Playing in the final regular season event of the year on the PGA Tour with a sponsors exemption, Auburn’s Jackson Koivun made sure to take advantage of his final opportunity to be alongside the pros and his future colleagues at the Wyndham Championship.
Invited to a handful of PGA Tour events this summer as the world’s No. 1 ranked amateur and having already earned — and deferred for a year — his PGA Tour card through the PGA Tour U Accelerated program, Koivun shot 14-under for the week to finish tied for fifth place at Sedgefield Country Club for the Wyndham Championship.
It continued an incredibly successful summer run for Koivun who qualified and playing in the U.S. Open, just missing the cut. Following that he got invites to the John Deere Classic where he finished tied for 11th and the ISCO Championship, finishing tied for sixth at that tournament. Now he can add another strong finish to his resume before his PGA Tour career even technically begins.
Koivun’s week out at the Wyndham Championship got started with a solid 2-under (68) round on Thursday before turning up the heat and firing off a 4-under (66) round on Friday that had six birdies and an eagle. Koivun went even lower on Saturday with a 5-under (65) and then finished things off on Sunday with a 3-under (67) to close it out. That included draining a birdie putt from off the green from over 25-feet away on the 18th green to jump up the leaderboard.
In the advanced stats, Koivun finished first in the entire field in driving accuracy by hitting 46 out of the 56 possible fairways over the course of the week. He was 12th in strokes gained off the tee and 17th in strokes gained in approach. He was 32nd in strokes gained puting.
Notable PGA Tour names that Koviun finished ahead of this weekend includes Hideki Matsuyama, Jordan Spieth, Sungjae Im, Rickie Fowler, Tony Finau and Adam Scott.
Despite looking like he’s ready to compete at the next level, Koivun already has announced and reaffirmed several times earlier this year that he would defer his PGA Tour card for at least a year and return to the Plains for his junior season and be the leader of Nick Clinard’s program. Auburn returns Koivun, Josiah Gilbert and Cayden Pope as leaders from last year’s team, with a handful of talented underclassmen all expected to compete for the final two spots in the starting lineup.
Auburn’s fall season will get going in just over a month playing in the Invitational at the Honors Course beginning on Sept. 15th. With his finish this weekend, though, Koivun earned a spot at the first FedEx Fall tournament on the PGA Tournament at the ProCore Championship in California on Sept. 11-14th.