PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – For Martin Trainer, it’s been the month of qualifying tournaments. Before arriving on Florida’s First Coast this week for the final stage of PGA Tour Q-School, the 32-year-old Tour winner was among a few Tour pros to take their chances in the inaugural LIV Promotions event, held a week ago in Abu Dhabi.
Trainer fell three shots shy of a playoff for one of three full-time tickets to the Saudi-backed league, tying for seventh.
His reasoning for the attempt was simple.
“Just an opportunity,” Trainer explained Saturday at Sawgrass Country Club, where he’s battling for one of at least five Tour cards and to improve on what is now just past champion status. “I have a little status on Korn Ferry next year, I’ll be in a few PGA Tour events, I could play a few European events, but between that (LIV Promotions) and this week, it was just two chances to have full status on a major tour basically.”
Trainer is one of four players in this week’s field who also competed in the Promotions event. Kevin Chappell and Zach Bauchou have already withdrawn while Braden Thornberry is within striking distance at T-24 after back-to-back 66s. Trainer has dug himself a bit of a hole entering what surely will be a soggy Sunday – and maybe Monday if play is delayed enough. He shot 2-over 72 and sits T-54 on the leaderboard at even par, seven shots out of the top five and ties but in the hunt to procure at least eight guaranteed starts on the Korn Ferry Tour next year.
As winner of the 2019 Puerto Rico Open, Trainer can bank on at least a handful of events on the PGA Tour in 2024; he’s gotten used to playing with conditional membership the past couple seasons, so he’s optimistic he can perform well and reshuffle into more events.
As for a full-time Korn Ferry Tour season, Trainer is prepared for that as well. It’s just not ideal.
“If I play well, I’ll probably have more of an appetite for it (playing on the KFT), but the prospect of playing poorly out there sounds rough,” Trainer said. “You get a little jaded after a while, for sure. But yeah, as long as I’m playing well, then it’s exciting, no matter the tour I’m on. But I think what weighs on you is when you’re not playing well at all, that’s rough for sure.”
No matter the tour Trainer begins on next year, he’s not expecting to miss any events because of suspension. He said he was denied a media release for the Promotions event because he missed the 45-day deadline. (LIV didn’t announced the Promotions dates until Oct. 26.)
Another form of punishment, however, is a likely outcome, Trainer added.
“We talked about it,” Trainer said. “We’ll see what happens. They might fine me, who knows. … I don’t think it will be a suspension.”
As Trainer stood outside the scoring area, on the upstairs patio of Sawgrass Country Club’s clubhouse, he reckoned that the two Q-Schools, LIV and PGA Tour, were not all that different – “Just golf with names that I’ve never heard of,” Trained said of LIV’s qualifying event. “It’s actually kind of amazing how many great players there are all over the world.”
The PGA Tour hasn’t publicly commented on details of past LIV Golf-related punishments.
Trainer still holds out hope that he can return to the form that won him a PGA Tour title. He’s taking it year by year, but as long as he sees glimpses in his game, and as long as there’s opportunity, he’ll keep chasing it.
“It’s up and down,” Trainer said. “Everyone’s career, unless you’re like a top-20 player, is up and down basically. Hopefully there’s more up for me in the future. We’ll see.”
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