Sunday at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship was already a tough one for Davis Lamb. He needed to finish inside the top 20 on the season-long points list to earn his PGA Tour card, and he did it. But appearing on GOLF’s Subpar podcast, Lamb opened up about how stressful the final hole was, including one moment when he thought it was all slipping away.
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Host Drew Stoltz set the tone by saying he was watching the tournament with his brother, his hands sweating as he understood that no shot carried more pressure than Lamb’s final hole.
As for Lamb, he had just made what he called probably the biggest birdie of his life on the par-3 17th. He then hit his drive on the 18th, and it appeared to carry the first fairway bunker. But while walking up the hole, he faced his first major challenge, which left him stressed.
“I started walking up, and volunteers—there’s like six volunteers stomping around over the bunker looking for my ball. Like, you gotta be kidding me. I mean, there’s one step of rough between this bunker and the fairway, and the rough at this course was the worst we’ve seen all year,” Lamb said on the show.
With the situation unfolding, Lamb had no choice but to play it safe. He explained what was going through his mind afterward.
“But anyway, all I could do was take a seven iron, hack it out, and then walk up to that next shot. I’m like, I could play this hole a hundred times, and I would never have to get up and down from 49 yards for par. But pressure does weird things to you.”
For context, the tournament in question was the Korn Ferry Tour Championship, held October 8–11 at The Federal Club in Glen Allen, Virginia. It was the season finale, and the top 20 on the points list earned PGA Tour membership for 2027. Austin Hitt won the tournament, but Lamb had a different goal. Starting the week at No. 23, he needed a strong finish to break into the top 20.
He opened with rounds of 67, 68, and 67 to reach 11 under par, tied for 10th and five shots behind 19-year-old Blades Brown. However, the projections still had him at No. 22 heading into Sunday, just short of the line.
That naturally made the stakes even higher. As if to make things more difficult, steady rain soaked the course. Lamb admitted he was not striking the ball at his absolute best that week. Instead, he was grinding, making only three bogeys across the tournament.
Birdies on the 14th, 16th, and 17th holes on Sunday moved him to No. 20 in the projected standings, meaning the 18th hole could decide everything.
The pressure, the bunkers, and the volunteers all came together on that final hole, leaving Lamb with one more challenge to overcome.
He knew there was no room to think that a bogey might be enough. He had to commit to the shot in front of him.
“So I just fully committed to the shot that I saw. You know, I just opened up the face a little bit, tried to hit a little bit of a cutty one in there, and it took that dead bounce, kicked up in the gap. There was a lot of relief once that ball stopped rolling.”
Essentially, Lamb got up and down from 49 yards to save par. His closing three-under 68 left him at 14 under par and secured a solo eighth-place finish. More importantly, he finished No. 20 on the final points list, claiming the last available PGA Tour card.
That stressful Sunday capped a season that had turned in both directions. Lamb grew up in Potomac and played college golf at Notre Dame before turning professional in 2021. He earned Korn Ferry Tour membership for 2024 after finishing third in the 2023 PGA Tour Canada Fortinet Cup standings but lost his status after finishing 120th on the points list that season.
He fought back in 2025 on PGA Tour Americas, picking up a win in Colombia and finishing third on the points list to earn another opportunity on the Korn Ferry Tour. Since then, he has made the most of that chance.
In March 2026, he won the Club Car Championship for his first Korn Ferry Tour victory, which lifted him to No. 3 on the points list. Now, after a nerve-racking finish to the season, he has secured his place among the 20 players earning PGA Tour cards.
Lamb will begin the 2027 season as a PGA Tour rookie. Whether he encounters any more bunkers or searching volunteers remains to be seen.