Hayden Buckley's quick start has helped get him more comfortable on Tour.

SOUTHAMPTON, Bermuda – There is a need to show respect. Hayden Buckley is totally on board with that.

But being in awe is not part of the admission. Can’t be, said the 25-year-old. “Just no reason to sit there and not think you’re as good as them. And that (attitude) has sort of helped me the last three years.”

Welcome to the twilight of the calendar year, which on the PGA Tour landscape means it’s time for dozens of new faces to battle it out with dozens of familiar names for precious playing opportunities.

Tournaments like the one that was held last week – the Butterfield Bermuda Championship – are fall staples to a wrap-around schedule that begins in September but doesn’t attract a steady diet of notable names. That affords unheralded rookies such as Buckley to seize playing opportunities, which is all he’s asking for.

The rest is up to him.

“People don’t know that there are 50 guys who are out here who are pretty good,” he said.

There is truth in that statement. But there’s also truth in this: Players on each side of a wide divide – the young trying to break through and the veterans trying to hold on – admittedly don’t know one another. Understandable, they are a generation apart.

Now that gap is not why there was a ferry boat involved in this story; no, the ferry boat just happened to be the setting for what prompted interest. Quietly, Buckley and his caddie, Brian Mahoney, boarded the ferry down the hill from Port Royal GC for a 25-minute ride across the Great Sound to get to the Princess Hamilton.

Also boarding the ferry was a small parade of longtime pros who have combined for 2,157 PGA Tour starts and 18 victories. Jonathan Byrd, 43; D.A. Points, 44; Ben Crane, 45; J.J. Henry, 46; and Jason Bohn, 48, enjoyed great banter and camaraderie.

They’ve known one another for years and each understands the landscape: Well into their 40s, they must try and keep up with so many younger, stronger, and longer players.

Crane chuckled and said that he didn’t know who this 25-year-old Buckley kid was, but it was a flavorful part of PGA Tour life that he loved. In his PGA Tour debut, the 2002 Sony Open, Crane at 25 missed the cut while a 44-year-old named John Cook nearly won the tournament.

For nearly two years, Crane has been sidelined by back pain, so the Butterfield Bermuda Championship was his chance “just to see if I can play golf right now,” he said. But he acknowledged that if one talked with Buckley, there’d be a story there.

No surprise, if you know Crane, but he was perceptive. Buckley was an intriguing study, starting with the young man’s almost apologetic thoughts regarding his fellow ferry-goers the night before.

“I don’t watch a lot of golf, so I don’t know many names. I had no clue who they were. But I have respect for them. They’ve earned it. It’s just that I’m almost oblivious to it all, which is a good thing for me.”

Buckley’s trip to Bermuda as a PGA Tour member was owed to a stroke of great fortune. But he also could be a poster boy for the PGA Tour’s commitment to developing more on-ramps into the big leagues.

After an unheralded career at the University of Missouri, Buckley in 2019 finished fourth in Q School for the Mackenzie PGA Tour Canada. “Big deal?” you say? Well, consider that the runner-up that week was Will Zalatoris, who two years later would threaten to win the Masters, and later won PGA Tour Rookie of the Year honors.

But back to Buckley.

Oh, how he cashed in on his Q School ticket to the Mackenzie Tour. A win, a third, and four other top 10s put him sixth on the Order of Merit, which earned him graduation to the Korn Ferry Tour in 2020.

That was the good news. The bad? It came during the COVID-19 pandemic and there were just 13 tournaments, none of them particularly memorable. His KFT standing having taken a hit, Buckley was first alternate in Lakewood Ranch, Fla., when the wrap-around season resumed in mid-February of this year.

“I arrived at 6 (a.m.) and at 7 (a.m.) they told me to be on the tee in 15 minutes, I was in,” said Buckley, who seems to have a knack for cashing in, because he shot 68-65-68-70 and won a three-way playoff at the LECOM Suncoast Classic.

Six months later, he was graduated again, this time to the PGA Tour, No. 14 off the KFT priority list.

The uncanny flair to take advantage has come with him. Buckley was T-4 at the Sanderson Farms, T-8 in Vegas, and made a third straight cut in Bermuda. In two weeks when the KFT category is re-shuffled, Buckley’s number should improve and assure him more starts.

That will afford him even more chances to meet more players and to do what is more important to him – to play well.

“Respect,” he said, “has to be earned.”