Jackson Koivun will only be a full-time PGA Tour member in the following summer, but the 20-year-old amateur spent this summer with his future tour. The Auburn star, who has earned all his PGA Tour card via PGA Tour University Accelerated, played this season in six PGA Tour events and made five cuts, including a T6 finish on the Isco Championship and a T11 at the John Deere Classic.
Koivun skipped the West Amateur this week to it in the Wyndham championship At Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina, the regular season finale of the PGA Tour before the Fedex Cup play-offs start in Memphis next week.
Koivun made the cut and then shot a five-under 65 on Saturday to move the top 10 on the rankings. But with so much scratching and claws in the field to find a way in the top 70 to extend their season, Koivun sees another side of Tour Life in Greensboro – the desperate side.
“It’s just stressful,” Koivun told CBS ‘Amanda Balionis after the Tour of how different this week in Greensboro is when boys fight for their job. “Together with some of these guys playing for a job, playing to keep playing this year, it is absolutely eye opening. Just take something.”
After this week, only the Top 70 in the rankings will continue to the Fedex St. Jude in Memphis. The Top 50 after next week will continue to the BMW championship. That ticket for the second Playoff event is also supplied with a ticket for all characteristic events next season.
This week there is even more than a place in the Top 70 on the line in Greensboro.
With the PGA tour that reduces the number of fully exempt players from 125 to 100 next year, players like Joel Dahmen, who came in the week outside the top 100, are looking for a good finish to push them on the other side of that fully exempt line while the FedEx Cup schedule of the PGA Tour is approaching. The Top-100 Cutoff will only be made in November after the RSM classic, but a strong finish in the Wyndham, even if it doesn’t move you in the top 70, will go a long way.
Koivun will receive a dose of PGA Tour -Reality this week.
Many players who earned their card last year, such as Matt McCarty and William Mouw, will now probably start an autumn season that will be busy while they are fighting to hold their PGA Tour card. In the meantime, professionals such as Max Homa and Adam Scott, who are exempt, but the play -offs will miss, now have to rely on sponsor exemptions to get to the characteristic events or try to play their way through the Aon Swing system.
Koivun has postponed his PGA Tour card for a year while going back to Auburn for his junior season. But this will be his life soon enough.
It is one, “so, this is what you want?” Week for Koivun.
And although the despair in Greensboro has been a bit shocking, the number 1 amateur in the world is still amateur golf ranking at the moment to be a pro and realize his dream.
“Yes,” Koivun said with a smile when he was asked if he still wanted to live.
He will be there soon enough, and the Wyndham championship has given him a necessary picture of the other side of the currency and a understanding of how difficult things can get on the PGA tour if things don’t go your way.
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