Omaha primer: Everything you need to know entering Korn Ferry Tour’s regular-season finale

A week after the PGA Tour held its regular-season finale in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Korn Ferry Tour will do the same in Omaha, Nebraska.

The Pinnacle Bank Championship marks the last event before the Korn Ferry Tour Finals and the final chance for players to earn one of 25 PGA Tour cards available to the top 25 finishers in the regular-season points standings. Players further down the list will be battling for a place inside the top 75 in points, which comes with a ticket to KFT Finals, where another 25 cards are up for grabs and those already clinching promotion can improve their priority rankings for next season on the PGA Tour.

Heading into Omaha, 15 players are already, as the KFT has coined it, Tour bound. That includes points leader Carl Yuan; Ben Griffin, the former North Carolina standout who briefly retired last year; Justin Suh, a four-time All-American at USC who was among that vaunted debut class in the Summer of 2019 that included Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland; Taylor Montgomery, who last season finished No. 26 on both the regular-season and KFT Finals points lists; Robby Shelton, a former top-ranked junior who went on to star at Alabama; and Davis Thompson and Trevor Werbylo, two players who were part of last summer’s inaugural PGA Tour University class.

That leaves 10 players currently inside the top 25 who have yet to clinch their cards:

• 16. Harry Hall
• 17. Tyson Alexander
• 18. Kevin Yu
• 19. Harrison Endycott
• 20. Trevor Cone
• 21. Anders Albertson
• 22. Kevin Roy
• 23. Ben Taylor
• 24. Vincent Norrman
• 25. Michael Kim

There are exactly 25 players outside the current top 25 and who could crack the top 25 without needing to at least win. Here are those names, which include recent Texas grad Pierceson Coody (who won in his third KFT start as a pro) and 20-year-old Akshay Bhatia (who won the KFT season opener), along with their minimum-finish requirement:

• 26. Brandon Harkins – Solo 73^rd
• 27. Ryan McCormick – T-68 (two-way)
• 28. Brent Grant – T-54 (two-way)
• 29. Pierceson Coody – Solo 26^th
• 30. Akshay Bhatia – T-14 (two-way)
• 31. T.J. Vogel – Solo 14th
• 32. Carson Young – T-10 (two-way)
• 33. David Kocher – Solo ninth
• 34. Jeremy Paul – Solo seventh
• 35. Jimmy Stanger – Solo fifth
• 36. Eric Cole – T-4 (three-way)
• 37. Nicolas Echavarria – Solo fourth
• 38. Zack Fischer – Solo fourth
• 39. Austin Eckroat – Solo fourth
• 40. Will Gordon – T-3 (three-way)
• 41. Andrew Kozan – T-3 (three-way)
• 42. Mark Anderson – T-3 (three-way)
• 43. Rob Oppenheim – T-3 (two-way)
• 44. Sam Stevens – Solo third
• 45. John VanDerLaan – T-2 (three-way)
• 46. Patrick Fishburn – T-2 (two-way)
• 47. Norman Xiong – T-2 (two-way)
• 48. Mac Meissner – Solo second
• 49. Pontus Nyholm – Solo second
• 50. Kevin Dougherty – Solo second

Starting with No. 51, Jose de Jesus Rodriguez, Nos. 51-120 all are mathematically still alive to crack the top 25, but they would need to win, and most of them would still need help. That group includes Kyle Westmoreland (57), Quade Cummins (68), Tain Lee (73), Sam Saunders (75), Nick Hardy (76), Sean O’Hair (85), Curtis Luck (94), Braden Thornberry (104), Blayne Barber (105), Erik Compton (111), Grayson Murray (117) and Jacob Bridgeman (120).

The secondary race this week in Omaha is for a spot in the top 75 and a KFT Finals berth. Here’s the current bubble picture for that race (taking out LIV player Peter Uihlein, who is still listed at No. 64):

• 70. Mark Hubbard (in FedExCup Playoffs)
• 71. Shad Tuten, 321,993
• 72. Chris Baker, 317.573
• 73. Tain Lee, 309.043
• 74. Martin Flores, 306. 54
• 75. Sam Saunders, 303.334

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• 76. Nick Hardy, 300 (not in field, into KFT Finals via FedExCup points)
• 77. Clay Feagler, 295.133
• 78. Alex Chiarella, 294.916
• 79. Vince India, 294.017
• 80. Spencer Ralston, 292.83

Typically, regular-season KFT events award 500 points to the winner, but for Omaha, the winner will receive 600 points, with solo second getting 330, solo third 210 and so on, with solo seventh (100 points) being that last solo position to earn triple-digit points.

The three-event KFT Finals begin next week in Boise, Idaho, followed by stops in Columbus, Ohio, and Newburgh, Indiana. Unlike the PGA Tour, the KFT’s postseason does not cut down its field sizes each week.