Ellis keeps scrapping, qualifies for Pebble Beach Pro-Am
Since graduating from Live Oak High School in 1998 John Ellis
has had his sights set on one thing: earning his PGA Tour card.
He hasn’t done so yet, but Ellis has gone from tapping on the
PGA Tour’s door to getting ready to kick it down.
Ellis keeps scrapping, qualifies for Pebble Beach Pro-Am
Since graduating from Live Oak High School in 1998 John Ellis has had his sights set on one thing: earning his PGA Tour card.
He hasn’t done so yet, but Ellis has gone from tapping on the PGA Tour’s door to getting ready to kick it down.
This past month the 28-year-old fired rounds of 66, 64, 72 to capture the Nevada Open and a $12,000 check against a strong field.
He also played in 10 events as a member of the Canadian PGA Tour this summer where he picked up two second-place finishes and earned a third-place in the Tour’s prestigious season-ending championship. He also ended the season with a scoring average of 69.89 and earned more than $40,000 for his efforts.
And the last handful of years Ellis has either qualified his way into the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am or showed enough golfing prowess to earn a special invite or sponsor’s exemption into the prestigious tournament.
“I’ve played some really nice golf this year,” Ellis said. “Sometimes my putting has been lacking a bit but in the Nevada Open I did everything pretty well.”
The hardest pill to swallow this year for Ellis was his failure to make it past the Second Stage in the PGA Tour’s annual Q-School tournament where he missed a spot in the finals by a mere three strokes.
“If I made it into the finals, I would have either earned my PGA or Nationwide Tour card no matter where I finished,” he said. “That was tough. It was just one week. It’s frustrating, but at the same time it’s a process. Hopefully, if I keep at it, it will happen.”
Without getting into the elite finals of the Q-School tournament Ellis will have to forge on without having an exempt status on any either major U.S. Tour, which means that he’ll be forced to travel the country playing in a number of Monday qualifying tournaments, mostly in the Nationwide events, where roughly 120 guys vie for seven spots each week.
This past year, Ellis made his way into three Nationwide Tour events via the Monday qualifying process but didn’t make the cut in any of those events.
Still, he has shown flashes of brilliance in his game. Like the second round 64 in both the Nevada Open and Canadian Tour’s San Jose International Open, which took place at the Golf Club at Boulder Ridge in San Jose, the course where Ellis now plays out of.
In the second round of the Canadian Tour’s Northern California Classic, which took place in Stockton at Brookside Country Club, Ellis carded a 65.
“I’ll do the Monday qualifiers and some Canadian Tour too,” Ellis said. “The Monday qualifiers are like a crap shoot, but I’ve had some success doing it. I’ve proved that I can play at this level. If I can get enough starts on the Nationwide Tour, I could do well enough to earn my card (PGA Tour) that way too.”
Until he makes it to on the PGA Tour, the life of a traveling mini tour play is a challenging one.
“Sometimes all of the traveling and living out of a suitcase does wear on you,” he said. “Sometimes, you start to miss your family out here so you have to balance it out. It’s definitely a grind, and sometimes it’s not that fun. But I love it and I wouldn’t change a thing.”
