Ziemer's B.C. Golf Notes: Svensson, Macdonald, Hadwin enjoy big weekends; Mandur inside top 20 at NCAA Championships; Four British Columbians to tee it up at Reno Open; Osland ready for her Olympic experience
Three From BC, Adam Svensson, Adam Hadwin And Stuart Macdonald, All Had Nice Finishes This Weekend - File Photo Images
By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf
A trio of British Columbia pros all made big moves with top-10 finishes on their respective tours on the weekend.
Surrey’s Adam Svensson moved one huge step closer to locking up his PGA TOUR card for next season with a solo second at the Korn Ferry Tour’s Evans Scholars Invitational in suburban Chicago.
Svensson jumped seven spots on the Korn Ferry Tour points list to 11th. The 300 points he earned gives him 1,576 points on the season. The Korn Ferry Tour considers 1,700 points its ‘fail-safe threshold’ for finishing inside the top 25 and earning PGA TOUR status for the 2021-22 season.
Svensson now seems a virtual lock. The former B.C. Amateur champion has 12 events remaining to collect the 124 points needed to reach that 1,700-point threshold.
Svensson finished the Evans Scholars tourney at 13-under par. That was five shots behind American Cameron Young, who won his second straight Korn Ferry event. Svensson, who won the Korn Ferry Tour’s Club Car Championship in Savannah, Ga., in late March, made $58,500 for his second-place finish on Sunday.
Vancouver’s Stuart Macdonald also had a nice finish in Chicago. Macdonald tied for 10th at seven-under after closing with a six-under 65. Macdonald jumped 13 spots on the Korn Ferry points list to 86th and made $15,974.
Macdonald is trying to finish inside the top 75 which would get him exempt status next season on the Korn Ferry Tour. It would also get him into the three post-season events where 25 more PGA TOUR cards are up for grabs. In his four of his last five starts, Macdonald has finished T26 or better.
On the PGA TOUR, Abbotsford’s Adam Hadwin matched his season-best finish, with a tie for eighth at the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Tex. Hadwin closed with an even-par 70 and finished the event at six-under par, eight shots behind winner Jason Kokrak.
The finish gives Hadwin some breathing room inside the top 125 on the FedEx Cup points list, where he must finish to remain fully exempt next season. He jumped 15 spots and is now 105th. Hadwin earned $196,875.
Fellow Abbotsford native Nick Taylor had a rough Sunday. He shot a five-over 75 and tied for 62nd at three-over par. Taylor made $16,425 and moved up one spot to 138th on the FedEx Cup list. Taylor has the luxury of not having to finish inside the top 125 as he remains fully exempt through the end of next season as a result of his win at the 2020 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Hadwin and Taylor are both in the field for this week’s Memorial tournament in Dublin, Ohio. Hadwin will be making his seventh appearance at the Memorial. His best finish came in 2016 when he tied for 11th. Taylor has made the cut in one of three previous appearances at the tournament.
MANDUR ADVANCES: B.C. Amateur champion Tristan Mandur of Duncan has advanced to Monday’s final stroke play round at the NCAA D1 men’s championships in Scottsdale, Ariz. Mandur, playing as an individual for the University of Utah, fired an even-par 70 at Grayhawk Golf Club and was tied for 16th at one-over par through 54 holes. The top 15 teams and top nine individuals not on advancing teams advanced to Monday’s play.
READY FOR RENO: Four British Columbians will tee it up this week at the Reno Open, where the winner will receive an exemption into the PGA TOUR’s Barracuda Championship later this summer. Kimberley’s Jared du Toit, Riley Wheeldon of Comox, Lawren Rowe of Squamish and Kaleb Gorbahn of Smithers are in the field for the Golden State Tour event.
Like the Barracuda Championship, this week’s Reno Open will be played using the Stableford scoring system. The 54-hole event goes Tuesday through Thursday at Toiyabe Golf Club. Gorbahn will be in familiar territory. He played four years of collegiate golf at the University of Nevada in Reno.
LIFE OF RILEY: Wheeldon finished third at the Outlaw Tour’s season finale played at TPC Scottsdale’s Champions course. Wheeldon completed the 54-hole event at 11-under par and earned $2,500. Fellow Canadian Wil Bateman of Edmonton beat the field by seven shots with a winning score of 20-under par.
OLYMPIC EXPERIENCE: Kelowna’s Megan Osland is in the field for this week’s U.S. Women’s Open at The Olympic Club in San Francisco. The iconic course is not far from San Jose State University, where Osland played her collegiate golf, but she never got to play the course. This will be Osland’s second U.S. Women’s Open.
She competed at the 2019 championship in Charleston, S.C., where she played well but missed the cut by two shots. “I think just having the experience playing at that level will help,” she says. “I have played some LPGA events, but the U.S. Open is just a whole other thing. I think just being there once and knowing I can compete gives me some confidence going into the event.”
Osland got into the U.S. Open by firing two rounds of one-under 71 to claim one of two spots available at a qualifier in Ormond Beach, Fla. She made 11 birdies in that 36-hole qualifier.