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After a tough year for the grads, here’s a look at who kept their cards – and who lost them

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After a tough year for the grads, here’s a look at who kept their cards – and who lost them

One of the main drivers of the PGA Tour’s recently announced eligibility changes was the belief that if you have a Tour card, you should be able to, for the most part, know your schedule.

This year, that was not the case for many of the players low in the reorder category of the Tour’s priority list, mainly the bottom half of the Korn Ferry Tour graduates and all five Q-School qualifiers, most of whom missed out on seven of the year’s first 10 tournaments.

While the percentage of KFT grads who kept their card ended up above average, at 50% (15 of 30 including Grayson Murray, who died in May but won the Sony Open in January), 13 of the bottom 15 players in priority from KFT/Q-School to start the season lost their full status by failing to finish in the top 125 of the final FedExCup standings, including all five Q-School grads. And all but two of those 13 guys failed to keep even conditional status.

As the Tour transitions to a leaner circuit in 2026, next year will be even tougher for the incoming crop of KFT/Q-School grads, who again will start the season prioritized behind the 10 DPWT grads. Not only will they struggle to get into early-season open events such as the Sony Open, WM Phoenix Open and Cognizant Classic, but they could find other tournaments – maybe American Express and the pre-Masters run of Valspar, Houston and Valero – more difficult to earn spots in as everyone plays more to make the top 100, which will be the new cutoff to maintain fully exempt membership.

Looking at this season’s final FedExCup standings, only 10 of the 42 DPWT/KFT/Q-School grads in the reorder category finished in the top 100, with four of them being winners – six of those players finished between Nos. 81-100. It could’ve been even fewer had Rafa Campos, No. 30 in KFT last year, not won the Bermuda Championship in the penultimate event of the fall.

“It’s crazy that I feel like I’ve played better than being 100th on the points,” said Chandler Phillips, who ended No. 94, “but hey, you know what, whatever, you know?”

Here is a snapshot of how each of the DPWT/KFT/Q-School graduates performed in 2024:

Player

FEC finish

Priority

Starts

Wins

Top-10s

MC

Robert MacIntyre

17

6

25

1

6

10

Matthieu Pavon

17

7

19

1

4

4

Max Greyserman

48

17

26

0

6

7

Jake Knapp

64

21

23

1

4

5

Patrick Fishburn

81

27

26

0

5

12

Rafa Campos

82

38

25

1

2

17

Victor Perez

83

2

22

0

3

7

Rico Hoey

86

12

28

0

4

10

Ryo Hisatsune

93

9

27

0

1

11

Chandler Phillips

94

18

27

0

2

9

Mac Meissner

106

28

25

0

3

9

Joe Highsmith

110

26

26

0

3

14

Chan Kim

112

10

27

0

3

8

Jacob Bridgeman

113

22

27

0

0

10

Ben Silverman

115

13

25

0

1

7

Ryan Fox

118

1

24

0

3

7

Chris Gotterup

119

31

26

1

1

13

David Skinns

122

20

28

0

2

12

Sami Valimaki

123

5

22

0

1

12

Hayden Springer

127

43

26

0

4

13

Pierceson Coody

131

14

27

0

2

12

Alejandro Tosti

137

11

28

0

2

17

A. Dumont de Chassart

139

19

27

0

2

15

Trace Crowe

148

40

25

0

1

14

Jorge Campillo

154

8

17

0

1

6

Jimmy Stanger

159

23

15

0

1

9

Ryan McCormick

161

35

25

0

1

16

Tom Whitney

164

29

27

0

0

17

Thorbjorn Olesen

170

3

16

0

0

6

Parker Coody

174

33

23

0

1

14

Roger Sloan

178

37

25

0

0

14

Alexander Bjork

179

4

16

0

0

8

Paul Barjon

181

16

27

0

1

22

Wilson Furr

184

32

25

0

0

18

Norman Xiong

187

24

18

0

1

12

Kevin Dougherty

189

30

26

0

0

18

Harrison Endycott

201

39

15

0

0

10

Blaine Hale Jr.

202

41

24

0

0

19

Nicholas Lindheim

212

25

15

0

0

13

Josh Teater

214

34

25

0

0

21

Raul Pereda

218

42

24

0

0

21

Scott Gutschewski

223

36

20

0

0

16

The good news is once 2026 arrives, lack of full-field starts should not be an issue for any PGA Tour member aside from potentially Phoenix.

There will just be fewer members, a change that has many of the Tour’s rank-and-file upset.

Maverick McNealy, who won the RSM Classic on Sunday, said a day earlier that he would’ve liked the Tour to have increased the size of the signature-event fields.

“This is my personal opinion, but I have a hard time defending signature-event fields of 72 players if we’re going to limit the number of players that have a card,” McNealy said. “I think 120 is a beautiful number, I think it’s very competitive. I think a cut is an integral part of our sport and I think it would be really cool to play signature events at 120 players over the 72. With eight tournaments, that’s 400 more playing opportunities. It just seems like a layup to me. There’s a bunch of arguments why 72 is the number. None of them have convinced me yet, but that’s my personal opinion.

“Money and points to reflect the strength of field. But I just hope that the decision they’ve made is really what’s best for the Tour. There’s always going to be winners and losers in every decision. I just hope that the Tour as a whole wins.”

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