Dahmen loses a full PGA Tour card and works his way into a $20M event at Bay Hill

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Joel Dahmen was down to his last chance to keep his full PGA Tour card at the final tournament of the year. He missed the cut, headed home to Arizona to be with his newborn son and had a month to ponder a future that didn't look terribly bright.

To be sure, teeing it up in a $20 million signature event at Bay Hill was not in his plans.

The new year of fewer cards — top 100 instead of 125 — and shorter fields left Dahmen uncertain about where he could play and how much. But he was reminded that good golf still pays off, and it earned him the final spot in the 72-man field at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

“It's nice to hang out with the big kids this week,” Dahmen said Wednesday. “Incredible event. Really hard golf course. It's definitely elevated, signature event. You can feel it, and I’m just super excited to be here.”

How did this happen?

It wasn't the gift of sponsor exemptions. Dahmen has asked for one every week, but he has received only one — at the WM Phoenix Open and that was the only cut he missed this year. Instead, he barely got into the field at Torrey Pines and tied for seventh, and he was among the last to get in the Cognizant Classic last week and tied for ninth by going bogey-free his last 27 holes.

It was enough — by five FedEx Cup points — to get the last spot over Jordan Spieth, who already had a sponsor exemption to Bay Hill.

“No, I could not see myself here,” the 38-year-old Dahmen said. "It was the first time in a long time that there was a lot of unknowns in my career. ... I think most players didn’t really know the schedule, we didn't know what we were going to get into. So I think for me the biggest thing was that every single start is a big start.

“It was just taking advantage of the opportunities, and so far I’ve done that.”

These next two weeks — Bay Hill and The Players Championship — are huge for a guy in Dahmen's position. He is not eligible for the three events after The Players, and only his good play kept him from having off five straight weeks.

But it's a strong field. Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the world, has won twice at Bay Hill in the last four years. The field features 19 of the top 20 in the world, and that includes Justin Thomas, who is competing for the first time since the Ryder Cup after back surgery.

“I've got to be realistic. I haven't played a tournament in six months,” Thomas said. “I feel like I can do anything I want with the golf ball at any given time. It's just going to be the concentrating for four-and-a-half, five hours on a very difficult test.”

Austin Smotherman, who graduated from the Korn Ferry Tour last year, also played his way into the field with a runner-up finish last week.

“That's part of why people love seeing maybe slightly bigger fields, seeing the underdog story, is that on a given week there’s a lot of guys in the world that can play golf,” Collin Morikawa said. "But at the same time opportunities aren’t just handed out to everyone. You have to go and earn it.

“Joe was given an opportunity. He's taken that opportunity and turned it into something great.”

It didn't start out that way.

There was joy being around his newborn. There was Thanksgiving dinner to host. And then there was time on the couch. The golf clubs were put away. It was Dec. 27 when his wife casually asked him if he thought about his immediate future and Dahmen realized he should probably practice.

“Yeah, the path to the tour is rougher. The path to stay on tour is tougher than it's ever been,” Dahmen said. “There's a lot of talk about being more of a closed shop. ... But on the other side I'm proof that in four events you can play well enough and earn your way into these events. And if you play well in one of these next two, you keep going on the upward trend.”

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

FILE - Joel Dahmen hits from the second tee of the South Course at Torrey Pines during the third round of the Farmers Insurance Open golf tournament Jan. 31, 2026, in San Diego. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy, File)

Rory McIlroy, from Northern Ireland, hits from the second tee during the final round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Caroline Brehman )

Austin Smotherman shows his balloter a birdie putt on the second hole during the final round of the Cognizant Classic golf tournament, Sunday, March 1, 2026, in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

Scottie Scheffler walks on the 18th hole during the third round of the Genesis Invitational golf tournament at Riviera Country Club, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026, in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Caroline Brehman )

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a defeat for the Trump administration, a federal judge in New York ruled Wednesday that companies that paid tariffs struck down last month by Supreme Court are due refunds.

Judge Richard Eaton of the U.S. Court of International Trade wrote that “all importers of record’’ were “entitled to benefit’’ from the Supreme Court ruling that struck down sweeping double-digit import taxes President Donald Trump imposed last year under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

The Supreme Court found tariffs that Trump imposed under the emergency powers law were unconstitutional, including the sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs he levied on nearly every other country.

In his ruling, Eaton wrote that he alone “will hear cases pertaining to the refund of IEEPA duties.’’ The ruling offers some clarity about the tariff refund process, something the Supreme Court did not even mention in its Feb. 20 decision. Trade lawyer Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding and a former U.S. trade official, said he expects the government to appeal or “seek a stay to buy more time for U.S. Customs to comply.″

The federal government collected more than $130 billion in the now-defunct tariffs through mid-December and could ultimately be on the hook for refunds worth $175 billion, according to calculations by the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

Eaton was ruling specifically on a case brought by Atmus Filtration, a Nashville, Tennessee, company that makes filters and other filtration products, claiming a right to a tariff refund.

All goods that go through U.S. Customs and Border Protections enter a process called “liquidation,” when the agency issues its final accounting of what is owed. Once liquidated, importers have 180 days to formally contest the duties. After that window closes, the liquidation is legally final.

The judge ordered customs to stop collecting the IEEPA tariffs the Supreme Court struck down last month on goods going through the liquidation process. And if the goods were past that part of the process, the agency would have to recalculate them without the tariffs.

“This is a great decision for importers and consumers who paid,” said Barry Appleton, a law professor and co-director New York Law School’s Center for International Law. “It will make customs brokers busy. It should make things easier for the courts — and get a process underway for those importers who paid within the last 180 days.”

On Monday, another federal court rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to slow the refund process. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit started the next phase in the refund process by sending it to New York trade court to sort out.

Now the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency must come up with a way to process the refunds. Customs routinely refunds tariffs when there’s been some kind of error, but its system was “not designed for a mass refund,″ said trade lawyer Alexis Early, a partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. “The devil will be in the details of the administrative process.″

Anderson reported from New York.

AP Writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this story.

Containers are stored in a cargo terminal in Frankfurt, Germany, Monday, Feb. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)