11 months ago, Tom McKibbin set out for Brisbane and the Australian PGA Championship as a DP World Tour winner exempt through 2025 but with one major goal for the year ahead – earning himself a PGA Tour card.
In the intervening period, he’s travelled to 19 different countries, clocked up enough mileage to take him almost halfway to the moon, and earned more than €1.3 million in tournament prize money, but that number one goal has not yet been secured and it all comes down to two weeks in the Middle East.
He arrives in Abu Dhabi for the HSBC Championship – the first of the two-season ending events – in 17th place in the Race to Dubai rankings, but more importantly, 11th among the players not already guaranteed PGA Tour cards for next season.
Shot-to-shot, hole-to-hole, and week-to-week, golf is a game of fractions, and McKibbin trails Frenchman Romain Langasque by just 43 points. Had Marcel Siem not holed a raking putt on the 72nd hole at the Italian Open and then proceeded to throw a dart on the first playoff hole, McKibbin would be eighth in line and with over 130 points to spare. A game of fractions indeed.
As a DP World Tour rookie, he got a look at Yas Links in the 2023 edition when the tournament was scheduled in the early part of the year, but had the weekend off after missing the cut in heartbreaking fashion. That week, he was the last player to get into the field and after receding daylight forced him to return to the course on Saturday morning to complete his 35th and 36th holes, a disastrous double bogey on the last meant he missed out by the minimum.
This time around, he’s a vastly different player, battle-hardened, and very much at home on the Tour. And regardless of what happens on Thursday and Friday, he’s guaranteed to be around for the weekend with no cut in play. But even if there was a 36-hole cut, his aspirations would be higher and he’d love to do enough to wrap up his PGA Tour card with a week to spare.
And it would be no less than he deserves. Across those 19 countries, he’s played 25 events and saw weekend action in 21 of them, posting a runner-up and a further eight top-10 finishes, including one at U.S. Open Final Qualifying which earned him his first Major Championship start.
He doesn’t turn 22 until the week before Christmas, so he’s got time on his side, but you need to strike while the iron’s hot and it’s been burning nicely all season long.
With mentor Rory McIlroy in the field and poised to wrap up his sixth Harry Vardon Trophy as the leading performer on the European circuit – a tally that would equal that of the late, great Seve Ballesteros – there is a lot on the line, but from an Irish perspective at least, McKibbin’s trials and tribulations take priority.
He’s got two rolls of the dice left, but lets hope he only needs one.
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