korn ferry tour pga card

Korn Ferry Tour: Strategies to Qualify and Challenges to Expect

Here's how to get on the Korn Ferry Tour and play for a spot on the PGA Tour

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The Korn Ferry Tour is the official developmental tour of the PGA Tour. It’s somewhat of a minor league for professional golfers where, if you play well enough, you earn a spot on the most competitive golf tour in the world, the PGA Tour.

The Korn Ferry Tour can also be a venue for players to revive their careers after losing their PGA Tour card. Some people say it's actually more difficult to succeed on the Korn Ferry Tour because of the number of players and the determination of each one of them. 

If you want to join the Korn Ferry Tour, here’s how to do it.

Qualifying School

One way to get to the Korn Ferry Tour is through the PGA Tour Q-School . That means paying some serious money and going through several rounds – depending on what status, if any, you already hold – of qualifying tournaments across the country.

Q-School consists of four stages of good ole’ fashioned survive-and-advance stroke play. If you play well enough, you advance.

For the first time in a decade, PGA Tour cards are once again available through Q-School as of 2023. The top five finishers, plus ties, from Final Stage go directly to the PGA Tour, with no stop on the Korn Ferry Tour required.

If you’re one of the top-25 finishers (plus ties) who didn’t earn a PGA Tour card, you’re exempt on the Korn Ferry Tour through three periodic reorders. 

The next 15 finishers, plus ties, are exempt through two periodic reorders the following season, and everyone else is subject to the first periodic reorder. 

In essence, the fewer reorders you’re exempt through, the quicker you need to perform well on the Korn Ferry Tour to maintain your status. Since players get priority access to Korn Ferry Tour events based on their Final Stage finish, if you don’t play well in Final Stage, although you may technically have access to Korn Ferry Tour events, there’s no guarantee there will be a spot for you in the Korn Ferry Tour event’s your eligible for.

While you earn Korn Ferry Tour status by reaching Final Stage of Q-School, it takes a lot of work just to get there. Here’s how Pre-Qualifying, First Stage, and Second Stage work.

Pre-Qualifying Stage

Players who advance through the Pre-Qualifying stage will join players already exempt from Pre-Qualifying at the First Stage.

Pre-Qualifying tournaments are contested during final three weeks of September. 

First Qualifying Stage

Players who survive First Stage advance to the Second Stage where they compete against players who were already exempt into Second Stage.

First Stage of Q-School is contested during the final three weeks of October. 

Second Qualifying Stage

Players who advance through Second Stage head to Final Stage to compete for one of five PGA Tour cards or priority ranking on the next season's Korn Ferry Tour. Second Stage is contested in mid to late November.

Final Qualifying Stage

Final Stage is contested in mid-December.

Monday Qualifying

The other way to play on the Korn Ferry Tour is through Monday qualifying for individual tournaments. On the Monday before each tournament there are a few, usually between 4-8, tournament spots up for grabs. A hundred-plus hopefuls show up each week to battle for those few precious spots in that week's tournament.

Of course, if you make it through the Monday Qualifier you have the opportunity to earn Korn Ferry Tour points and solidify future status.

In order to participate in any of the qualifying events, players have to fill out the appropriate qualifying tournament application .

LPGA & Symetra Tour

The official development tour for the LPGA is the Symetra Tour . To join that tour is much the same as the Korn Ferry Tour.

Players are responsible for a large portion, if not all, of their expenses while going through qualifying. This includes travel, hotels, and entry fees. Players lucky enough to have endorsement contracts from companies can offset some of that cost. The upside? It was announced in 2021 that Korn Ferry Tour purses for each event will go up in 2022, and starting in 2023 all events offer at least a $1 million purse.

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Here Are the 2024 PGA Tour-Bound Players From the Korn Ferry Tour

• Author: John Schwarb

For the first time since 1981, twins will simultaneously hold PGA Tour cards. 

Parker and Pierceson Coody were among 30 players earning 2024 status on the PGA Tour via the 2023 Korn Ferry Tour season. The developmental tour's season wrapped up Sunday in Newburgh, Indiana, with the Korn Ferry Tour Championship.

The finale represented the last chance for players to crack the top 30 on the season-long points list and five played their way in: Paul Barjon, Mac Meissner, Wilson Furr, Josh Teater and Roger Sloan.

Ben Kohles finished atop the season-long Korn Ferry Tour points list and is PGA Tour-bound in 2024.

Jordan Prather/USA TODAY Sports

Ben Kohles, 33, finished atop the points list, he was there for most of the season after two wins in April. By finishing first he also earned exemptions to the 2024 Players Championship and U.S. Open .

The Coody twins starred at the University of Texas and are grandchildren of Charles Coody, the 1971 Masters champion. Twins Curtis and Allan Strange both held PGA Tour cards in 1981.

Below are the 30 PGA Tour-bound players.

2023 Korn Ferry Tour Graduates

Listed in order of Korn Ferry Tour points

Alejandro Tosti

Ben Silverman

Pierceson Coody

Grayson Murray

Paul Barjon

Max Greyserman

Chandler Phillips

Adrien Dumont de Chassart

David Skinns  

Jacob Bridgeman

Jimmy Stanger

Norman Xiong

Nicholas Lindheim

Joe Highsmith

Patrick Fishburn

Mac Meissner

Tom Whitney

Kevin Dougherty

Chris Gotterup

Wilson Furr

Parker Coody

Josh Teater

Ryan McCormick

Scott Gutschewski

Roger Sloan

Rafael Campos

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Tight race for pga tour cards, top 75 at korn ferry tour regular-season finale.

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The PGA Tour isn’t the only circuit with a regular-season finale this week.

The Korn Ferry Tour’s super-season is also coming to an end with the Pinnacle Bank Championship in Omaha, Nebraska. There has been no promotion or relegation since fall 2019 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After this week, the top 25 players on the season-long points list will earn their PGA Tour cards for the 2021-22 season. Those inside the top 75 will also be exempt for the Korn Ferry Tour Finals, where another 25 Tour cards will be up for grabs, and at least be guaranteed full status on the Korn Ferry Tour for next season.

Entering the regular-season finale, the standings are excruciatingly close.

According to the Tour’s calculations, it appears as though the top 19 in the standings are safe to earn Tour cards. That’d mean the cutoff falls at Jared Wolfe, and it would take a wild sequence of events for No. 20 Nick Hardy to fall out, too.

After that, it gets interesting: Ben Kohles, Brett Drewitt, Curtis Thompson, Taylor Montgomery and Peter Uihlein occupy spots No. 21-25, respectively. Uihlein has only a seven-point lead over No. 26 Austin Smotherman, while 27th-ranked Roberto Diaz is eight points behind.

In all, spots No. 24-27 are separated by just 18 points.

The Tour said that any player at No. 59 (Charlie Saxon) or better has a mathematical chance to crack the top 25 based on their play this week.

For Tour hopefuls, the top 75 is just as important. Taylor Dickson is currently the bubble boy, only 16 points ahead of No. 76 Jose de Jesus Rodriguez.

Those who finish outside the top 75 are not exempt for the Korn Ferry Tour Finals and will need to make plans to enter the second stage of Q-School.

The three-tournament Korn Ferry Tour Finals – featuring both the top 75 in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals and No. 126-200 on the FedExCup standings – begin next week with the Albertson Boise Open in Idaho. It continues with the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship in Ohio and concludes with the Korn Ferry Tour Championship, Sept. 2-5, in Indiana.

Here are the players who have already secured a graduation date to the PGA Tour:

Stephan Jaeger

Mito Pereira (already competing on Tour after three-win promotion)

Taylor Moore

Taylor Pendrith

Greyson Sigg

Davis Riley

Will Zalatoris

Adam Svensson

David Lipsky

Paul Barjon

Max McGreevy

Andrew Novak

Seth Reeves

Cameron Young

Jared Wolfe

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Final 25 PGA Tour cards awarded at Korn Ferry Tour Championship

The start of the new PGA Tour season is only a week away, and 25 additional players from the Korn Ferry Tour will be looking forward to teeing it up at the Greenbrier after punching their tickets to the big tour at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship.

The top 25 Korn Ferry Tour players already locked up their PGA Tour cards back in August at the conclusion of the regular season. The remaining players have been battling it out over a three-tournament Korn Ferry Tour Finals series that began with the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship, then headed to the Albertson’s Boise Open, and concluded with Monday’s final round of the Korn Ferry Tour Championship. Twenty-five additional PGA Tour cards were up for grabs for the top qualifiers throughout the Finals series.

England’s Tom Lewis came into the Tour Championship at T82 in the standings. He needed a high finish to secure his card, and he delivered, winning the tournament by five shots with rounds of 68-66-66-65. Monday’s final round was his best of the week, featuring eight birdies and one bogey. You can find the full list of players who earned their PGA Tour cards in the Korn Ferry Tour Finals series below.

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Chris Baker Joseph Bramlett Bronson Burgoon Cameron Davis Tyler Duncan Doug Ghim Fabian Gomez Brandon Hagy David Hearn Kramer Hickok Tom Hoge Beau Hossler Viktor Hovland Anirban Lahiri Hank Lebioda Tom Lewis Grayson Murray Matthew NeSmith Rob Oppenheim Cameron Percy Robert Streb Ben Taylor Brendon Todd D.J. Trahan Ricky Werenski

Some notable names who failed to secure their status via a finish in the top 25 in the Finals standings include Peter Uihlein, Ben Crane, Billy Hurley III, Harris English, Stewart Cink, Jose de Jesus Rodriguez , Hunter Mahan, Jamie Lovemark, Morgan Hoffmann, Freddie Jacobson and Johnson Wagner.

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Wyndham Championship

Sedgefield Country Club

Late collapse by Max Greyserman hands Aaron Rai first PGA Tour title at Wyndham Championship

David Jensen

GREENSBORO, N.C. — It must have been a lonely vantage, standing in the fairway on the 18th hole, watching Aaron Rai make the birdie that put the Wyndham Championship to rest. That's where Max Greyserman stood, his approach from the fairway suddenly rendered irrelevant, and it would have been hard not to stew on missed opportunities. He took a final full swing—he needed to hole out from 162 yards to force a playoff—watched the ball land in the greenside bunker and began the long uphill walk in the fading light.

Rai, who finished at 18 under to capture his first PGA Tour win, deserves all the credit we afford to winners on this circuit, and his final-round 64 tells the story of a clutch performance that continued to the very end, but it's an undeniable fact that the lasting memory from Sedgefield Country Club will be the nightmarish closing stretch from 29-year-old tour rookie Greyserman.

It all began, strangely enough, with what looked like a (literal) stroke of great fortune. Already leading Rai by two shots on 13, Greyserman striped a drive and then hit his 91-yard approach into the hole for an eagle. It seemed to be the shot of the tournament, it pushed him to 21 under, and, based on his terrific form all day, at least felt decisive.

The good feelings, however, lasted exactly one hole. On 14, he pushed his tee shot to the right, where his good luck turned instantly bad when the ball hit the cart path and bounded out of bounds. He hit a provisional, confirmed his first tee shot had rolled out, and then made a drastic mistake in hitting his next shot into a bunker. When the dust had settled on this burgeoning nightmare, he'd made a quadruple bogey 8, and given his four-shot lead away in one fell swoop.

RELATED: Here's the prize money payout for each player at the Wyndham Championship

To his credit, he rebounded instantly with a birdie on 15 to retake the lead, but on 16, facing a three-foot par putt, he lipped it out, then lipped out the comebacker to make double and lose his lead for good. Meanwhile, Rai made five straight pars to take him to the 18th, where he hit a marvelous approach to six feet before burying the tournament-winning birdie while Greyserman watched helplessly from the fairway.

"I didn't hit a good tee shot," Greyserman said of his disaster on 13. "You're going to hit bad tee shots over the course of 72 holes, but if that doesn't hit the cart path, we're probably in a different situation. That doesn't mean that that one bounce is the reason I didn't win, but what happened after...if that doesn't hit that cart path, I'm potentially able to hit onto the green."

"It's honestly not the first time that I've hit the cart path on the right and it went OB," he continued. "In Savannah on the Korn Ferry Tour I was in contention down the stretch and the same thing happened. I've got to ask the people not to put cart paths on the right side."

Like Greyserman, the English Rai is 29, and like Greyserman he had never before won on the PGA Tour (though he was won twice on the DP World Tour). His triumph in Greensboro, along with the money and the two-year exemption, will also earn him entry into his first Masters next year at Augusta.

"It's truly a dream come true," Rai said, "understanding how difficult it is out here and how difficult the standard is. I'm extremely grateful. It hasn't sunk in, but it's an amazing achievement."

Standing on 18 tee, Billy Horschel approached him and asked if he wanted to know the sitaution—Rai led by one, but had avoided scoreboards all day. He declined, but changed his mind 30 seconds later and asked his caddie, who advised him to just focus on the hole, but in a way that Rai interpreted as a good sign—he must be in the lead or close to it. His drive was dead straight, and he followed with one of the best approaches of the day on the notorious closing hole. Rai described himself as "pretty calm" standing over the birdie putt on 18.

"I obviously felt a little bit nervous at times," he admitted. "That's pretty normal in that situation, but I'm proud of staying pretty focused and present throughout."

For his part, Greyserman said all the right things in the aftermath of his painful defeat, and seemed to have a solid perspective on a potentially rattling afternoon.

"Obviously stuff happens in golf that sometimes it's not meant to be," he said. "I'm just going to walk away that I played really, really good golf, executed really well, had probably a four, four or five shot lead...if you're doing that in a PGA Tour event, you're doing something exceptionally well so that's what I'm going to walk away with."

RELATED: Here are the clubs Aaron Rai used to win the Wyndham Championship

Ryo Hisatsune and J.J. Spaun finished in a tie for third at 15 under, while Luke Clanton, the amateur who has been posting great results all summer on tour, did it again with a solo fifth , playing 39 holes Sunday less than 24 hours before the start of his U.S. Amateur in Minnesota. The Wyndham is the last event of the Tour's regular season final, but the bubble watch proved relatively uneventful on Sunday, with the top 70 coming into the weekend staying the same by tournament's end. The only real drama came between Victor Perez and Davis Riley, with Perez holding him off to maintain his spot just inside the bubble.

The Tour heads to Memphis for the first leg of the playoffs this coming week, and both Greyserman and Rai will be in the field. While Greyserman can be proud of a strong rookie season, there are questions he has not yet answered, and that will loom even larger as the postseason begins. As for Rai, he hung in just long enough to rise to the moment, and though he owes his chance to some strange circumstances late in the day—appropriate, considering the strange circumstances of the entire week, starting with the heavy rains that canceled play on Thursday—he made the best of what fate gave him, and took a massive step forward in a career that keeps getting better.

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Family affair: three gutschewskis grouped together at korn ferry tour event, share this article.

Amy Gutschewski won’t have any difficult decisions to make as far as what group to watch during the first two rounds of the Korn Ferry Tour’s Pinnacle Bank Championship. That’s because the PGA Tour’s developmental circuit made it easy for her, grouping husband, Scott, and sons Luke and Trevor together for Thursday and Friday play. It marks the second time a father and multiple sons have played in the same Tour-sanctioned event, following in the footsteps only of the Nicklauses.

Scott, or “Gootch” as he is affectionately called, is a 47-year-old journeyman pro who once went 10 years – 3,626 days to be exact – between starts as a PGA Tour member. He should be in Greensboro, North Carolina, at the Tour’s Wyndham Championship, but he’s far enough down the alternate list that he decided to commit to his first Korn Ferry Tour event of the year in his home state of Nebraska. Scott has made just four of 16 cuts this season in the big leagues and not even a victory at the Wyndham would have earned him a place in the FedEx Cup Playoffs, which begin next week.

Luke, a rising junior at Iowa State, won the Nebraska Junior Amateur in 2020 and was one of six first-round co-leaders and one of four co-medalists at the 122nd U.S. Amateur Championship in 2022 at Ridgewood Golf Club. His younger brother, Trevor, just won the U.S. Junior Amateur at Oakland Hills last month. The brothers are making their debuts in a PGA Tour-sanctioned event in their hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, alongside their pops in the 9:57 a.m. group off No. 10.

Next on the tee: The Gutschewski Family ❤️ Scott Gutschewski will play the opening rounds with his sons Luke and Trevor @PinnBankGolf . pic.twitter.com/ScGMD0enze — Korn Ferry Tour (@KornFerryTour) August 6, 2024

Through the years, Luke has caddied for Scott on occasion, including several years ago at a Korn Ferry event in North Carolina.

Meanwhile, Scott and Amy’s daughter, Isabelle, attends the University of Nebraska and is part of the PGA Golf Management program. As for their youngest, Isaiah? He’s only eight but has inherited the family’s passion for golf. Two years ago, Amy posted on Twitter after Isaiah made a birdie on the first hole of his first tournament: “And just like that, another one is hooked,” she wrote.

This family affair in the game just keeps getting better and it doesn’t get much better for Scott, a three-time winner on the Korn Ferry Tour, than a chance to play in a professional event alongside his boys.

“I thought there was a chance at some point Luke and I may kind of cross paths depending on how long I could still walk and everything,” Scott told Omaha’s CBS affiliate KMTV, “but yeah, Trevor was definitely a huge surprise [to play alongside at a Tour event].”

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Pro golf week ahead: PGA Tour concludes regular season with Wyndham Championship in Greensboro

Top 70 players on fedex cup points list after this week will advance to playoffs at fedex st. jude championship near memphis.

There’s no more margin for error on the PGA Tour and the Korn Ferry Tour to make the postseason. 

Both Tours will wrap up their playoff fields in the next two weeks, the PGA Tour concluding the regular-season FedEx Cup season beginning on Thursday with the Wyndham Championship at the Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, N.C.; and Korn Ferry Tour players have only two more shots at moving on, this week’s Pinnacle Bank Championship in Omaha, Neb., and next week’s Magnit Championship in Jackson Township, N.J. 

The top-70 on the FedEx Cup points list will advance to the FedEx St. Jude Championship Aug. 15-18 at TPC Southwind near Memphis. The top-156 players on the Korn Ferry points list after the Jersey event will make the first round of the Korn Ferry Finals Aug. 22-25 at the Albertson’s Boise Open. 

How do the PGA Tour, Korn Ferry Tour playoff systems work?

The PGA Tour pares the FedEx playoffs field to the top-50 after St. Jude to play at the BMW Championship the following week at Castle Rock, Colo. The top-30 after that make the Tour Championship in Atlanta Aug. 29-Sept. 1. 

The Korn Ferry cutoff at Boise will be the top 144 for the Simmons Bank Open Sept. 12-15 in Franklin, Tenn., the top 120 for the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship Sept. 19-22 in Columbus, Ohio and the top 75 for the Korn Ferry Championship Oct. 3-6 in French Lick, Ind. 

Who’s in danger of missing the FedEx Cup playoffs? 

One of the biggest names on the outside of the top 70 entering the week is defending Wyndham champion Lucas Glover, who is 76 th on the points list, 17 points behind Victor Perez on the bubble (Perez is 71 st but another spot will be added to replace the late Grayson Murray, who is still 57 th on the points list). 

A reminder about Glover, the 2009 U.S. Open champion: He went on a hot streak last year beginning with his victory at Sedgefield. He the won at Southwind the following week and finished fifth in the final FedEx Cup standings.

But he's struggling right now. Glover doesn't have a top 10 finish this season (he had three in four starts prior to Greensboro last season) and has missed four of his last six cuts.

Other past PGA Tour winners with work to do this week are Kurt Kitiyama (No. 74), Luke List (No. 75), Keith Mitchell (No. 79) and Matt Kuchar (No. 111). Kuchar has the longest active streak of making the PGA Tour's postseason at 17 years in a row — the only player to have reached the FedEx Cup Playoffs every year since it began in 2007.

What’s going on with LIV Golf? 

The LIV Golf League is inactive this week but its tournament Aug. 16-18 at the Greenbrier Old White Course in West Virginia should continue a showdown between the top two teams, Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers and Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII. 

Rahm’s team is 15.5 points behind DeChambeau’s with the Greenbrier and LIV Chicago Sept. 13-15 remaining before the LIV Team Championship Sept. 21-22 near Dallas. The Rippers (captained by Cameron Smith of Ponte Vedra Beach) and Torque (captained by individual points leader Joaquin Niemann) are within mathematical striking distance of the Crushers. 

Niemann has a 14.23-point lead in the individual standings over Rahm, who won his first LIV event three weeks ago and has finished among the top 10 in all 10 starts this season. 

PGA Tour: Greensboro is Last Chance Gulch 

Event: Wyndham Championship, Thursday-Sunday, Sedgefield Country Club, Greensboro, N.C. 

What's the purse?  $7.9 million ($1,422,000 and 500 FedEx Cup points to the winner. 

Who won last year?  Lucas Glover went deep with a 62 in the third round and beat Russell Henley and Byeong Hun An by two shots. 

How to watch on TV: Golf Channel (Thursday-Friday, 3-6 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 1-3 p.m.); CBS (Saturday-Sunday, 3-6 p.m.). 

Area players entered: Tyson Alexander, Bud Cauley, Adrien Dumond de Chassart, Nico Echavarria, Harris English, Ben Griffin, Brian Harman, Billy Horschel, Zach Johnson, Patton Kizzire, Keith Mitchell, Andrew Novak, J.T. Poston, Greyson Sigg, Davis Thompson, Carl Yuan. 

Notable: Jordan Spieth, Justin Rose, Shane Lowry and Nicolai Hojgaard lead the field. ... Sungjae Im at No. 9 and Lowry at No. 10 are the highest-ranked players on the FedEx Cup points list playing at Sedgefield. ... Nine-time PGA Tour winner Brandt Snedeker was named the 27th Payne Stewart Award winner and will be honored at the Southern Exchange in Atlanta on Aug. 27, two days before the first round of the Tour Championship at East Lake. Snedeker, the 2012 FedEx Cup champion, launched the Snedeker Foundation shortly after that victory. It has supported youth initiatives in Middle Tennessee, such as Our Kids, which provides medical evaluations and crisis counseling services in response to concerns of child sexual abuse. ... The Tour announced this week that the title sponsor for its event in Charlotte, N.C., will be Truist, a financial company based in Charlotte. The 2025 Truist Championship will be May 8-11 at the Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Wissahickon Course, because of the PGA Championship being played at Quail Hollow a week later. The tournament returns to Charlotte in 2026. 

LPGA Tour: Nelly Korda goes after second gold medal 

Event: Olympic Women’s Golf, Thursday-Sunday, Le Golf National, Paris. 

What's the purse?  No purse.

  Who won the last Olympics? Nelly Korda captured the gold medal by one shot. Mone Inami of Japan defeated Lydia Ko of New Zealand in a playoff for the silver medal. 

How to watch on TV: Golf Channel/Peacock (Thursday-Saturday, 3 a.m.-12 p.m.; Sunday, 3 a.m.-12:30 p.m.). 

Area players entered: None. 

Notable:  The 60 athletes represent 33 countries. In addition to Korda, the U.S. players are Lilia Vu and Rose Zhang. ... The top-seven in the world are playing and 12 of the top 15. ... Korda’s mother Regina played in the 1988 Olympics for the Czech Republic. 

PGA Tour Champions: Stephen Ames dominated 2023 Boeing 

Event: Boeing Classic, Friday-Sunday, The Club at Snoqualmie Ridge, Snoqualmie, Wash. 

What's the purse?  $2.2 million ($330,000 to the winner). 

Who won last year? Stephen Ames shot 63 in the final round and beat Miguel Angel Jimenez by seven shots. 

How to watch on TV: Golf Channel (Friday-Sunday, 6-8 p.m.). 

Area players entered: David Duval, Fred Funk, Jim Furyk, Vijay Singh. 

Notable:  K.J. Choi, who won the 2011 Players Championship, won his first Senior major two weeks ago at the Senior Open Championship. ... Ernie Els, the Schwab Cup points leader, Washington native Fred Couples and Bernhard Langer lead the field. 

Korn Ferry Tour: Two weeks to make it to Boise 

Event: Pinnacle Bank Championship, Thursday-Sunday, The Club at Indian Creek, Omaha, Neb. 

What's the purse?  $1 million ($180,000 to the winner). 

Who won last year? Alejandro Tosti shot 62 in the final round and beat John VanDerLaan and Max Greyserman by three shots. 

How to watch on TV: The event is not being televised. 

Area players entered: Chris Baker, Cody Blick, Fred Biondi, Dillon Board Jonathan Byrd, Ricky Castillo, Vince Covello, Brett Drewitt, Nick Gabrelcik, Joey Garber, Tano Goya, Evan Harmeling, Philip Knowles, Rick Lamb, Trey Mullinax, Raul Pereda, Doc Redman, Julian Suri, Danny Walker, Thomas Walsh. 

Notable:  With two events left to qualify for the Korn Ferry Finals, area players Knowles (97), Board (100), Russell Knox (109) and Suri (112) are well within the top-156 bubble. ... PGA Tour veteran Scott Gutschewski will play with his sons Trevor and Luke in the first two rounds. Trevor Gutschewski won the U.S. Junior Boys last month and is a verbal commitment for the University of Florida next year. Luke Gutschewski is a junior at Iowa State. Scott Gutschewski played college golf at Nebraska. 

What are the (golf) odds? 

Women’s Olympic Golf: Korda is the biggest favorite to win her second gold medal, at +425 by Hard Rock Bet. Atthaya Thitikul is +800 and Vu is +850. 

Wyndham Championship: Hard Rock Bet likes Im at +1200. Four players are +2250, Harman, Horschel, Lowry and Si Woo Kim. 

Boeing Classic: Steven Alker is +500, followed by Els (+800), Ames (+900) and Choi (+1000). 

Sunday golf: Rai wins Wyndham Championship; Ames successfully defends Boeing Classic title

Greensboro, N.C. — Aaron Rai took advantage of Max Greyserman's late meltdown to win the Wyndham Championship on Sunday for his first PGA Tour title.

Rai closed with a 6-under 64, with the 29-year-old Englishman making a 6 1/2-foot birdie putt on the par-4 18th to post at 18-under 262 in the regular-season finale at Sedgefield Country Club.

Greyserman, the 29-year-old former Duke player, shot 69 to finish two strokes back on a day when everyone played 36 holes and some a few more in the event washed out by rain Thursday and delayed Friday and Saturday.

Rai was four strokes back after Greyserman holed out from 91 yards for eagle on the par-4 13th, then had an unexpected share of the lead a hole later when Greyserman drove out-of-bounds and made a quadruple-bogey 8 on 14.

Greyserman — who shot 60 in the second round — birdied the par-5 15th to pull a shot ahead, then four-putted the par-3 16th for a double bogey and parred the last two holes.

J.J. Spaun (64) and Ryo Hisatsune (67) tied for third at 15 under.

The top 70 in the FedEx Cup standings qualified for the playoff opener next week in Tennessee.

PGA Tour Champions

Snoqualmie, Wash. — Stephen Ames successfully defended his Boeing Classic title, birdieing the par-5 18th for a 5-under 67 and one-stroke victory over Ernie Els, Steven Alker and Robert Karlsson

The 60-year-old Ames, a naturalized Canadian from Trinidad and Tobago, won has third PGA Tour Champions title of the season and ninth overall. He won four times on the PGA Tour.

Ames finished at 11-under 205 at The Club at Snoqualmie Ridge.

Els and Alker played alongside Ames, each shooting 68. Els also has three victories this season. Second-round leader Karlsson shot 75 in the final group.

Korn Ferry Tour

Omaha, Neb. — Matt McCarty won the Pinnicale Bank Champions for his second victory in his last four stars to take the Korn Ferry Tour season points lead, closing with a 4-under 67 to beat Danny Walker by a stoke.

McCarty finished at 14-uder 270 at The Club at Indian Creek. Already assured a PGA Tour card next season, he jumped from second to first in the standings with two events left in the regular season.

The 26-year-old McCarty won the Price Cutter Charity Championship four weeks ago for his first career victory and tied for second last week in the Utah Championship.

Danny Walker shot 72. T.J. Vogel (70) and Brandon Crick (70) were 12 under.

U.S. Golf Association

Tulsa, Okla. — Rianne Malixi beat Asterisk Talley 3 and 2 to win the U.S. Women's Amateur at Southern Hills, three weeks after routing Talley in the U.S. Girls' Junior final.

Last month in the U.S. Girls' Junior, the 17-year-old Malixi — from the Philippines — beat Talley 8 and 7 at El Caballero in Tarzana, California, the largest championship-match blowout in tournament history.

Malixi is the second player to win both events in the same year, joining Eun Jeong Seong in 2016. She has verbally committed to play at Duke, with plans to begin play in 2025.

The 15-year-old Talley, from Chowchilla, California, led 1 up Saturday after the first 18 holes of the 36-hole championship match were moved up a day because of expected rain Sunday.

Malixi was 3 up after 26, and Talley took the next three holes to it. They halved the 30th, Malixi won the next three with birdies and closed it out with par halve on the par-5 34th.

Other tours

Peter Uihlein won the International Series England for his first Asian Tour victory. The American closed with an 8-under 63 for a seven-stroke victory at Foxhills in Surrey, England. He finished at 20 under, shooting a course-record 61 in the second round. .. Ren Yonezawa closed with a 7-under 64 for a three-stroke victory in the Japan Golf Tour's Yokohama Minato Championship. He finished at 2-under 262. ... Brandon Robinson-Thompson of England ran away with the Farmfoods Scottish Challenge for his second Challenge Tour title. He won by eight strokes, shooting a 5-under 66 to reach 22 under. ... Yui Kawamoto closed with a 1-over 73 for a one-stroke victory in the Japan LPGA's NEC Karuizawa 72. She finished at 11 under.

Karl Vilips claims first professional victory at Korn Ferry Tour’s Utah Championship

PGA TOUR University

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In his sixth start as a professional, Karl Vilips claimed his first career victory at the Korn Ferry Tour’s Utah Championship presented by Zions Bank and Intermountain Health and climbed to No. 15 on the points list. The 22-year-old’s victory was promptly due after finishing inside the top 15 in his past three events, including a runner-up finish at the NV5 Invitational presented by Old National Bank. As a tournament winner, Vilips upgraded his Korn Ferry Tour membership to fully exempt after originally having conditional status from finishing No. 10 in the PGA TOUR University Class of 2024.

“We keep doing what we're doing, just getting as far up that points list as I can,” said Vilips in his post-round interview Sunday. “A really ambitious goal at this point is to get No. 1 on the points list, but that would take a few more wins. We're just going to try to win every time we step up on the first tee of a tournament and the expectations now are to get that PGA TOUR card.”

Vilips became the 17th PGA TOUR University alum to win a professional event and brought the total number of victories for alumni to 25. This season alone, eight victories have been claimed across three tours, as Vilips joins six additional alumni in the winner’s circle: Austin Eckroat (PGA TOUR) Chris Gotterup (PGA TOUR) , Davis Thompson (PGA TOUR), John Pak (Korn Ferry Tour), Frederik Kjettrup (PGA TOUR Americas) and Ryan Burnett (PGA TOUR Americas).

The top 30 finishers at the end of the Korn Ferry Tour season will earn PGA TOUR cards for the 2025 season. Eight PGA TOUR University alumni sit inside the top 30, and William Mouw further solidified his positioning in the points list to No. 19 with a solo fourth at the Utah Championship. Logan McAllister recorded his best finish of the season with a T8, alongside Ross Steelman who posted his best showing since the opening event of the season.

Three PGA TOUR University alumni represented their respective countries for the first time at the Men’s Olympic Golf Competition at Le Golf National last week. Ludvig Åberg (Sweden) led the charge in 8-under and finished T18, followed by Belgium’s Adrien Dumont de Chassart (T40/-1) and Chinese Taipei’s Kevin Yu (52nd/+4). The PGA TOUR will conclude the regular season this week at the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina at Sedgefield Country Club. Currently, three alumni are in the top 70 of the FedExCup standings and in position to qualify for the FedExCup Playoffs: Åberg (6th), Thompson (24th) and Eckroat (49th).

In the final event of a four-week stretch on PGA TOUR Americas, John Keefer recorded his third runner-up finish of the season at the BioSteel Championship in Windsor, Ontario. Keefer has yet to finish outside of the top-25 in any start as a professional, as his resume includes six top-25s, highlighted by five top-10s and three runner-up finishes. The 23-year-old moved to No. 2 in the Fortinet Cup, and he is joined by Frederik Kjettrup (No. 3) and Ryan Burnett (No. 8) as alumni in position to finish inside the top 10 of the Fortinet Cup and earn a Korn Ferry Tour card for the 2025 season.

PGA TOUR University Alumni – Korn Ferry Tour Points List  

*Class of 2024

PGA TOUR University Alumni – FedExCup Standings  

PGA TOUR University Alumni – Fortinet Cup Standings