Ben Kohles was leading PGA Tour Q School before a costly rules infringement and a punishing two-hole stretch saw him tumbling down the leaderboard.
While majors are often seen as the highest pressure environment in golf, those in the know will tell you that nothing compares to PGA Tour Q School. This is a place where careers are on the line. Where a good week can catapult you into the big time, but one bad stretch can leave a player staring into the abyss, questioning it all and considering an alternative career.
PGA Tour journeyman Ben Kohles knows that feeling better than most.
Since turning professional in 2012, he’s lived on the margins of the PGA Tour, dipping in and out of status year after year. He finished 145th in the FedEx Cup standings in 2025, which grants him limited PGA Tour status for next season. Useful, yes – but not the security he was chasing. That’s why Q School mattered so much.
And, for three and a half rounds, it was all going to plan.
Scores of 68, 66, and 65, plus a steady start to the final round, put Kohles atop the leaderboard. With only the top five earning PGA Tour cards under the new format, he was exactly where he needed to be.
Then disaster struck.
On the 8th hole, Kohles missed his drive into the trees on the right. The ball settled on a bed of leaves and small twigs. As he attempted to remove a twig from in front of the ball, it moved.
And that small movement carried a heavy price.
Co-leader, Ben Kohles, accidentally moves ball, resulting in a one-stroke penalty at PGA TOUR Q-School presented by Korn Ferry.
He moves from T1 to T9 after a double bogey.
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— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) December 14, 2025
Kohles fell foul of Rule 15.1b of the Rules of Golf, and was penalized under Rule 9 which reads: “Players should take care when near any ball at rest, and a player who causes their own ball or an opponent’s ball to move will normally get a penalty (except on the putting green).”
Kohles punched out for what was now his third shot and went on to make double-bogey, which dropped him from first place down to a tie for eighth.
That left Kohle’s outside the crucial top-five, but still in touch.
Unfortunately, likely still reeling from his own mistake, Kohles drove into the water on the next hole, leading to another double-bogey, which saw him fall to a tie for 22nd.
A birdie on the 10th offered a flicker of hope, but that was quickly extinguished by yet another double on the 11th. From there, the round settled into damage limitation. Two birdies and two bogeys over the closing stretch saw him play the final seven holes in level par, but the damage had already been done.
A closing five-over-par 75 left Kohles at T29 – and without the most valuable prize in professional golf: a PGA Tour card.
That’s Q School in a nutshell, where a season – and sometimes a career – can hinge on a single moment.
