Las Vegas golfers look to secure PGA Tour playing cards

It’s been a month since the 2023 PGA Tour season finished at the RSM Classic, but that doesn’t mean the grinding has ended for players trying to reach the tour for 2024.

In fact, the most significant event for those players takes place this week in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, with the 2023 Q-School finals. Two Las Vegas residents will be in the field looking for status for the upcoming season.

Isaiah Salinda, a Korn Ferry Tour player who made a splash in October at the Shriners Children’s Open, is the lone Las Vegas resident to make it through second stage qualifying to reach the finals this week. Salinda tied for sixth at a qualifier in Valencia, California, to earn his place in this week’s field.

But the odds are stacked against Salinda this week. He’s part of a 168-player field where only the top five finishers and ties will earn a PGA Tour playing card for 2024. The next 40 will earn full status on the Korn Ferry Tour, and the next 20 full status on the Americas Tour, the new entity that combines the formerly separate Canadian and Latinoamerica tours. The rest of the field will have conditional status on the Korn Ferry Tour.

But Salinda has shown an ability to overcome long odds. He was one of four in an 83-player field to earn a spot in the Shriners at a Monday qualifier. He not only converted that into a made cut at TPC Summerlin but also held the lead on the weekend before finishing in a tie for seventh.

While Salinda made it through second-stage qualifying to reach the Q-School finals, several other Las Vegas residents weren’t as fortunate. Eric McCardle, Sangmoon Bae, Dominic Piccirillo, John Oda, Jhared Hack and Zane Thomas failed to advance, severly limiting their options of where to play in 2024.

Joining Salinda at the Q-School finals is Scott Piercy, a four-time PGA Tour winner and veteran of 396 starts. Piercy lost his full status for 2024 after finishing 132nd on the points list in 2023, leaving him with conditional status and past champion status that will limit the number of starts he can make in 2024. Q-School gives the 45-year-old a chance to improve his status for what will be his 16th season on the tour.

Salinda and Piercy are seeking to join more than a dozen other Las Vegas residents with full status for 2024, including one player who will be making his PGA Tour debut.

Norman Xiong, a 24-year-old native of Guam, punched his ticket to the PGA Tour by finishing 16th on the 2023 Korn Ferry Tour points list. Xiong is a two-time winner on the Korn Ferry Tour and was the nation’s top college golfer at Oregon in 2018 as a sophomore when he left school to turn pro.

On the other major tours — the LPGA and Champions — Las Vegas residents were few and far between at their recently concluded qualifying tournaments.

No players with local ties made it through Champions qualifying, and just two women survived LPGA qualifying.

Polly Mack, who played at UNLV from 2017 to 2019 before finishing at Alabama, finished sixth to retain full status on the LPGA Tour. She finished 125th on the money list during her rookie season in 2023, a year in which she led the tour in driving distance at 281.7 yards.

Gigi Stoll tied for 45th at the Q-School finals to earn conditional LPGA Tour status, giving her a handful of starts in the coming year. Stoll, an Arizona graduate who moved to Las Vegas in 2021, picked up her first win on the Epson Tour in 2023 and finished 17th on the season money list.

Greg Robertson covers golf for the Review-Journal. He can be reached at grobertson@reviewjournal.com.