Two golfers with strong Colorado ties have already lost their fully-exempt status on the PGA Tour this year, and others could follow suit depending on what happens in the final five weeks of official Tour events in 2009.
Four local players — David Duval (pictured), Martin Laird, Leif Olson and Kevin Stadler — have recorded impressive top-three finishes in the last several months to greatly help their cause, but a few of them remain on the bubble, with their Tour status for 2010 hanging in the balance over the next couple of months.
Five non-team tournaments remain on the Tour schedule — four from the “Fall Series” and a World Golf Championships event in China. The run starts with the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospital for Children Open in Las Vegas next week and ends with the Children’s Miracle Network Classic in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Nov. 12-15.
Of the seven PGA Tour players with strong Colorado ties, two-time winner Jonathan Kaye and Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Brandt Jobe are no longer fully exempt after failing to reach the money threshold required by the medical extensions they received from the Tour. Kaye, a Denver native and former University of Colorado golfer, can get into some Tour events by virtue of his past-champions status, and he and Jobe could receive sponsor exemptions into a handful of tournaments. But they could also try to improve their status by going through Tour qualifying, which concludes on Dec. 7.
Kaye has been playing recently on the Nationwide Tour, while Jobe has been competing on the Japan Golf Tour, where he won six times in the 1990s. Kaye currently stands 163rd on the 2009 PGA Tour money list ($327.408) , while Jobe is 172nd ($265,841).
Another local player, Parker’s Shane Bertsch, returned to the PGA Tour last week after spending the early part of the year recovering from a broken foot suffered late in 2008. If he doesn’t gain fully-exempt status for 2010 by how he performs over the next two months, he’ll likely receive a medical extension that would allow him to play a limited number of tournaments on Tour next year.
Of the remaining four local Tour players, only Stadler appears safe as far as finishing in the top 125 on the 2009 money list, which assures fully-exempt status for 2010. Thanks in no small part to his second-place finish in the Wyndham Championship in August, Stadler ranks 90th on the Tour money list with $925,514.
A total of $852,752 was required to make the top 125 in 2008, and two local players finished 125th (Laird) and 126th (Bertsch). Golfers who end up in the 126-to-150 range are partially exempt for the following year, historically getting into 20-25 events that year. The 150th player in 2008 won $537,958.
Duval, the former No. 1-ranked player in the world, is probably in the most interesting situation among local Tour members. The Cherry Hills Village resident is competing this year on a one-time exemption by virtue of being in the top 50 on the career money list, but his tournament options will be more limited in 2010 if he falls out of this year’s top 125.
After placing second at the U.S. Open in June — his best finish on the PGA Tour since 2001 — Duval was in good shape, but he’s made just one cut since then (63rd at Buick Open). The result is that he’s dropped to 119th on the 2009 money list ($623,824) and left himself in danger of losing his fully-exempt status on Tour.
As with Duval, Laird, the former Colorado State University golfer, and Olson, a Golden native who attended Mullen High School, stand where they do this year thanks primarily to their performances in one tournament. Duval’s runner-up at the U.S. Open is his only top-50 performance of the year. Laird’s second-place showing in August’s Reno-Tahoe Open is his only top-15 finish of the year on the PGA Tour. And before ending up a career-best third on Sunday at the Turning Stone Resort Championship, Olson hadn’t placed in the top 35 in his rookie season on Tour.
Laird goes into the final five weeks of the Tour season 134th on the money list ($515,254), while Olson is 148th ($412,966) after jumping 66 spots last week.
All in all, it could be a Fall Finish — and a 2010 Tour qualifying — worth remembering.
