Brendan Jones is headed for the PGA TOUR Champions in 2025 after successfully negotiating the qualifying school.
Brendan Jones will become the 10th fully exempt Australian on the PGA TOUR Champions when he turns 50 in March after winning one of five tour cards at the recent qualifying school.
After a sluggish front nine on the last day, Jones was left with work to do, however five closing birdies, including on the 17th and 18th holes, for 31 on his homeward nine, and the Canberran finished in the final qualifying position.
However, on the other end of the scale, while it was joy for Jones there was despair for the Australian duo of Andre Stolz and Scott Barr after they were leapfrogged by their fellow countryman, the pair finished one shot shy of claiming playing rights to the world’s most lucrative professional over 50’s circuit.
Jones shot 67-69-66-68, 14-under par for the 72-hole event, with Soren Kjeldsen the medalist in streeting the field, his 24-under total eight better than another Swede in Freddie Jacobson. He finished tied with American Mark Walker and Chile’s Felipe Aguilar in taking the last three places.
Another Australian in Mat Goggin, who mixes tournament appearances with his responsibilities in getting the Seven Mile Beach Golf course project up and running in Hobart, Tasmania, was also well in the mix heading into the final day before ultimately finishing 14th.
Players who reached the last stage of qualifying and finished sixth to 30th earn the right to play Champions Tour Monday qualifying events in 2025, this group including Stolz, Barr, Goggin and Queenslander Brad Kennedy.
While he has limited experience in the US, although Jones did win on the then-secondary Nationwide Tour in 2004, he has been a success story in Asia, primarily in Japan where he has won 15 tournaments since joining the tour in 2001. Jones was rookie of the year in Japan in 2002 and the Australian Amateur Champion in 1999, while his most recent win on the Australasian Tour was the 2023 New Zealand Open.
The Australians are now a powerful force on the PGA TOUR Champions, led by Richard Green who finished third in 2024 behind Kiwi Steve Alker in the season-long Schwab Cup.
Cameron Percey, who also enjoyed a strong rookie season on the senior circuit, was qualifying school medalist in 2023, with Green finishing on top at the 2022 Tour School.
Rod Pampling, Greg Chalmers, Mark Hensby, Stuart Appleby and Percey all played in the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship in early December which was restricted to the leading 35 players on the 2024 points list.
……while it’s also PGA TOUR qualifying time
The Champions Tour school was run and won during the first week of December, however 171 players were chasing just five PGA TOUR memberships at the final stage of qualifying later in the month.
To be contested across 72 holes, with event was to see the field playing two rounds at TPC Sawgrass’ Dye’s Valley Course and two rounds at Sawgrass Country Club in Jacksonville, Florida.
The top five and ties will earn TOUR cards, and the next 40 finishers and ties guaranteed starts on the 2025 Korn Ferry Tour. The following 20 finishers and ties will earn guaranteed starts on 2025 PGA TOUR Americas and the remainder of finishers will hold conditional status on the Korn Ferry Tour and PGA TOUR Americas.
The 2024 qualifying event represents the first time since 2012 that players can win their way onto the PGA TOUR, with the final qualifying stage having only granted secondary Korn Ferry Tour status for more than a decade.
The final stage of qualifying has drawn a field with a number of big names and former winners, including the likes of South African Garrick Higgo, South Korean S H Kim, Scotsman Martin Laird and Americans Scott Piercy, Chez Reavie and Nick Watney, just to name a few.
Australian Rhein Gibson, now based in Edmond Oklahoma, won his way through the final stage in the second round of qualifying in Savanah, Georgia.
The 38-year-old Gibson, who has made 61 starts on PGA TOUR previously and has two Korn Ferry Tour victories to his credit, shot 18-under in Savanah to finish fifth and progress to the finals.
Others Australian in young gun Quinn Crocker and Asian Tour regular Travis Smyth were eliminated at the second stage of qualifying.
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