Australia’s Harrison Endycott isn’t treating the RSM Classic as a last-chance saloon, even though he’s in a group of pros fighting for their 2024 cards at the PGA Tour’s last official event of the season. In fact, he and his fiancée have bought a house in Tennessee and he’s going all-in on what he aims to be a long golf career in the US.
Endycott is a feel-good story in golf; a Sydney boy who lost his mother as a teenager but fought through grief to get to the paid golf ranks in the US. He lost his Korn Ferry Tour card, regained it, and then won on the secondary circuit in 2022 to earn promotion onto the PGA Tour this year.
The 27-year-old hasn’t played terribly in 2023, making the cut 19 times but missing it on 13 occasions from 32 events. He also registered a top-10 and three other top-25s. But the good results haven’t been potent enough to keep him out of the bubble who need to play for their 2024 status at Sea Island in Georgia this week.
“It’s been a very disappointing year this year, there’s no doubt about that,” he told Australian reporters on a call from the US this morning. “But if I go [and] win this week, would you look at it as a good year or a bad year? It changes the narrative [completely]. I have a lot to clean up; I have to be a better putter. But I know my good stuff is good enough, I just have to clean up the bad stuff.”
Endycott sits 140th on the FedEx Cup Fall points list, 15 spots out of the 125 who retain their PGA Tour cards. With 314 FedEx Cup points, Endycott would need at least an outright fourth place (or at least 123 points) at the RSM Classic to finish in the 125.
“I’m in a position where [I have to think], Go win a golf tournament [and the rest will take care of itself],” he said. “If I don’t, then I don’t care if it takes five years from now, it will get better.”
Endycott said he could certainly draw from the grit he’s developed in the past three years, losing his Korn Ferry card but reclaiming it at qualifying school and then winning his way onto the PGA Tour.
“I’ve been in worse positions before on a golf course, on and off the golf course. And, you know, now that I’m a bit more mature. My mindset is different than when I was 25. And my mindset is going to be different at 35. I’m going to have a mortgage soon. I got bills to pay like… s–t! [laughter].
“But the big [golfers] and the top guys are very good at accepting [the highs and lows]. That’s one thing that I want I think specially over the break after RSM; learning how to accept certain things better and I will because I’ve experienced it. I’ve had disappointments, I’ve had highs or lows.”
Should he not make the top 125, Endycott is likely to at least retain conditional status on the PGA Tour given he currently sits within 126-150 on the FedEx Cup. But with a house in Nashville, Tennessee, and aiming to join Old Hickory Country Club, where two-time major winner John Daly is a member, he’s in it for the long haul beyond this week.
“You can’t look at getting to the PGA Tour as a temporary thing, I look at this as a career,” Endycott said. “What I’m doing on the putting green and range, is what I’m doing to set myself up for 10 years out here. I’m setting myself up for the Champions tour [in 23 years].”
Of the other Australians in the field at the RSM, Aaron Baddeley is assured of keeping his card at 107th on the FedEx Cup. But Baddeley, who has four career PGA Tour wins, can move himself into 51-60 on the FedEx Fall if he wins this week. That would get him into two Signature events on the PGA Tour in February: the Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational, which he won in 2011.
Victorian Cameron Percy, at 159th, has 217 FedEx points and needs a two-way tie for second at the RSM (220 points) to keep his PGA Tour card.
