“Well, that sucks.”
Those were the words of James Nicholas as he got into his car, his PGA Tour Q-School run coming to a frustrating end at the second stop in Valdosta, Georgia.
Nicholas, 28, had placed in the top 15 and was tied, the threshold to advance to next week’s final stage, before bad weather suspended Friday’s final round shortly after noon ET with Nicholas on 13 holes at Kinderlou Forest Golf Club. Just over two hours later, the entire round was abandoned, with scores reverting to 54 holes in accordance with Q-School bylaws.
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Nicholas and a few other players who had climbed inside the cut line when the horn sounded had instead gone home, their clutch performances undone. Nicholas ended up missing with one shot.
The disappointing finish marked one of two Stage Two venues to complete only three laps. The final round in Dothan, Alabama, wasn’t even attempted after storms delayed Thursday’s third round, which ended Friday. The other three locations – Palm Coast, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; and Tucson, Arizona – each competed in the originally scheduled 72 holes.
The PGA Tour Q-School statutes state: A round of a first or second “official” qualifying stage that is not completed by the end of the last scheduled day of competition will be forfeited and the results of the last completed round will stand, unless at least half of the field has completed the round, in which case, play must be temporarily suspended and completed when conditions permit. No completion should exceed one additional day. Under no circumstances would play be resumed so that at least half of the field had completed play so that play could be extended for up to an additional day.
In Valdosta, neither group had finished, as the first groups out were on their penultimate hole and the last group was on the eighth hole. The final line of the rules, which is the same for all Korn Ferry Tour events (except the KFT Championship), prohibits the resumption of play in the final round if that round cannot be completed that day. So when officials determined the round couldn’t resume until 2:45 p.m. ET at the earliest, there was no chance they could do it before sunset at 5:31 p.m.
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“It’s a really difficult situation for the rule makers,” Nicholas said in a video he shared on his Instagram page. “They are not the ones who make the rules. It is in the statutes that things happen this way. I personally think we need to change them.”
Nicholas was 4 under with just one par through his 13 holes Friday, although the online leaderboard when play was stopped only reflected his score through nine holes since there was no live hole-by-hole scoring. He was still shown a shot inside the cut line, at 6 under, with five other players, including Gunnar Broin, who came out at 4 under and was still inside the number with three holes to play. Broin’s competitor, Jonathan Brightwell, would have been 7 under during his round, 5 under through five holes of his back nine and safe with a few shots before being pulled from the course.
The return was likely particularly heartbreaking for Broin and Brightwell. Broin finished 133rd in PGA Tour Americas points this season and was looking to earn at least conditional Korn Ferry Tour status by advancing to the final stage. Brightwell has not had status on a PGA Tour-sanctioned tour since 2022 on the KFT.
Nicholas, on the other hand, has a nice safety net. He already retained his full KFT card by competing in the KFT Championship this fall, and he was only competing in the second stage for the opportunity to earn one of five PGA Tour cards up for grabs in the final round, which begins Thursday in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
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“I have a full Korn Ferry Tour card for next year, so I’m not as upset,” Nicholas said, “but if I hadn’t – and there are a lot of players who were playing really well today who have moved inside the number and don’t have a chance anymore. … You work all year, your whole career, to get through Q-School, and then it’s just a call that a meteorologist says we don’t can’t go out and play, or a rules official says we can’t go out there and play.
“It sucks, it’s not easy, it’s not fun, but those are the rules.”
North Carolina senior Ryan Burnett medaled in Valdosta at 14 under, two strokes ahead of Tennessee product Hunter Wolcott. Former PGA Tour pros Doc Redman, Roger Sloan and Joey Garber were also among those who advanced as well. Other notables coming out of the other four sites include Ryo Ishikawa, Fred Biondi, Norman Xiong, Ted Potter Jr., Jim Herman, Brandon Wu, Turk Pettit, Nick Gabrelcik, Luke Guthrie and Spencer Levin.
Among those missing at the five locations were Blades Brown, Jimmy Walker, Nick Watney, Scott Piercy, Andrew Landry, Austin Cook, Sung Kang, Anthony Paolucci, Cole Hammer and Dylan Meyer. Meyer, a former star player at Illinois, was 9 under through 36 holes in Dothan, Ala., before shooting a 10-over 82 in his third and final round. He went from third to T-44 and missed the cut by seven shots at 1 over.
