Adam Hadwin had been a PGA Tour mainstay since 2014, but a down 2025 that he called a “shot to the ego” sent him back to the Korn Ferry Tour to grind his way back to the top circuit in professional golf. The 2026 season has seen Hadwin split his time between the KFT and the PGA Tour, but his golf hasn’t been great on either circuit. Hadwin opened the year on the KFT with a runner-up finish in Panama, but has had just one top-10 finish since. On the PGA Tour, Hadwin made just five of 12 cuts, with his best finish being a T21 in Puerto Rico.
All that left Hadwin needing to win this week’s Korn Ferry Tour Championship to earn his PGA Tour card back for 2027. That task got even harder on Thursday’s opening round, when a mistake and a penalty cost him dearly.
According to Golf Channel’s Brentley Romine, Hadwin self-assessed a two-shot penalty on the par-3 second hole for playing a shot out of position. Hadwin’s tee shot came up short of the green and in the fairway cut. With preferred lies in effect, Hadwin was allowed to take a scorecard’s length relief. But the 38-year-old Canadian took a club-length relief, which is something he was allowed to do at the Biltmore Championship on the PGA Tour last month. But at the KFT Championship, only a scorecard’s length relief is allowed. When Hadwin saw his playing partners take shorter relief on the next hole, he self-reported the violation to the rules official, and his par on No. 2 was changed to a double bogey.
Hadwin eventually shot a 1-under 70 in the first round and followed it up with a 4-under 67 in the second round. But that put Hadwin eight shots off the lead of Blades Brown and looking at another year of partial status on the PGA Tour.
Hadwin played 11 straight seasons on the PGA Tour before losing his card last fall. When he was making a last-ditch effort to save his card last year, Hadwin said he believed 2025 was just a blip in his golf story and that brighter days were ahead, even if it meant things got darker first.
“I do truly believe that I’ve got my best golf still to come, I’ve got a lot more in me and then I’ll be a better player once I get through this,” Hadwin said at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship last year. “It was just a matter of when I got through this.”
As he started 2026 looking to return to the PGA Tour, Hadwin admitted that while he believed he could climb back to and compete on the PGA Tour, professional golf is only getting younger and more talented as he approaches his 40s.
“I have no illusions,” Hadwin told TSN in January. “I don’t think it’s going to be easy. The competition out there has continually gotten better over the years and gets stronger every year.
“At the end of the day, good golf will take care of a lot of things,” Hadwin told TSN. “I’ve said that my entire career and it’s really sort of time to get back to that focus and maybe have some fun out there for a change. At the very least, this will humble me a little bit and bring me back, back down to reality, and, if nothing else, probably show me whether I truly want it or not, and whether I want to keep going with the game.”
Barring a blistering weekend charge at The Federal Club, Hadwin will once again face another year on the feeder tour and questions about whether he wants to keep trying to climb the mountain.
