The First Look: Korn Ferry Tour Championship presented by United Leasing & Finance

The Korn Ferry Tour heads to Indiana as the Korn Ferry Tour Championship presented by United Leasing & Finance tees off Thursday at Victoria National Golf Club in Newburgh. FIELD NOTES: Will Gordon and David Lingmerth, winners of the first two Korn Ferry Tour Finals events respectively, are both in the field and looking to continue their recent good form … Paul Haley II, however, is first on the season-long Eligibility Points List with a second-place finish last week at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship. He finished birdie, bogey to end two shots behind Lingmerth, but it was good enough to overtake Carl Yuan in the season-long points standings. Yuan is also in the field … Robby Shelton is the only two-time winner on Tour this year and he is playing in the finale. He won both the BMW Charity Pro-Am presented by TD SYNNEX and the Pinnacle Bank Championship presented by Aetna … Michael Gligic, Henrik Norlander and Joseph Bramlett, winner of the 2021 Korn Ferry Tour Championship, locked up their returns to the PGA TOUR with their respective performances at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship. All three men are in the field this week. COURSE: Victoria National Golf Club, par 72, 7,242 yards. Designed by Tom Fazio in 1998, the club is part of a private 18-hole facility which was built atop Peabody Coal Company’s abandoned Victoria strip mine located in the southwestern corner of Indiana, seven miles from Evansville. Those same strip mines were active from 1950 until 1977. The club hosted the Korn Ferry Tour’s United Leasing & Finance Championship from 2012-2018, during which the likes of Smylie Kaufman and Seamus Power won before eventually going on to win on the PGA TOUR. Victoria National started hosting the Korn Ferry Tour Championship in 2019. The club also hosted Legends Tour events in 2003 and 2004 and the U.S. Senior Amateur in 2006. KORN FERRY TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP 72-HOLE RECORD: Jonathan Byrd (2017), 24-under 260 total (Atlantic Beach Country Club) * Tom Lewis holds the Korn Ferry Tour’s low 72-hole total at Victoria National, winning the 2019 Korn Ferry Tour Championship at 23-under 265. VICTORIA NATIONAL COURSE RECORD: 63; Chris Baker, 2019 Korn Ferry Tour Championship, Sebastian Vazquez, 2016 United Leasing & Finance Championship STORYLINES: The Korn Ferry Tour season comes to a close with plenty of PGA TOUR cards still on the line in the Hoosier State. There has been so much movement over the last two weeks and there will be so much more this week. Here’s a refresher on what’s on the line. Fifty PGA TOUR cards are awarded at the end of the season on Sunday at Victoria National. The first 25 were determined via the Korn Ferry Tour Regular Season Eligibility Points List; these 25 names were finalized after the Pinnacle Bank Championship presented by Aetna, although they are still jockeying for position during the three-event Finals. The next 25 cards (The Finals 25) are awarded via the Korn Ferry Tour Finals Eligibility Points List, which will be finalized Sunday at the conclusion of the championship. The top eight on the current list have crossed the fail-safe threshold (210 points) to secure #TOURBound status. The winner of both the cumulative season-long list and the player who earns the most points in just the three Finals events will both earn spots in THE PLAYERS. The season-long leader will also earn a spot in the U.S. Open … Hurly Long, Seung-Yul Noh and Sean O’Hair are tied for 23rd place on The Finals 25 and Patrick Fishburn is in 26th place. Chris Gotterup, Grayson Murray and Carson Young are tied for 27th place. Four-time PGA TOUR winner Aaron Baddeley is 30th. The aforementioned eight players, all who are hovering right around the line of demarcation, will be in Indiana looking to lock up PGA TOUR playing privileges for next season … Former Air Force Captain Kyle Westmoreland is chasing his first TOUR card after a T9 last week moved him to 17th on The Finals 25 … This is the final year of the current Finals format. Beginning in 2023, PGA TOUR cards will be awarded as follows: 30 from the Korn Ferry Tour, 10 from the DP World Tour, and five (and ties) from Q-School. LAST TIME: Joseph Bramlett pulled away from the pack to win by four shots and finished at 20 under. He joined a list of 24 other graduates who secured PGA TOUR membership through the Finals points standings. Bramlett and Trey Mullinax were in a tight battle late on Sunday before Bramlett outdistanced his competitors by posting seven birdies in an eight-hole stretch. “Extremely excited, yeah, I can’t wait,” Bramlett said. “It’s a really, really big deal.” (Note: Bramlett tied for sixth place last week at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship and locked up PGA TOUR status for next season.) Others who clinched their PGA TOUR cards with good showings last year at Victoria National were Mullinax, Hayden Buckley and Sahith Theegala, who just played in the TOUR Championship last week at East Lake and finished No. 28 on the FedExCup. Justin Lower earned the final card, edging Taylor Montgomery by 5.273 points. (Montgomery has since earned his TOUR card via the 2022 Korn Ferry Tour Regular Season.) HOW TO FOLLOW (All times ET) Television: Thursday-Sunday, 4 p.m. – 7 p.m. (Golf Channel).

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