The DP World Tour’s season isn’t quite over yet, but Patrick Reed has just about earned his way back onto the PGA Tour.
Reed, speaking ahead of the Spanish Open this week in Madrid, said his goal this past season was simply to make it back onto the Tour after his split with LIV Golf. Reed has been serving his one-year suspension from the PGA Tour and playing on the DP World Tour full time in an effort to earn his Tour card back.
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Earning it, and letting his “clubs do the talking,” was important to him.
“The biggest thing for me at the start of the year when I decided not to re-sign with LIV was to try to make my way back to the PGA Tour,” he said, via The Associated Press. “The way to do that I felt was to try to play our way on. To be able to have the start of the season I did and to basically earn my way back to the PGA Tour means a lot to me.”
Reed announced in January that he was walking away from LIV Golf. He did not qualify for the Tour’s “Returning Member Program” — which was created when Brooks Koepka wanted to make the jump back — but instead Reed went to the DP World Tour, where he’s an honorary lifetime member.
He’s won twice on the European circuit this season, first in Dubai in January and then at the Qatar Masters in February. He’s currently leading the season-long race, too, and is roughly 300 points ahead of Rory McIlroy entering the final stretch of the season.
While McIlroy may catch him there, the top 10 players from the DP World Tour who aren’t otherwise exempt will earn a PGA Tour card in 2027. That would include Reed.
“This was a huge year to me,” Reed said. “Not just for my career, but also for my family, because I had to go earn my spot back, and to be able to go out there and earn it back and play the way I’ve been playing, means a lot. And to hopefully play well these last couple of events, and hopefully hold everyone off and win the Race to Dubai would mean a lot.”
Reed has won nine times on the PGA Tour in his career, most recently at the Farmers Insurance Open in 2021. He won the Masters in 2018, too, for his lone major championship title. Reed is entering play this week in Madrid at No. 29 in the Official World Golf Rankings.
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Reed thinks only way back to PGA Tour is to earn it
LIV Golf has been working to find a path forward after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund opted to stop bankrolling the venture earlier this year. The new phase, which has been dubbed “LIV 2.0,” still has plenty of questions that need to be answered before play starts back up again.
LIV Golf filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month. The murky future, and the possibility of European members being ineligible for the Ryder Cup team next fall, has led to plenty of speculation that the league’s top golfers will find a way out.
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Jon Rahm, for example, revealed on Wednesday that he would not be participating in LIV Golf next season or beyond. That presumably sets up his quest to return to the Tour, and deals a significant blow to LIV now that it is without Saudi Arabian funding. Rahm was going to play this week in Madrid, too, but he withdrew ahead of the birth of his fourth child.
What Rahm and others in his situation do remains to be seen. But if it were up to Reed, he thinks they should all follow the same path he did.
“I’m a firm believer that if you earn your right to play somewhere you should be able to play, but you have to earn it,” he said. “You have to go out there and do the work, you know, go out there and not only just work hard but also play well.
“I’ve always wanted to earn my spot rather than having a spot given. Those guys on LIV, there are pathways to whether it’s to here on the DP [World Tour], whether it’s to the PGA Tour … I feel like that’s the only way that you should be able to get back is by going out there and letting the clubs do the talking.”
Source: sports.yahoo.com
