One spot off the PGA Tour card, grateful to Mitchell Meissner for his shot at the KFT Championship

What a difference a year can make.

After his T-33 finish at last year’s Korn Ferry Tour Championship, Mitchell Meissner got into his rental car and drove two hours from French Lick, Indiana, to Indianapolis. There he met a wrist surgeon and five days later underwent a second procedure on his right wrist in three years.

Now he’s about to earn his first PGA Tour card as he enters this week’s KFT playoff final at Pete Dye Golf Course ranked No. 21 in points, just one spot outside the graduation cutoff.

“I try to show a lot of gratitude in the position I’m in right now,” Meissner said Tuesday.

The 29-year-old Meissner, whose younger brother, Mac, plays on the PGA Tour, didn’t always plan for a career in professional golf. Plagued by the putting yips while studying at Rice, he spent the fall of his senior year landing a consulting job with Accenture in Dallas. But that winter he tried one last putting experiment – ​​the right-hander took a left-handed putter and the putts started falling – and the decision got his game going again. He’s been putting from the other side ever since.

Meissner’s professional breakthrough came on the PGA Tour Latinoamerica in 2022, when he finished second three times to help lock his KFT card. Later that year, however, Meissner was playing a boxing match in a bar when a blow tore his ECU tendon, requiring surgery.

After his second wrist surgery last year, Meissner was unable to rush back like he did the first time. But he couldn’t afford to wait too long either. His surgery in mid-October was the same procedure as Jordan Spieth, who was absent from September to February.

“If you’re in his position on the PGA Tour, you’re probably in a position where you can wait a little bit longer,” Meissner said. “If you’re on the Korn Ferry Tour and you’re not getting paid when you’re not playing, you kind of have to rush back a little bit.”

Not that Meissner didn’t speed things up cleverly. After his surgery, his mother brought him back home to San Antonio. They made a pit stop in Kansas City to see his sister perform in a ballet rendition of Alice in Wonderland; with Meissner on painkillers you could imagine the experience. A week later, he couldn’t fit his cast arm into his suit jacket for his cousin’s wedding, where he had to read a passage during the ceremony.

In December, Meissner hit waves, and when the KFT season started in January in the Bahamas, Meissner played it up and completed T-39. He followed with three consecutive finishes of T-11 or better to build a nice, early cushion in the standings.

In July, Meissner was among KFT professionals who pledged money for every bird made to victims of the devastating floods in Kerrville, Texas. Meissner grew up and worked at Laity Lodge, a Christian camp less than an hour from Camp Mystic, where 27 campers and counselors died in the floods. While finishing in ninth place at the NV5 Invitational, his final tournament of the hopefuls, Meissner birdied the final hole to end the week with 25 birdies and an eagle (27 shots won). The event also ended on July 27.

“That was pretty poetic,” said Meissner, who still wears a green ribbon on his hat in honor of the lives lost. “That was one of the first times that something so worldly and very tragic happened that really affected me. I was really devastated.”

Meissner hasn’t finished better than T-22 since that tournament, missing three of six cuts. He’s had to rely more on the putter as his usually elite ball striking and distance control have diminished.

While he has fallen from No. 11 in points at the start of August to now just outside the bubble, Meissner will also be leaning on his confidence.

If he should be on the PGA Tour in 2026, he will be.

But he will be grateful regardless of the outcome on Sunday.