Will Zalatoris birdied two of his last three holes to lead the Korn Ferry Challenge at 10 under.
It will be another crowded leaderboard on Sunday in the Korn Ferry Challenge at TPC Sawgrass.
They’re calling it the Korn Ferry Challenge.
It will be a challenge, all right … whoever wins on Sunday at the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley Course will have earned it against one of the deepest fields in Korn Ferry Tour history.
Wake Forest graduate Will Zalatoris finally emerged on top after nine other players led or shared the lead at some point. He birdied two of his last three holes and with a 65, took a one-shot lead at 10-under-par 200.
James Bramlett, attempting to become only the second African-American to win on the Korn Ferry Tour, shot the day’s low round with a 64 — with a 6-under 29 on the back nine — and is tied for second at 9-under with fellow PGA Tour member Luke List (65), Chase Wright (66) and Lee Hodges (67).
Shad Tuten (67) and Theo Humphrey (67) are tied at 8-under. There are 10 players within three shots of Zalatoris and 15 within four shots.
After a third round that began with the players who made the cut on 1-under-par number still only five shots off the lead, the field spread out a bit more on Saturday — but not by much.
“It’s anybody’s ballgame,” Zalatoris said. “I’ve got a one-shot advantage, but you don’t even look at it as sitting on a lead. I’ve still got to go get it tomorrow. I’ve shot 10-under the last three days on a pretty tough golf course and I feel like every aspect of my game is clicking. If I win, great, if not, it’s still a learning experience. The ultimate goal is just to get better every day.”
Bramlett may have some added pressure. He will be trying to won the same day that one of his best friends in golf, Harold Varner III, will be contending at the Charles Schwab Challenge at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas. Bramlett, Varner, Cameron Champ and Tiger Woods are the only African-Americans on the PGA Tour.
For a few holes on Saturday, both Bramlett and Varner led their respective tournaments.
“I feel extra inspired this week to play well, especially seeing Harold doing what he is doing,” Bramlett said. “Harold is doing it at Colonial on the biggest stage and to see what he is doing definitely adds a level of inspiration for me. I honestly want to catch him. If he is going to win, I want to win too. I want to get on it.”
Bramlett torched the back nine at the Valley (his front), beginning with a 40-foot birdie putt at No. 10. He dropped two more birdies, at Nos. 13 and 15, then holed a 9-iron from 172 yards out for an eagle-two at the par-four 18th hole.
How hard was that? The 17th is a converted par-5 hole and playing 500 yards. It’s the hardest hole on the course this week, averaging 4.371.
Nowhere close to being done, Bramlett then birdied No. 18 on a 12-foot putt, turned, and made two short birdie putts at Nos. 1 and 3 before he cooled off with two bogeys among his last four holes.
List will join Zalatoris and Bramlett in the final group. List hasn’t played on the Korn Ferry Tour since 2015, when he qualified for the PGA Tour, but wasn’t able to get into Colonial based on his current number at 124th on the FedEx Cup points list.
No matter. List is playing hard and birdied two of his last three holes to get into the last threesome.
“I would love to be at Colonial, but I kind of took it as a positive being here just to get my feet wet again,” he said. “I worked hard the last month of so, so it has been nice to see some good shots and good putts go in.”
The 156-player field for next week’s King & Bear Classic is set.
The 156-player field for next week’s Korn Ferry Tour King & Bear Classic is set, with two notable additions who were not in the field at Dye’s Valley this week: Tyler McCumber of Ponte Vedra Beach, who has PGA Tour status and is not in the field for the RBC Heritage at Hilton Head Island, S.C., and four-time PGA Tour winner Chris Kirk.
The event will be held at World Golf Village in St Augustine, Florida.
McCumber qualified for the PGA Tour off his money list standing on the 2019 Korn Ferry Tour. Entering the Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, he had made nine of 12 cuts this season.
Also playing at the King & Bear is past Tour winner Johnson Wagner. Mike Weir, an eight-time winner, did not enter.
The tournament will begin on Wednesday and conclude on Saturday, giving players an extra travel day to Utah for the next tournament on the Korn Ferry Tour schedule.
Scott Langley has been as sharp as anybody through two rounds at the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley.
Scott Langley didn’t know what to expect from his game this week at the Korn Ferry Challenge — which wouldn’t make him different from most of the other 154 players in the field in their first competition in three months.
But he’s been as sharp as anybody through two rounds at the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley.
Langley birdied three of his first four holes and leveled off with 13 consecutive pars before a closing bogey on Friday. But his 68 was good enough for the clubhouse lead at 6-under-par 134, one shot ahead of eight players who were done at 5-under.
Late in the afternoon, Ben Kohles (66), Lee Hodges (65) and Kristoffer Ventura (68) joined Langley at 6-under. Kohles had a one-shot lead and bogeyed the 18th hole.
Jamie Arnold of Australia shot the low round of the tournament thus far with a 63 that included one bogey to drop him out of a possible tie for the lead with Langley. Also at 5-under are Andres Gonzalez (65), Chase Wright (69), Nick Hardy (68), Will Zalatoris (68), Brandon Crick (66), Theo Humphrey (68) and Shad Tuten (64).
Gonzales, who recovered from an opening double-bogey at No. 10, played two days after his wife Kristin gave birth to their third child. He birdied four of his last five holes.
“I could shoot 90 today and be happy,” said the native of Olympia, Wash.
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On another low-scoring day, the Valley still laid its traps. Langley missed only two fairways and three greens in the second round, and for the tournament he’s hit 23 of 28 fairways (.821) and 31 of 36 greens (.861). His only mistake was hitting his tee shot at No. 18 into the water. He scrambled to make the bogey and avert further damage — and seemed no less upbeat.
“It’s really kind of uncharted territory for all of us,” said the University of Illinois graduate and past PGA Tour member, referring to the Korn Ferry’s re-start after not playing since March 1 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re grateful to the [PGA] Tour for all their hard work and looking out for our tour. I played well on Thursday [with a 66] and mentioned to my caddie that I was a little surprised. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect with my competitive game.”
Langley made a short birdie putt at the par-5 first hole, dropped 20-footers for birdie at Nos. 3 and 4, then made a steady stream of two-putt pars until his bogey at the last.
“I gave myself a lot of chances,” he said. “I didn’t capitalize on as many as I would have liked but overall it’s a good score. I’m trying to hit fairways, hit greens and keep it simple.”
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Langley’s career is notable because he became the first member of a First Tee chapter to earn a PGA Tour card, in 2013. He played out of the First Tee Gateway Chapter in St. Louis and in 2006, when he was 15, he was on the winning pro-am team with Dana Quigley at the PGA Tour Champions event at Pebble Beach.
“The First Tee is great because in a really well-meaning way, it kidn of conceals these really important values you want to teach kids in a really fun vehicle that is golf,” he said. “I was there to play golf and hang with my friens but in those moments and through those experiences the nine core values became a part of me.”
It wasn’t lost on him that the Korn Ferry Tour’s next stop under the revamped schedule is the World Golf Hall of Fame King & Bear course next week — just 2 miles from the First Tee national headquarters.
“My golf career in general is way cooler than I ever thought it would be,” he said. “Anything at this point to me is just pure enjoyment. But yeah, it’s cool that that’s the situation next week, that they’re so close. Obviously, it’s an organization that’s meant a lot to me personally. I’ve been able to witness the incredible, exponential growth that they’ve been able to achieve and their reach since I’ve been a part of it.”
While no positive coronavirus were reported at the Charles Schwab Challenge, the Korn Ferry Tour’s restart event was a different story.
The PGA Tour getting back in business hinges heavily on one thing: negative COVID-19 tests. The Tour cleared a big hurdle at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas, this week as it restarted its season with the Charles Schwab Challenge and, more importantly, not a single positive test for the coronavirus.
Commissioner Jay Monahan said on Wednesday that no caddies or players tested positive at Charles Schwab and all had been tested. That equates to 487 tests of players, caddies and essential personnel – all negative, per Associated Press reporting.
The Korn Ferry Tour wasn’t so lucky. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that one player and three caddies tested positive for the coronavirus at the Korn Ferry Challenge in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
The Tour has said it will not release the names of individuals who test positive.
According to the AP, the positive results came from saliva tests conducted at home. The Tour recommended that players and caddies take such tests before traveling to a tournament, but did not require it. Add in the reported tests conducted for the Korn Ferry Tour event, and the number of tests administered (both at home and on-site) reaches 1,559. Nearly 900 of those were done on-site.
A positive test means an individual must self-isolate for a period of at least 10 days. Two negative test results are needed (at least 24 hours apart) before that individual is allowed to return.
Since announcing it would be the first sport to fully resume action, PGA Tour officials have insisted that a series of strict protocols would be put in place, keeping stakeholders as safe as possible. That has played out at Colonial in some ways. There are no fans and no grandstands. Airport-like thermal screening has been set up and players are fulfilling media requests by video in an isolated room.
Then again, on the course, few masks have been seen at Colonial, and volunteers were mostly the ones wearing them. None of the players or caddies on-site were wearing masks and numerous members of law enforcement were also lacking PPEs.
The bubble is in place, but it’s best heavily on guidelines.
Camilo Villegas went into the first round of the Korn Ferry Challenge at TPC Sawgrass with no expectations and posted a lights-out score.
Camilo Villegas went into Thursday’s first round of the Korn Ferry Challenge at TPC Sawgrass with no expectations.
After all, he had not hit a golf shot in competition since Feb. 9 in his native country of Colombia, when he tied for fourth in the Bogota Championship. Since the coronavirus pandemic forced a shutdown in professional golf after the first round of the Players Championship on March 12, his best guess is that he played several practice rounds in Jupiter, Florida.
Then there was the main reason he wasn’t going to stress over bad shots or missed putts: his 20-month-old daughter Mia is undergoing treatment for tumors on her brain and spine, which he revealed on Wednesday during an emotional news conference.
“Like I said [Wednesday] … play good, good,” he said. “Play bad, good. I’m in a different place right now.”
Then, after being told by his brother and caddie Manuel Villegas to “go out and have fun,” Villegas birdied six of his first 12 holes and survived a sloppy finish to shoot 3-under 67 at Dye’s Valley to finish in a tie for 10th, three shots behind leader Paul Barjon (64), a native of France who played college golf at TCU.
A group of veterans with PGA Tour experience were bunched together in a tie for second at 4 under, including Tim Wilkinson of Jacksonville Beach, Erik Compton, Luke List, Scott Langley and Ryan Brehm.
Joining Villegas at 3 under were Ben Martin, who nearly won the Players Championship five years ago at the neighboring Stadium Course, Curtis Luck, who had a hole-in-one at No. 11, his second hole, and PGA Tour veterans Mark Anderson, Tag Ridings and Roberto Diaz.
There are 22 players within three shots of Barjon as the field of 155 players took advantage of light wind and soft greens to average just a shade over the par of 70 on the Valley Course.
Villegas was the fifth alternate into the tournament and after those dominoes fell, he made his first start in four months. Beginning at No. 10, he birdied three of his first four, countered a bogey at No. 15 with birdies at Nos. 16 and 18, then turned and birdied the par-5 first hole to take the tournament lead at 5-under.
Villegas bogeyed two of his last four holes but he wasn’t about to complain – especially about his work on the speedy Valley greens, where he needed only 26 putts.
“There were a couple of mistakes but I rolled it beautiful on the back nine, my front nine,” he said. “All in all, I’m happy to be here. More than the scoring, more than anything, it just feels good to have the energy. There was some good energy coming my way and I felt it. It was awesome.”
Part of that energy was the outpouring of texts, emails, phone calls and prayers after the former University of Florida All-American and four-time PGA Tour winner talked about the challenges his daughter faces.
“My phone was blowing up,” he said. “The support and the energy, the prayers and all the good stuff coming from everybody because they feel it and they feel for you and I felt it out there.”
Villegas also thanked fans who posted their feelings on social media.
“It’s pretty touching to see how many people think about you,” he said. “Especially in tough situations. I think my message was pretty clear. Don’t feel bad for us. Just send us good energy, a little prayer for Mia would be great. She’ll keep fighting and we’ll keep fighting. One day we’ll celebrate when she’s clean. I felt that energy and those prayers. I’m sure they’ll continue to send us the good vibes.”
Barjon, a former TCU player, took the lead after a pedestrian front nine (the Valley’s back) in which he made one birdie.
He then rattled off five birdies among his first seven holes on the front.
“I hit the ball pretty good all day but during the first nine holes, I had some issues with the speed of the greens,” said Barjon, who lost to David Kocher in sudden death in the Korn Ferry’s last tournament at the El Bosque Mexico Championship. “I don’t remember the last time I’ve played greens this fast and they’re soft at the same time, so they’re hard to figure out. On the back nine, I hit it a little closer and made a few putts. My speed was a little better so, I definitely turned it on.”
KFT President Alex Baldwin: “There’s an unpredictability to what the future will hold but we’re preparing to the best of our ability.”
Korn Ferry Tour president Alex Baldwin said the events of the last three months aren’t in any playbook. But she’s worked tirelessly to participate in the return to golf this week with the Korn Ferry Challenge.
A few seconds after Zack Sucher of Birmingham, Alabama, and Adam Svensson of Canada hit the opening tee shots of the Korn Ferry Challenge at 7 a.m. on Thursday at the first and 10th tees of the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley Course, Alex Baldwin will permit herself a small sigh of relief.
“There will definitely be a moment to sort of reflect and acknowledge and feel some appreciation for what has gone on in getting us to that point,” said the president of the Korn Ferry Tour. “But we have to be unrelenting to continue each and every day to fulfill our 2020 season. A lot of still happening around the country. There’s an unpredictability to what the future will hold but we’re preparing to the best of our ability.”
Baldwin, who started her career in golf as a player agent for IMG, was named the Korn Ferry Tour president on Jan. 30, 2019. She is the first woman to head one of the PGA Tour’s six global tours but like the rest of the world, wasn’t quite prepared for the seismic changes from the coronavirus pandemic that would rock the world in her second year.
The last time the Korn Ferry Tour played was March 1 in Mexico. The PGA Tour, which holds the Charles Schwab Challenge this week in Fort Worth, Texas, last saw shots in the air at the first round of The Players Championship on March 12.
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The Players was canceled the next day as sports worldwide came to a screeching halt.
But almost from that point, Baldwin said she and her colleagues on the Tour’s executive team began preparing for the eventual return of the game.
That begins this week in Ponte Vedra Beach, where 156 past and aspiring PGA Tour pros will play 72 holes on the Dye’s Valley Course, then travel to St. Augustine, Florida, next week for 72 more in the King & Bear Classic June 17-20.
Thousands upon thousands of details went into reopening golf on both tours and Baldwin said the process “has been non-stop.”
There has been arranging to test around 400 players, caddies, tournament staff, Tour staff and volunteers each week as the PGA Tour is planning to compete non-stop until the week before Christmas and the Korn Ferry Tour until mid-October with the Orange County National Championship in Orlando.
The Tours also are providing charter flights and hotels to keep players and caddies within a tight “bubble” to minimize contact with those outside the tournament community each week. Players and caddies had to be educated on the myriad of details to ensure social distancing while at the same time playing a game four days in a row on courses that frequently top out over 400 acres of land.
There has been communication with health officials in their markets, the CDC, the WHO and members of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force.
Nothing has been left to chance — or so the Tour leadership hopes.
“It’s been a constant cycle of communication, an enormous amount of collaboration,” Baldwin said. “There has been a lot of listening and understanding and caring. Logistically, all the different considerations have been deal with through an incredible team effort. We have focused on the return to golf in the safest possible manner.”
Pandemic not in any playbook
It certainly isn’t what Baldwin thought her job would entail when she was promoted by commissioner Jay Monahan after serving two years as vice president of corporate partnerships. Baldwin helped the Tour land corporate partners such as Morgan Stanley, Citi, Rolex and United Airlines, and spent her first six months as the Korn Ferry Tour president negotiating the deal for the Los Angeles-based financial company to take over from Web.com as the tour’s umbrella sponsor.
A view of the tee marker on the 16th hole during the first round of the 2019 Korn Ferry Tour Championship in Newburgh, Indiana. Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images
The Korn Ferry Tour played six tournaments in January and February and was scheduled for a three-week break before the Chitimacha Louisiana Open.
But during that time, Baldwin watched the news and started getting an ominous feeling.
“I did anticipate there would be a disruption, the way it was starting to unfold,” she said. “I can’t say I expected us not to hit a golf ball for 103 days. I’ve joked with Jay that none of this was in the playbook. There have been a lot of twists and turns.”
Baldwin’s situation was a bit different than Monahan and his PGA Tour staff. The Korn Ferry Tour is composed mostly of young players trying to use it as the pathway to the PGA Tour, or for those who have lost their Tour status and are fighting their way back.
While Korn Ferry Tour purses are $600,000 or more, there isn’t a lot of financial security. The big equipment and endorsement contracts, and corporate outings come when they reach what they call “The Big Tour.”
And when the Korn Ferry Tour stopped, some had to take part-time jobs — such as Jared Wolfe, the No. 6 player on the 2020 points list, who sold coronavirus testing equipment to clinics.
Baldwin said her career as an agent helped her empathize with the Korn Ferry players who saw their income drop to nothing for three months.
“I absolutely think I had a unique vantage point,” she said. “I know what it’s like to represent a player who’s the first alternate in a tournament, one who’s the 25th alternate, or the one who wins, and with it comes the additional obligations and opportunities.”
She said being a mother also helps. Baldwin and her husband Eric have two children, Max and Olivia.
“Certainly being a caring and compassionate person helps,” she said. “Empathy is really important in everything we do.”
Players laud Baldwin’s communication
Korn Ferry Tour players often don’t spend enough time on the tour to get to know the leadership. But Baldwin has made an impression many of them, mainly for her listening and communication skills.
“She’s amazing. … brilliant,” said Chris Baker. “To get to this position, she’s got to be very smart and it’s hard to come in and run one of the top tours in the world. I was on the Player Advisory Council last year and spent some time with her. She does a great job listening to us, taking our ideas and putting then into play. She’s a great leader.”
Davis Riley said Baldwin inundates the players with informational emails about almost any subject that affects their professional lives.
“She does a great job of letting us know what we’re doing,” he said. “She’s a great representative for the Korn Ferry Tour.”
Extensive sports background
Baldwin has been immersed in sports since she was in high school in Connecticut, where she played basketball, field hockey and lacrosse. She was on the rowing team at Bates College in Maine – and is a member of the Jacksonville Rowing Club – where she graduated with a degree in political science.
The highlight of her week is a family tradition: nine holes of golf with her son.
After working at IMG’s golf division from 1992-2004, Baldwin joined Fenway Sports Management, where she worked for Monahan and helped sell sponsorships and consulted clients for the Tour’s event at the TPC Boston.
She was later a consulting executive at CAA Sports before rejoining Monahan at the PGA Tour.
“I was at IMG when they represented Tiger, Vijay, David Duval, Karrie Webb. … it was the height of golf’s ascension, that moment in time that I feel golf redefined its trajectory,” she said. “I was young, a kid, and I was lucky enough to have a front seat to see it all happen.”
But she wanted to broaden her experiences and instead of representing players, she wanted to work with tournaments and corporate sponsors.
“I’m very passionate about the industry,” she said. “And working for Jay Monahan, who has this incredible combination of intellect, business sense and compassion. … it’s made him a true leader but also a colleague, someone who looks out for every single person involved with the Tour as if they were in his family.”
Baldwin is thankful for the re-opening of golf in one key regard: she and the rest of the Tour are back to their main task.
“We have to remember we’re running a business, to maintain opportunities for our players,” she said. “That’s the human side of this that carries us forward.”
There are now 16 PGA Tour winners who have combined for 36 titles who will tee it up in this week’s Korn Ferry Tour re-start event.
There have been five withdrawals from the Korn Ferry Challenge at TPC Sawgrass, which resulted in three more past PGA Tour winners added to the field, including one Gator and one Bulldog.
Camilo Villegas, who has won four PGA Tour titles, Hudson Swafford, who has one, and D.A. Points, who has three, will be among the 156 players who will start at Dye’s Valley on Thursday.
That brings the list to 16 past Tour winners who have combined for 36 titles in the field. The group is led by 2003 Masters champion Mike Weir (eight victories) and Robert Allenby and Sean O’Hair (four each).
Villegas, who played on the University of Florida’s 2001 national championship team, won the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship in 2008. His last victory was in 2014 at the Wyndham Championship.
Swafford, a St. Simons Island, Georgia, resident, left Georgia after the 2011 season and won the PGA Tour’s event in Palm Springs, California, in 2017.
The highlight for Points in his career was winning in 2011 at Pebble Beach.
A total of five players have withdrawn since the field was finalized late last week: Joshua Creel, Bo Hoag, James Hahn, Derek Lamely and John Oda. The players are not required to make a reason for their withdrawal public.
For medical privacy reasons, the PGA Tour has said it will not release the names of any player on any of its tours who are forced to withdraw because of a positive coronavirus test.
David Kocher was the last man standing following a three-way playoff in the Korn Ferry Tour’s El Bosque Mexico Championship on March 1.
David Kocher was the last man standing following a three-way playoff in the Korn Ferry Tour’s El Bosque Mexico Championship on March 1.
How could he have ever anticipated that he’d also be the last man to hold a winner’s trophy on the Korn Ferry Tour for more than three months?
Kocher and the rest of the players on the Korn Ferry Tour will finally get their chance to play meaningful golf on Thursday when the Korn Ferry Challenge at TPC Sawgrass begins at the Dye’s Valley Course.
They will be chasing a $600,000 purse and $108,000 first-place check as their tour joins the PGA Tour in Fort Worth to resume competitive golf after it was suspended on March 13 at the Players Championship.
“It was crazy, how things turned so quickly,” said Kocher, a Charlotte, North Carolina, native who is the first player in University of Maryland history to play in four NCAA championships. “I was playing very well and remember thinking that I could definitely build on this. I had really good momentum and I was bummed I couldn’t carry that to the next tournament [in Louisiana].”
However, Kocher isn’t losing sight of the fact that he’s played exceptionally well since turning pro in 2018 and qualifying for the PGA Tour Series-China.
He knocked out five top-10s in 2019, including a victory, and earned a spot on the Korn Ferry Tour by finishing third on the Order of Merit.
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Kocher has made five of six cuts on the Korn Ferry Tour and followed up a tie for fourth in the LECOM Suncoast Classic with his victory over Paul Barjon and Chad Ramey in Mexico. That elevated him to third on the points list, behind Mito Pereira and Davis Riley.
Kocher two-putted for birdie on the par-5 18th hole at the El Bosque Country Club to win on the first hole of sudden death, capping a breathless day in which he rallied from five shots back to get into contention, then survived a shot in the hazard on the 72nd hole to make a 12-foot par putt and reserve his spot in the playoff.
Kocher’s momentum was going to be interrupted anyway by the Korn Ferry Tour schedule. The Tour wasn’t due to resume for another three weeks after Mexico but Kocher said it was still a bit of a shock when he found out late the night before he was going to drive from Charlotte to Broussard, Louisiana, for the Chitimacha Louisiana Open.
“I was obviously a little upset,” he said. “But I think I’ve handled it pretty well.”
His answer was to go back to work. Kocher has practiced and played frequently with friends and fellow pros at the TPC Piper Glen, Raintree Country Club and the Charlotte Country Club, trying to sharpen a tee-to-green game that was among the best in the early weeks on the Korn Ferry Tour.
Kocher is 12th on the tour in driving accuracy (.904) and eighth in greens in regulation (.833).
On the rare occasions he’s missed a green, Kocher has gotten up-and-down 75 percent of the time, ninth on the tour.
Kocher has been so locked in that he’s hit only one approach shot in a bunker and missed only 11 other greens. Kocher is third on the tour in total birdies with 96 and has logged scores in the 60s in 11 of his last 16 rounds.
“My ball-striking has always been one of the most solid points of my game,” he said. “If I’m hitting a lot of greens, I can compete with anyone. My confidence level is very high after winning a top-five. I know I can play well and win out here.”
Prior to any practice rounds, Kocher said he had played Dye’s Valley only twice.
That, combined with a strong field that includes 15 past PGA Tour winners, will make it a highly competitive week, he said.
“I expect them to play pretty well, especially the guys in Florida who play in these conditions,” he said. “This is one of the best fields in Korn Ferry Tour history … a lot of good players.”
Plus, he’d like to accomplish something else: meeting another former Maryland player who hit a ton of fairways, Ponte Vedra Beach resident Fred Funk.
“He’s a great friend of the program,” Kocher said. “I’d love to meet him.”
Here’s a primer on the Korn Ferry Tour, the primary avenue to PGA Tour membership for the vast majority of players.
The Korn Ferry Tour is back on the First Coast after a two-year absence, with tournaments to be played June 11-14 at TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley Course in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, and June 18-21 at the King & Bear course at the World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Florida.
It won’t be permanent, at least not yet.
The Tour played at the Valley Course from 2010-15, then at the Atlantic Beach Country Club in 2016 and 2018 (the 2017 tournament was canceled because of Hurricane Matthew). The first three years at the Valley was a regular-season event and the Korn Ferry Tour Championship was played from 2013-17, until it was moved to Victoria National in Newburgh, Indiana, last year.
Here’s a primer on the tour that is the primary avenue to PGA Tour membership for the vast majority of players:
The name game
Since it was launched in 1990 as the Ben Hogan Tour, umbrella sponsorships have determined the name of the circuit. Since then it’s been the Nike Tour, Buy.com Tour, Nationwide Tour, Web.com Tour (a Jacksonville web consulting firm did the honors) and now the Korn Ferry Tour. Korn Ferry is a “global organizational consulting firm” based in Los Angeles.
Who plays?
It’s a mix of recent college grads, PGA Tour members who have lost their exempt status and pros in between. But the fields can be pretty good. At the Valley Course this week, the field will include 15 players who have combined to win 30 PGA Tour events, led by Mike Weir with eight.
The “pathway”
PGA Tour officials cringe when the Korn Ferry Tour is referred to as a “minor league” or “developmental” tour. Since the rules were changed in 2013 to eliminate national qualifying tournaments for the PGA Tour, the strategy is to market the Korn Ferry Tour as the “pathway” to the PGA Tour.
Here’s how it works: The top 25 players on the final regular-season points list earn PGA Tour cards for the next season. The top 75, combined with Nos. 126-200 on the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup points list, play in the Korn Ferry Finals, a three-tournament series to determine 25 more PGA Tour cards based on performance in those tournaments. Later in the fall, the Korn Ferry national qualifier fills the roster of players for the coming KFC season.
Except…
There will be no Korn Ferry Tour graduating class in 2020 because of the schedule interruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The results of this season will be combined with the 2021 season to determine the 50 PGA Tour cards for 2021-22. One caveat is that the top 10 players at the end of this season will get conditional PGA Tour status and will be eligible for events held opposite World Golf Championships or majors.
Does it work?
Before the Hogan Tour, only the top 125 players on the PGA Tour money list from the previous year were guaranteed of playing high-level tournament golf each week. There were always Monday qualifiers, but that left a lot of very good players with only mini-tours.
“There are so many good players now that each and every one of them should have an opportunity to play,” Deane Beman, then-PGA Tour Commissioner, said at the time.
Since Mike Springer won the first Korn Ferry event at the 1990 Bakersfield Open and went on to win twice on the PGA Tour, Korn Ferry graduates have won 549 times on the PGA Tour, including 24 majors. Korn Ferry graduates include World Golf Hall of Fame member Ernie Els, David Duval, Bubba Watson, John Daly, Jim Furyk, Zach Johnson, Jimmy Walker, Tom Lehman, Patrick Reed, Justin Thomas, Webb Simpson and Gary Woodland.
How good is the golf?
While most Korn Ferry courses aren’t set up like U.S. Opens, these guys light it up. There have been 34 scores of 60 or better in the history of the Korn Ferry Tour, including a 58 by Stephan Jaeger in the 2016 Ellie Mae Classic at the TPC Stonbrae, and six rounds of 59 – including Jacksonville University graduate Russell Knox and Atlantic Beach resident Sam Saunders. Two players, Jaeger and Daniel Chopra (2004 Henrico County Open) have shot 30-under for 72 holes.
To win on the Korn Ferry requires birdies and eagles, and lots of them. Only two winners last season shot single-digits under par, and the average winning score was 17 under. The scoring average for Korn Ferry winners in 2019 was 67.13.
How good is the money?
Well, it’s good but not supposed to be that good, to give players an incentive to advance to the PGA Tour and its wealth of riches. Last year, Scottie Scheffler banked a tour-leading $565,338, which would rank No. 159 on the Tour’s official money list. The purses for the next two weeks will be $600,000, with $108,000 going to the winner.
Paul Claxton of St. Simons Island, Georgia, became the first Korn Ferry player to reach $1 million in career earnings in 2013 but that’s like Crash Davis breaking the minor league home run record in “Bull Durham.” The highest purses are $1 million for the Korn Ferry Finals.
More than 250 players will tee it up at two sites on Monday ahead of the Korn Ferry Tour’s first event back.
Players looking for competitive reps will tee it up anywhere and everywhere. This summer, that could mean everywhere from state opens to charity events to the Korn Ferry Tour. The Monday qualifier is loaded for the Korn Ferry Challenge at TPC Sawgrass, the KFT’s restart event to be played June 11-14 at TPC Sawgrass’ Dye’s Valley Course in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
More than 250 players will tee it up at two sites – Palencia Club in St. Augustine, Florida, and Eagle Harbor Golf Club in Orange Park, Florida – on Monday ahead of the Korn Ferry Tour event, and their resumes are all over the board.
Eight Monday qualifiers will be added, four each from Palencia and Eagle Harbor, to the Korn Ferry Challenge field (which is deep itself).
A quick look at the field reveals experience levels from PGA Tour winners, like Jonathan Byrd and Smylie Kaufman, on down. Martin Piller and Nicholas Thompson are seasoned pros who have also bounced between the PGA and Korn Ferry tours. James Driscoll is a two-time Korn Ferry Tour winner.
Akshay Bhatia, the 18-year-old and former No. 1 junior who turned professional after last year’s Walker Cup, is also in the field.
Former Duke teammates Chandler Eaton, who made the cut at the 2019 U.S. Open and advanced all the way to the final stage of Korn Ferry Tour Q-School last fall, and Alex Smalley, two-time Sunnehanna Amateur winner and a U.S. Walker Cupper, are in the field. Put past Stanford teammates (and Walker Cup teammates) Brandon Wu, who also made the 2019 U.S. Open cut, and Isaiah Salinda in that same group.
Sunny Kim has still gotten competitive reps during the pandemic through mini-tour golf and in March carded a 59 to win his 67th event on the Minor League Golf Tour.
Former Augusta State player Broc Everett, who won the 2018 individual NCAA title, will tee it up and so will Chase Koepka, the younger brother of Brooks Koepka.
Korn Ferry Tour player Chip McDaniel is of particular interest in this setting. He garnered the moniker “Mr. Monday” after he successfully Monday qualified for three PGA Tour events in 2019 in addition to navigating his way through U.S. Open sectional qualifying.
This time last year, Brandon Mancheno was gearing up for the start of the summer amateur circuit at the Dogwood Invitational, an event he won. Mancheno, a Jacksonville native and a junior at Auburn, will have a little different week now that the Dogwood has been canceled. Also keep an eye on Davis Thompson, a Georgia junior who is ranked No. 5 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings.
Other up-and-comers include recent college graduates Luis Gagne (LSU), Will Gordon (Vanderbilt), Will Grimmer (Ohio State) and Norman Xiong (Oregon).
