PGA Tour Canada and the PGA Tour Latinoamerica are merging to form one circuit that will be called “PGA Tour Americas.” It will have a season divided by two swings - South America and the Great White North - that offer at least 10 spots on the Korn Ferry Tour.
“We talk all the time about wanting to identify and provide access to the best players in the world,” said Alex Baldwin, president of the Korn Ferry Tour who now oversees all paths to the PGA Tour - PGA Tour Americas, PGA Tour University and Q-school.
“It’s an extremely competitive environment,” she said. “We have a fantastic opportunity to bring the best of these two tours together.”
Still to be determined is the 16-tournament schedule for both regions in 2024 that will run from February through September, and the size of the purses.
The fields will be populated by the leading 60 players from this year’s PGA Tour Latinoamerica and from the PGA Tour Canada season. Other spots will be available through the early stages of Q-school this fall.
The Latin America swing will run from February through May, and the top 60 players will have status for the North America Swing.
Before the second swing starts, the PGA Tour Americas will have another Q-school. Those graduates will advance along with Nos. 6-20 from the PGA Tour University. The remainder of the fields will be filled by open qualifiers, sponsor exemptions and others in a priority list.
A cumulative points list for both swings will determine which 10 players advance to the Korn Ferry Tour. Also, the top two finishers from the Latin America swing and the top three from Canada will get conditional status, provided they don’t finish among the overall top 10.
Conditional status means they are exempt on the Korn Ferry Tour through the first reshuffle of the priority list.
Those 15 players also will be exempt into the final stage of Q-school - five cards are on offer for the PGA Tour - and the next two dozen or so will go straight to the second stage.
The Canadian tour has been a more popular proving grounds over the decades, a starting point for the likes of Mike Weir, Steve Stricker and Mackenzie Hughes. The PGA Tour acquired both tours in 2012, and now is bringing them together as one starting in 2024.
“The ecosystem is expanding, but we’re creating opportunities,” Baldwin said. “Every time you tee it up and are playing for something, that is part of your growth, your development, your experience to make you compete at a high level.”
BLOOMING ROSE
Rose Zhang won the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and kept right on rolling. The Stanford sophomore won the Pac 12 Championship with a record score (12-under 204) for a seven-shot victory (another record).
It was her sixth win of the season. If she wins her last two tournaments - the NCAA Regionals and NCAA Championship - she would tie Lorena Ochoa’s record for wins in a season (8) and career (12).
As for the Women’s World Amateur Ranking, Zhang has no equal.
Last week, Zhang broke the record with her 136th week at No. 1 in the world, breaking the mark previously held by Leona Maguire of Ireland. The record for men is 87 weeks by Keita Nakajima of Japan.
Zhang won the Mark H. McCormack Medal as the leading women’s amateur golfer in 2020, 2021 and 2022 - only Maguire and Lydia Ko are three-time winners of the award.
Among her wins are the ANWA, the 2022 NCAA title, the 2021 U.S. Girls Junior and the 2020 U.S. Women’s Amateur. Zhang also has a 6-1-2 record in two Curtis Cup appearances.
She is expected to turn pro after the NCAAs. Zhang will have direct access to the Q-Series qualifying under a new LPGA policy that exempts the No. 1 player in the world amateur ranking after the NCAAs.
LIV AND THE OWGR
Each week shows the effect of LIV Golf players not getting world ranking points.
A year ago, there were 19 players now with the Saudi-funded circuit who were among the top 50 in the world. Now there are just six, and only one of them - British Open champion Cameron Smith at No. 8 - among the top 25.
The U.S. Open and British Open are a month away from using the world ranking to exempt players from qualifying - top 60 for the U.S. Open, top 50 for the British. The ones most affected appear to be Mito Pereira (No. 55) and Harold Varner III (No. 61), who would be certain to be out of the top 60 barring a top finish in the PGA Championship.
NELLY’S VIDEO
For someone who estimates she has 6,000 videos of her swing on her phone, Nelly Korda says she’s really not that technical with her golf.
During her formative years, she had a coach behind her to let her know if she was in all the correct spots. On her own, she turns to her phone. And she apparently turns to it a lot.
“When you’re by yourself - which a majority of the time when I’m practicing I am - it’s hard to know if one swing was good and one swing was not in my positions because your feel is different every day,” she said. “That’s why I over-obsess with video. It’s just to check to see if I’m actually hitting the positions I want.”
How many?
“So many videos on my phone it’s disgusting,” she said. “If people knew how many swing videos I had on my phone and if I had to ask my dad to video that many swings, he would boycott every one of my practices.”
She put the number at 6,000.
“Maybe more,” Korda said. “I go through a practice session and I’ll probably video maybe 20 or 30 until I really like it, and then I play that one. But I have been told that I need to stop, or I just need to delete them all and keep the one I want.”
NO SNEAK PREVIEW
Justin Thomas was the lone American who played the French Open in 2018 ahead of the Ryder Cup at Le Golf National, compared with seven players who made the European team.
The Italian Open at Marco Simon, site of this year’s matches, is next week and none of the top players from either side are going. For PGA Tour members from both sides of the Atlantic, going to Italy would mean missing a $20 million designated event at the Wells Fargo Championship. Plus, the PGA Championship is two weeks after that.
U.S. captain Zach Johnson doesn’t see this as an issue, understanding the value of what the PGA Tour has going.
“The more times you can get your feet on the site, great,” he said. “But I’ve got some plans in store that will allow the team to get used to a golf course that they’re not familiar with.”
Europe still has plenty of players scheduled for the Italian Open who have Ryder Cup hopes, such as Victor Perez, Thorbjorn Olesen, Robert MacIntyre and Danish twins Nicolai and Rasmus Hojgaard.
DIVOTS
Twelve players who made the cut at the Mexico Open last year are now with LIV Golf. That includes Abraham Ancer and Carlos Ortiz, the two highest-ranked players from Mexico. … Max Homa has missed the cut in consecutive weeks, the first time he has done that since the U.S. Open and Travelers Championship in 2021. He was partners in New Orleans with fellow Cal alum Collin Morikawa. … Lilia Vu is the first player with multiple wins on the LPGA Tour this year.
STAT OF THE WEEK
Seven Americans and seven Europeans have won individual titles on the PGA Tour this year.
FINAL WORD
“I just don’t really know how to do anything else, so I’ve got a lot better chance making money doing this than anything else.” - Spencer Levin, after his first Korn Ferry Tour win at age 38, on what kept him going.
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