Michael Thorbjornsen of Stanford completed No. 1 within the PGA Tour College standings and secured his PGA Tour card as quickly as he turns skilled.
Thorbjornsen, a 22-year-old from Massachusetts, was one of many prime gamers in faculty golf this season and has capitalized on the comparatively new pathway for amateurs to qualify for the tour instantly via faculty. Thorbjornsen accrued a excessive sufficient factors common over the previous two years to complete the 2023-24 NCAA season atop the rankings.
Factors are awarded for taking part in faculty tournaments in addition to stepping into skilled occasions. Thorbjornsen has made the lower in 4 skilled tournaments already, most lately the 2023 John Deere Basic. He positioned fourth on the 2022 Vacationers Championship, the place he was taking part in on an exemption.
Thorbjornsen, whose four-year Stanford profession concluded when he missed the 54-hole lower on the NCAA championship, can be eligible for the rest of the 2024 PGA Tour season and the whole 2025 season at any time when he turns professional.
“PGA Tour U is, I feel, among the finest packages in all of sports activities,” Thorbjornsen mentioned in a information launch from the tour. “What they’ve finished, making a pathway to the PGA Tour and to those completely different excursions beneath it, it is enormous. It offers college students and us golfers causes to remain for 4 years, and you may’t actually cross up on the alternatives that they current to you.”
The PGA Tour College pathway has been tweaked and modified, and final 12 months was the primary time a participant who completed No. 1 in a given season acquired speedy entry to the PGA Tour.
That participant was Ludvig Åberg, a Swede who parlayed his profession at Texas Tech right into a white-hot begin to his professional profession. He gained one match apiece on the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour, performed for the victorious Group Europe on the Ryder Cup, completed second to Scottie Scheffler ultimately month’s Masters and is at present ranked No. 6 on the earth.
“Ludvig, though he is been on tour for say a 12 months now, he is prime 10 on the earth, he is finished unbelievable issues lately,” Thorbjornsen mentioned. “We’re good associates, we competed rather a lot final 12 months, so he is somebody I look as much as however I am additionally attempting to beat him as effectively.”
