Brett Coletta a winner of the Queensland Open as an amateur chasing Korn Ferry Tour status again
The long and winding road to earn the right to play the PGA Tour continues this week when Stage 2 qualifying for the 2022 Korn Ferry Tour gets underway at the first of five venues across the USA with several Australasians hoping to play their way into the Final Stage in early November at which point places on the 2022 Korn Ferry Tour are determined.
Each venue carries a field of around 75 with those successful, graduating to the Final Stage where they will be joined by players whose standing on the Korn Ferry or PGA Tour has given them the right to try again.
There has already been pre-qualifying at seven venues and Stage One qualifying at eleven venues across the USA just to get this far, highlighting the tremendous task involved in just getting to the Korn Ferry Tour, never mind the 2023 PGA Tour which can now only be accessed through a good year on the Korn Ferry Tour.
Australasians such a Victorian Brett Coletta and NSW’s John Lyras tee it up at the first venue in Brooksville in Florida this week, Coletta a winner of the PGA Tour of Australasia’s 2016 Queensland Open as an amateur and actually going close to gaining his PGA Tour card via the Korn Ferry Tour in 2020.
Lyras a 25 year old from Sydney actually pre-qualified to play the Wyndham Championship on the PGA Tour in 2019 and performed a similar feat when playing the AT&T Byron Nelson in Texas earlier this year.
Other than a 4th place in a Tier 2 event on the PGA Tour of Australasia earlier this year however it has been a battle for the man from the St Michael’s Golf Club but he gets an opportunity to make further progress this week.
Others likely to tee it up over the next ten days include former Australian Open Champion Stephen Allan, former PGA Tour event winner and Presidents Cup team member, Mark Hensby, former PGA Tour player James Nitties, Tasmanian Mathew Goggin, who was also a member of the PGA Tour for several years, NSW’s Travis Smyth, West Australian Jason Scrivener, who has been playing so well in Europe over the last three years or so, Ryan Ruffels and New Zealand’s Denzel Ieremia and Nick Voke.
