When one door closes, another one opens.
That is how former Santa Margarita High star Beau Hossler approached his rookie year as a tour pro after he ran out of PGA Tour sponsor’s exemptions earlier this summer.
Unable to earn his PGA Tour card the way he had envisioned, Hossler headed to the Web.com Tour to try to do it the hard way. Sunday, he succeeded.
With a birdie on the final hole of the WinCo Foods Portland Open, the final event of the Web.com Tour regular season, Hossler finished in a tie for 19th in the tournament to secure his PGA Tour card for 2017-18 by finishing among the top 25 on the tour money list. (He wound up 23rd with $164,326 in earnings for 11 events.)
But even after posting a 72-hole total of 9-under on the Witch Hollow Course at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club, Hossler didn’t know for certain he was in the top 25 until after the leaders had finished.
“It was a stressful couple hours just waiting,” Hossler, 22, said after the event in Portland. “It was a stressful tournament as well. It was nice to handle the nerves well, and it was good to get my card.”
What made Hossler’s card-clinching accomplishment even more impressive is that he did it without playing status on any tour, in the fewest events (11) of all 25 Web.com players who earned their PGA Tour cards. He also had to play nine consecutive events to get it done.
In retrospect, his most important tournament came in June at the Air Capital Classic in Wichita, where he survived a playoff in a Monday qualifier just to get into the field and then tied for second over the weekend to earn Special Temporary Membership on the Web.com Tour. That enabled him to play every week the rest of the season.
“It’s amazing to go from a Monday qualifier in Wichita to getting my card here (in Portland),” said Hossler, a two-time Big 12 Player of the Year at University of Texas, where he also won the Fred Haskins Award as collegiate golf’s top player in 2016. “When you get an opportunity, you need to snag it and play well. . . . It’s nice to have it all come together.”
The 2017-18 wrap-around PGA Tour season begins with the Safeway Open in Napa from Oct. 5-8. Hossler can improve his order of priority on the PGA Tour in the four-event Web.com Tour Finals, beginning this week with the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship in Columbus, Ohio.
