Seems like the blunder at the Champion Course really put him off his game.

Ben Griffin

Unlike Lowry, Ben Griffin isn’t having the best time on the fairway this season. The highest he has finished on the leaderboard was a T19 in the season-opening event, the Sony Open in Hawaii 2026. However, what they have in common is that both missed the cut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. And they are also out of the weekend rounds in The PLAYERS Championship.

Griffin had an excellent opening round on Thursday. He shot a 2-under 70 and finished close to the top of the leaderboard at T17. However, he made several significant blunders on Friday, resulting in a score of 4-over par. A triple bogey on the 8th hole and a double bogey on the 14th hole did the most damage to his score. They alone cost him five of the six strokes he conceded in the second round. Despite a last-hole birdie, Griffin was already too far away from the cutline to recover in the $25 million flagship event.

Rasmus Højgaard

Rasmus Højgaard has been busy on the fairway this year. He has already participated in five PGA Tour events. The Dane also managed to grab a top-10 finish in the Cognizant Classic a couple of weeks ago. However, he hasn’t been at his best since.

Højgaard failed to capitalize on the opportunity last week despite playing in the alternate PGA Tour event in the weaker field. Not only did he fail to impress, but he also missed the cutline of the 2026 Puerto Rico Open by scoring a 4-over par. Hojgaard’s score at TPC Sawgrass improved as he managed a 3-over par in two rounds. But that wasn’t enough to help him make the weekend rounds for the PLAYERS Championship. Hence, he ended up missing the cut for two straight weeks.

Marco Penge

At one point in the tournament, Marco Penge was a serious contender for the 2026 Genesis Invitational. However, a third-round blunder pushed him back to 16th place by the end of the tournament. Either way, the Englishman’s rookie season on the PGA Tour isn’t going as planned.

He missed the cut in the first couple of events he played in. Then Penge finished at T64 in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. But he was still performing well enough in strong field events. That was until the PLAYERS Championship.

Both of Penge’s rounds were absolutely disastrous. He shot a 3-over par on Thursday that included three bogeys and a double bogey to counter two birdies. The Englishman followed that up with a 4-over on Friday with the same number of bogeys and a double bogey. Only this time, he scored one birdie. A +7 was more than enough to keep him out of the weekend rounds and make him miss the first cut in a strong field tournament.

Tom Hoge

While Tom Hoge may not be as big a name as others on this list, his exit was perhaps the most shocking one. Unlike others, he wasn’t performing badly in the tournament. The 36-year-old had a decent first round after he shot 1-over 73. He still had plenty of time to make the cut on Friday.

Before the 7th hole in the second round, he was sitting at even par, still very comfortably within the cutline. But all hell broke loose on the 7th hole. After a series of blunders, he completed the par-4 hole in 9 strokes. That was enough to end his dreams of playing the weekend at TPC Sawgrass this year.

This came as a surprise because he had finished T3 in the tournament last year. Moreover, Hoge also held the record for the lowest score at TPC Sawgrass, a 10-under 62, in 2023. So it was not expected that he would lose his way in the tournament.

Other than the names mentioned above, a few other notable names missed the cut in the PLAYERS Championship. Aldrich Potgeiter, Max Greyserman, Gary Woodland, and Team U.S. member for the 2025 Ryder Cup, Harris English, also didn’t make the weekend rounds.