{"id":238932,"date":"2025-10-25T02:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T02:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/238932\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T02:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T02:18:09","slug":"this-former-college-star-has-a-chance-to-make-another-huge-career-jump-in-utah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/238932\/","title":{"rendered":"This former college star has a chance to make another huge career jump in Utah"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Brennan has three wins this year in PGA Tour-sanctioned events, but until this week if your pro golf interest doesn\u2019t dip below the Korn Ferry Tour level or you\u2019re not a college golf nerd, you may know little about the 24-year-old from West Virginia.<\/p>\n<p>MORE: Max Homa dealing with a painful injury as he contends in Utah<\/p>\n<p>Brennan has been precocious at every level of golf, and if his play this weekend in the PGA Tour\u2019s Bank of Utah Championship were to fall just right, he could skip Triple-A and go straight to the major leagues.<\/p>\n<p>An eight-time winner in college while at Wake Forest, including two ACC individual titles, and a three-time champion this year on the PGA Tour Americas, Brennan stands alone in first after 36 holes at Black Desert Resort, two shots up on Jackson Suber and Piercson Coody. He backed up an opening 67 on Thursday with a 65 in the second round to get to 10 under, and in only his third PGA Tour start, Brennan has given himself a shot at the $1.08 million first prize and an instant tour card for 2026.<\/p>\n<p>As it is, Brennan earned himself a fulltime spot on the KFT next year by getting so hot in August and September that he won three times in a four-start span\u2014twice in Canada and once in Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p>He was a top-10 machine in the Americas season, notching 12 of those finishes in 16 starts.<\/p>\n<p>Brennan, whose previous PGA Tour starts came in the 2022 Genesis Invitational and 2023 U.S. Open, got into the Utah event this week with a sponsor\u2019s exemption.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve got great support and have to thank the tournament director, John [Coolbaugh], here this week for giving me a spot. It really means a lot,\u201d Brennan said. \u201cIt\u2019s very exciting to be in tour event. I wasn\u2019t sure I was going to be play any this fall, so to have the opportunity to play in one is awesome.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c \u2026 It\u2019s been a really fun week so far. Hopefully it stays that way. I know it will regardless of [the] play but be nice play well this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Fortinet Cup champion takes on Utah \ud83c\udfdc\ufe0f<\/p>\n<p>A look at Michael Brennan\u2019s stock yardages <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BOUChampionship?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">@BOUChampionship<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/2EBpU0GCre\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/2EBpU0GCre<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 PGA TOUR Americas (@PGATOURAmericas) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PGATOURAmericas\/status\/1981450338348527828?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">October 23, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Brennan is climbing the pro ladder at an efficient clip. After graduating from Wake Forest, he qualified for the Americas Tour through a 12th-place finish in the 2024 PGA Tour University Ranking, and that has given him invaluable experience.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel like I\u2019ll definitely be more prepared for this weekend after having those experiences,\u201d Brennan said, \u201cand I know it\u2019s not the same level, but I am going to try to treat them the exact same and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not surprising for his athletic and big-hitting generation, Brennan smashes the ball off the tee and this week is fifth in driving distance (354.30 yards) and No. 1 in strokes gained\/off the tee (3.721). On Friday, he played the three par 5s in four under, including an eagle at the ninth, where he missed the green and chipped in from 37 feet. A big key at Black Desert is keeping your ball out of the sharp, black lava, and Brennan has been impressively accurate, missing only three fairways over two rounds while hitting 80 percent of the greens.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust kind of looking to stay a lot of the same this weekend,\u201d Brennan said. \u201cHopefully driver stays hot because if you\u2019re not in the fairway it\u2019s trouble out here. So, yeah, putting the ball in play is important.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n<p>    <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Brennan has three wins this year in PGA Tour-sanctioned events, but until this week if your pro&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-238932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}