OU golfer with PGA Tour aspirations will make his first pro start at the Wichita Open
The professional golf career for one of the most promising prospects in the country will start this week at the Wichita Open.
Less than two weeks after leading Oklahoma to the NCAA national championship match, recent graduate Quade Cummins will make his first start as a professional when he tees off at 9:01 a.m. Thursday at Crestview Country Club.
Cummins had to earn a spot in the Korn Ferry Tour event the hard way, as he snagged a qualifying spot earlier this week with a 7-under round for the low score at the Monday qualifier at Auburn Hills.
“This is what I’ve always wanted to do ever since I started playing golf to be able to turn pro and be able to say I’m a professional golfer,” Cummins said. “It’s awesome to be able to qualify for my first tournament. I still have to play well later this week to make it mean something though. Hopefully I can play well this week and that’s how my career starts. It would be a pretty cool story.”
Cummins is not the typical Monday qualifier.
He is one of the best golfers to ever play for OU, where he notched 22 top-10 finishes and 10 top-5 finishes and left with eight school records, including career scoring average (71.3) and rounds of par-or-better (88). Cummins was recently named to the all-Big 12 team and was ranked No. 6 in the PGA Tour University rankings, which automatically earned him pro status.
The Korn Ferry Tour schedule just so happened to have Wichita as the first stop where he could try to qualify. Now that he has, Cummins makes it clear he’s not just happy to be here — he thinks he can win.
“My expectations are to get on the PGA Tour, so you’ve got to start somewhere,” Cummins said. “I’m trying to be in contention on Sunday. If I play as well as I can and that’s a 10th-place finish, then that’s fine. But going into it, I feel like I’m good enough to be able to compete for wins and it will be a disappointment if I don’t play well. Hopefully I will go out there and play some good golf and have a chance going down the stretch on Sunday.”
To do that, he’ll have to top a field that includes defending champion Jared Wolfe, who will try to become the first player in the Korn Ferry Tour’s 32-year history to successfully defend his title. The rest of the field includes 12 of the tour’s top 25 golfers in the standings, led by No. 10 Chad Ramey, and three PGA Tour winners, led by Sean O’Hair with four victories.
Now that he’s playing against professional golfers, Cummins doesn’t think he’ll have to do anything differently from his All-American career in Norman.
“I’ve been playing my game for my whole life, so I don’t think I need to change anything to accommodate the tour that I’m on now,” Cummins said. “My game got me to where I’m at today and that was with a lot of help from a lot of people. They basically turned me into what I am today golf-wise and I don’t think I need to change anything now that I’m here.”
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