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.