“Well, that sucks.”
Those were the words of James Nicholas as he climbed into his car, his PGA Tour Q-School run having come to a frustrating end at second stage in Valdosta, Georgia.
The 28-year-old Nicholas had charged into the top 15 and ties, the cutoff to advance to next week’s final stage, before inclement weather suspended Friday’s final round shortly after noon ET with Nicholas through 13 holes at Kinderlou Forest Golf Club. Just over two hours later, the entire round was scrapped, with scores reverting to 54 holes in accordance with the Q-School bylaws.
Nicholas and a few other players who had climbed inside the cut line when the horn sounded were instead headed home, their clutch performances negated. Nicholas ended up missing by a single shot.
The anticlimactic ending marked one of two second-stage sites to complete only three rounds. The final round in Dothan, Alabama, wasn’t even attempted after storms delayed Thursday’s third round, which was completed on Friday. The three other sites – Palm Coast, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; and Tucson, Arizona – each got in the originally scheduled 72 holes.
The PGA Tour Q-School bylaws state: A round of an “official” First or Second Qualifying Stage that is not completed by the end of the last scheduled competitive day will be canceled and the results through the last completed round shall stand, unless at least half the field has completed the round, in which case, play should be temporarily suspended and completed when conditions permit. No completion should extend past one additional day. In no situation would play resume in order to have at least half the field complete play so that play may be extended to an additional day.
In Valdosta, no groups had finished, as the first groups out were on their penultimate holes and the final group was on the eighth hole. The last line of the bylaw, which is the same for all Korn Ferry Tour events (excluding the KFT Championship), prohibits play resuming in the final round if that round cannot be completed that day, so when officials determined that the round couldn’t resume until 2:45 p.m. ET at the earliest, there was no chance they could get the round in before a 5:31 p.m. sunset.
“This is a really hard situation for the rules officials to be in,” Nicholas said in a video he shared to his Instagram page. “They don’t make the rules. It’s in the bylaws that this is how things go. I personally think we need to change them.”
Nicholas was 4 under with just one par through his 13 holes on Friday, though the online leaderboard when play was stopped only reflected his score through nine holes since there wasn’t hole-by-hole live scoring. He was still shown a shot inside the cut line, at 6 under, along with five other players, including Gunnar Broin, who went out in 4 under and was still inside the number with three holes to play. Broin’s playing competitor, Jonathan Brightwell, was reportedly 7 under on his round, 5 under through five holes of his back nine, and safe by a few shots before being called off the course.
The revert was likely especially gut-wrenching for Broin and Brightwell. Broin finished 133rd in PGA Tour Americas points this season and was looking to secure at least conditional Korn Ferry Tour status by advancing to final stage. Brightwell hasn’t 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 kept his full KFT card by making the KFT Championship this fall, and he was only competing in second stage for the opportunity to earn one of five PGA Tour cards up for grabs at final stage, which begins Thursday in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
“I have a full Korn Ferry Tour card for next year, so I’m not as upset,” Nicholas said, “but if I didn’t – and there are a lot of players that were playing great today that moved themselves inside the number and now don’t have a chance. … You work all year, your whole career, to get through Q-School, and then to have it just be a call that a meteorologist says we can’t get out there and play, or a rules official says we can’t get out there and play.
“It sucks, it’s not easy, it’s not fun, but those are the rules.”
North Carolina alum Ryan Burnett medaled in Valdosta at 14 under, two shots clear of Tennessee product Hunter Wolcott. Former PGA Tour pros Doc Redman, Roger Sloan and Joey Garber were among those to also advance. Other notables advancing 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 across the five sites 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 standout at Illinois, was 9 under through 36 holes in Dothan, Alabama, before shooting 10-over 82 in his third and final round. He dropped from third to T-44 and missed the cut by seven shots at 1 over.
