Power eyes desert gold as PGA Tour card chase moves to Utah
Seamus Power during the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/PGA of America)
Opportunity knocks again for Seamus Power in this week’s Bank of Utah Championship as he battles for his PGA Tour card.
With just four events of the season remaining, the West Waterford man (38) must finish the FedExCup Fall series of events ranked inside the top 100 in the FedEx Cup standings to be fully exempt next year.
Those inside the top 125 after the final-counting RSM Classic next month will have conditional cards, which means that 135th-ranked Power needs a big result somewhere to secure a stronger playing schedule in 2026.
The good news for the Tooraneena man is that a win in one of the next four events would give him a two-year exemption and invitations to The Sentry, The Players Championship and the PGA Championship.
“The goal is going to be to get a win in the Fall,” Power said at the Amgen Irish Open, conscious that a third PGA Tour win could transform a mediocre season into a memorable one.
So far, the FedEx Cup Fall series has been a mixed bag for Power, who finished 47th in the Procore Championship after the Irish Open and 48th in the Sanderson Farms Championship the week after the Ryder Cup break.
He didn’t get a spot in the field at the Baycurrent Classic in Japan two weeks ago, but after finishing 11th at Black Desert Resort last year, he has good memories of the venue.
He faces five of the world’s top 50 in Alex Noren (17th), Maverick McNealy (19th), Kurt Kitayama (36th), Billy Horschel (38th) and Jason Day (42nd), not to mention a host of players hovering around the top 100, including Matt Wallace and Victor Perez.
On the DP World Tour, this week’s Genesis Championship in South Korea represents the final chance for players to make the top 110 in the Race to Dubai and secure their cards for 2026.
With five players counted as ‘in addition’, the cutoff for membership on the 2026 Race to Dubai is 115th, leaving Adam Scott in the ‘hot seat’, just 4.78 points ahead of German Yannik Paul.
It’s too late now for Conor Purcell, who missed the cut in the DP World India Championship last week and didn’t make the field for this week’s field co-sanctioned event, where local legend Ben An defends his title.
It’s also a big week for players looking to make the DP World Tour Playoffs, with only the top 70 in the Race to Dubai qualifying for the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in two weeks.
On the LPGA Tour, eight four-woman teams representing the USA, Australia, Thailand, China, Japan, Korea, Sweden and a World selection, comprising Charley Hull, Lydia Ko, Brooke Henderson and Taiwan’s Wei-Ling Hsu, compete in the Hanwha LIFEPLUS International Crown in Korea.
Lauren Walsh, meanwhile, tees off tomorrow in the LET’s Wistron Ladies Open in Taiwan before playing next week’s Armaco China Championship.
She will then join rookies Anna Foster, Sara Byrne and Annabel Wilson in the final-counting Andalucia Costa Del Sol Open de España at Real Guadalhorce in Malaga at the end of next month.
