The Korn Ferry Tour’s regular season will come to a dramatic conclusion this week in Omaha at the Pinnacle Bank Championship and 25 PGA Tour cards are on the line.
Fifteen players have already wrapped up their cards — they are PGA Tour-bound. Carl Yuan sits in the No. 1 spot on the KFT points list and behind him, in order are: Ben Griffin, the former North Carolina standout; Justin Suh, a four-time All-American at USC; Taylor Montgomery, who last season finished No. 26 on both the regular-season and KFT points lists; Robby Shelton, a former top-ranked junior who went on to star at Alabama; and Davis Thompson and Trevor Werbylo, two players who were part of last summer’s inaugural PGA Tour University class.
They guys who need to perform this week are numbers 16-25: 16. Harry Hall, 17. Tyson Alexander, 18. Kevin Yu, 19. Harrison Endycott, 20. Trevor Cone, 21. Anders Albertson, 22. Kevin Roy, 23. Ben Taylor, 24. Vincent Norrman and No. 25 Michael Kim.
There are exactly 25 players outside the current top 25 who could make the jump into that top 25. Among them is former Texas All-American Pierceson Coody, who has played only seven events, has a victory and is No. 29 in the points standings. Another high-profile contender is 20-year-old Akshay Bhatia who won the KFT season opener. But he cooled off after that is and 30th on the points list. He’ll need at least a tie for 14th this week to jump into the top 25.
It’s been a long season and given what’s on the line, so many of these young players have shown up for nearly every event on the schedule.
Now’s the time because at the Korn Ferry playoffs, the players from the PGA Tour who finished 126-150 will be in the field.
LPGA Tour Heads To Northern Ireland:
Most of the stars of the LPGA Tour have headed home but there’s a full field this week in Northern Ireland at the ISPS Handa World Invitational.
Men from the European Tour will be on site as well at Galgorm Castle — two courses, two separate events, they’ll alternate layouts the first two days at the Massereene Golf Club.
Former Women’s Open champion Georgia Hall is one of the bigger names in the field along with Leona Maguire. Defending champion is Pajaree Annarukarn.
Danielle Kang Set To Return:
Danielle Kang has battled the injury bug this season but she will be returning to the LPGA Tour in two weeks at the Canadian Open, which starts August 25.
