PGA Tour Monday Qualifiers often throw up some interesting stories, but in this week’s early entrance exam for the Black Desert Championship in Utah, one of the more bizarre Monday Q stories unfolded.
According to Ryan French, better known as Monday Q Info on ‘X’, two players qualified and will take their places alongside the likes of Seamus Power, despite being ineligible to compete in the qualifier in the first place.
Most weeks, there are pre-qualifiers to the main qualifier, but due to a clerical error, RJ Manke, Riley Lewis, Chris Korte and John Sand all found themselves listed in the field for the main qualifier despite not meeting the eligibilty criteria of being a PGA Tour or Korn Ferry Tour member, or of having made a cut on the PGA Tour in 2024.
“It was a clerical error by our tournament director,” Utah PGA Section Devin Dhelin told Monday Q.
“It is our first PGA Tour Monday, and he just made an error. He has done hundreds of tournaments without an issue. He just missed this one.”
Once they realised the error, the Utah PGA section called the players in question and told them they were being removed and that their entry fees would be reimbursed, but after an unnamed one of the four dug his heels in and contacted the PGA Tour looking for reimbursement for travel expenses, the PGA Tour consulted their legal department and decided to allow the players to compete.
“It was our fault,” Dhelin said. “We made a clerical error, and we take full responsibility, but every player knows the requirements to skip the pre-qualifier.”
You can’t please everybody, and naturally their inclusion left others with grumbles, one telling Monday Q: “If any of them get through, the Tour will be getting another phone call.”
Well, the Tour can expect that phone call because not one, but two of them did. 28-year-old Korte and 25-year-old Sand are now set to make their PGA Tour debuts after shooting matching eight-under 64s at Sand Hollow Golf Club to finish as co-medallists.
There’s a lot of golf to be played, but you have to be in it to win it. How incredible would it be if either Korte or Sand find themselves at the top of the leaderboard again on Sunday evening and a life changing series of events are owed to a basic clerical error?