20 players will earn PGA Tour cards Sunday. One of them no longer has to worry

Twenty PGA Tour cards will be awarded Sunday at the season-ending Korn Ferry Tour Championship in Virginia. The weekend will be tense for many players, but Alistair Docherty no longer has to worry.

Docherty secured his long-awaited PGA Tour card last month. He is one of 13 players competing this week who have already locked up a place on the top tour next season. Seven cards remain available.

The 32-year-old Docherty took a difficult route to the PGA Tour. He has made nearly 100 Korn Ferry Tour starts and only six on the PGA Tour. Two years ago, he narrowly missed earning a card when he finished 32nd at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship; 30 cards were awarded that year. Two months later, he also missed qualifying through PGA Tour Q-School by one stroke.

“It was tough at the time; I kind of wanted to put the blame on other people,” Docherty said on the Subpar podcast. “I had [a Tour card] in my fingertips in the final stage of Q-School, and I guess I hit a 9-iron with a lot of adrenaline from 165 yards and flew the green. So you learn from it, you try to get better every day, but in the back of my mind I was trying to blame all these other people for coming up a little short. That put me in a pretty dark spot.”

Docherty put together a strong 2026 season. He tied for second in his second event of the season in the Bahamas and won the Argentina Open three starts later. That victory earned him a spot in The Open Championship, where he missed the cut. In August, he added another runner-up finish at the Pinnacle Bank Championship, losing in a playoff.

He learned before the Simmons Bank Open for the Snedeker Foundation that he had earned his PGA Tour card, then promptly missed the cut in his next two events.

“I kind of backed off a little bit,” he said, laughing. “It was a big sigh of relief, kind of took my foot off the gas pedal and definitely didn’t play all that well the last few weeks, but it’s really nice to have a Tour card and I’m preparing for next year.”

The full interview with Docherty is available on the Subpar podcast and on YouTube. The original article was written by Josh Berhow for GOLF.com.