Earning a PGA Tour card is a tremendously difficult task. But keeping it is no cake walk, either. Harder still? Winning back your card after losing it. Three PGA Tour veterans proved that the hard way on Sunday at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship, where they just missed out on reclaiming their Tour privileges.
After changes to qualification rules in recent years, only the top 20 finishers at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship earned PGA Tour cards for the 2026 season. You can read all about the fortunate few who punched their Tour tickets on Sunday here.
But in this space we’re concerned with the other side of the equation, the players who have lived the life of a PGA Tour pro, fought all year on the Korn Ferry Tour to get back and came up painfully short on Sunday.
The silver lining for these three pros? They all finished high enough in the Korn Ferry standings to earn full status there in 2026, where they’ll mount new campaigns to reclaim their cards.
PGA Tour pros who missed cards at KFT Championship
Justin Suh
Justin Suh, a 28-year-old former PGA Tour pro from San Jose, has played in 90 PGA Tour events in his pro golf career, earning two top-5 and five top-10 finishes.
Suh played full season of 29 Tour events in 2024. But he only made 12 cuts and failed to record any top 10s. As a result, he finished 162nd in the FedEx Cup standings to lose his playing privileges and drop back to the Korn Ferry Tour.
On the Korn Ferry Tour this season, he won the Argentina Open in March and collected two other top 10s. But it wasn’t enough to move back to the big leagues.
Entering the Korn Ferry Tour Championship at 24th in the standings, just outside the top 20 who earns cards, Suh finished T31 to remain tantalizingly close but, ultimately, short of getting his card back.
Russell Knox
A 40-year-old Scottish pro, Russell Knox played successfully on the PGA Tour for several years, earning two victories at the 2015 WGC-HSBC Championship and the 2016 Travelers Championship.
But his last full season was 2022-23, when he made 23 of 37 cuts to finish 144th in the Fedex Cup standings and lose his Tour card.
He played in 10 Tour events in 2024 and then received three sponsor invites in 2025, missing two cuts and finishing 68th at the Corales Puntacana Championship.
Knox made 21 Korn Ferry Tour starts in 2025, earning a runner-up early in the season at the Bahamas Great Abaco Classic along with three other top 10s.
But a disappointing T55 finish at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship Sunday dropped Knox from 34th to 36th place in the final KFT standings, leaving him 16 spots short of reclaiming his PGA Tour card.
Dylan Wu
Twenty-nine-year-old Oregon native Dylan Wu should be familiar to many golf fans. He played 33 PGA Tour events in 2022-23, finishing 86th in the standings to maintain his card.
