PGA Tour hands card to top university player Thorbjornsen

Having completed his four years at Stanford University last week at the NCAA Championship, Michael Thorbjornsen officially secured his PGA Tour card as the no. 1 player in the tour’s University Class of 2024.

Thorbjornsen may accept PGA TOUR membership upon turning professional, and he will be eligible for all open, full-field PGA TOUR events for the remainder of the 2024 season and the 2025 season.

Laudable as this step is in the career of a young golfer the PGA Tour also showed its unfriendly side by declining the customary year-long exemption to Senior PGA Championship winner Richard Bland to its plus-50 tour events as the Englishman is a LIV Golf regular and as such, barred from the US tour’s ranks.

Bland, who earned his first professional title at age 48 after 47 fruitless starts at the British Open in 2022, however has guaranteed starts at next year’s Senior PGA and this year’s Senior US Open. Playing his very first senior circuit event Bland held off a top field to win the Senior PGA by three strokes on Sunday.

In a statement, the PGA Tour said, “In spite of the win, because of competing in an unauthorized event by the PGA Tour, he will be ineligible for Tour-affiliated events. The PGA of America, USGA and R&A each operate based on criteria of their own.”

Since joining LIV Golf, Bland has earned close to $10 million and is a founding member of the parallel league’s Cleeks GC team.

Meanwhile, though Stanford missed Sunday’s 54-hole cut at the NCAA Championship, Thorbjornsen’s university record stood above his peers’, the tour said in a statement. In the last two years, the 22-year-old has won twice and made the cut at four professional events including a fourth-place finish at the 2022 Travellers Championship near his hometown of Wellesley, Massachusetts.

“PGA Tour U is, I think, one of the best programmes in all of sports,” said Thorbjornsen. “What they’ve done, creating a pathway to the tour and to these different tours underneath it, it’s huge. It gives students and us golfers reasons to stay for four years, and you can’t really pass up on the opportunities that they present to you.”

Thorbjornsen began the 2023-24 season on the sideline with a stress fracture in his back. When he returned to the Cardinal lineup in February, he finished T71 and T17, respectively, in his first two starts, relinquishing the no. 1 spot to Georgia Tech’s Christo Lamprecht. Thorbjornsen returned to the top of University rankings after winning the Cabo Collegiate, and the victory started a run that included five consecutive top-10s entering last week’s national championship.

Thorbjornsen also missed the 54-hole cut in the individual competition this week after rounds of 74-75-78 but was assured of finishing on top of the PGA Tour U rankings after Lamprecht was subbed out of Georgia Tech’s lineup after the first round due to a back injury.

“Christo has been a huge part in my success this spring pushing me, even though we’re not together and I rarely see him,” said Thorbjornsen. “Finishing in that no. 1 spot is massive, so just doing everything you can every single day, making sure you’re getting one percent better every single day, is huge.”

The Rocket Mortgage Classic (June 27 to 30) is the first full-field event for which he is eligible, and he plans to compete in US Open Final Qualifying on June 3 in New Jersey. As a tour member, Thorbjornsen will also be eligible to receive sponsor exemptions into Signature Events such as the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday (June 6 to 9) and the Travelers Championship (June 20 to 23).

Thorbjornsen joins Texas Tech’s Ludvig Åberg (2023), Texas’ Pierceson Coody (2022) and Florida State’s John Pak (2021) as the top players in PGAT University. Last year, Sweden’s Åberg became the first to earn tour membership via the varsity rankings and in his rookie year, won the DP World Tour’s Omega European Masters, competed for the European Ryder Cup Team and won the RSM Classic.

“Ludvig, even though he’s been on tour for say a year now, he’s top 10 in the world, he’s done unbelievable things recently,” said Thorbjornsen. “We’re good friends, we competed a lot last year, so he’s someone I look up to but I’m also trying to beat him as well.”