MEMPHIS, Tenn. \u2013 Jackson Koivun\u2019s inspired playoff run ended Sunday at the FedEx St. Jude Championship with the 21-year-old closing with an even-par 70 to tie for 24th.<\/p>\n
He needed a tie for seventh or better to have any chance of advancing to next week\u2019s BMW Championship and his postseason chances largely unraveled on the 11th hole. But the game\u2019s most promising young star said he\u2019s savored his time since breaking through for his first PGA Tour victory at last month\u2019s 3M Open.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been fun,\u201d Koivun said. \u201cObviously, 3M was great and I had my game, but the last three weeks it\u2019s just been a learning experience. To be honest, I\u2019ve never [played] four weeks in a row and learning how to recover and eat enough to not get exhausted.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking back, if I play [No.] 11 in even par I\u2019m playing next week and that kind of stinks, but I\u2019m happy with how this summer turned out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Koivun made a triple-bogey 6 on the par-3 11th hole Sunday, bouncing his tee shot off a walking bridge and chipping his next shot into a water hazard. On Thursday, he made a double-bogey 5 on the hole, a difference of five shots that would have been enough to crack the top 50 in FEC points and earn him a spot in next week\u2019s field.<\/p>\n
Despite missing out on the second playoff event, Koivun said his six events since joining the Tour have been an eye-opening experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat I\u2019m not immortal,\u201d he laughed when asked what he\u2019s learned about himself. \u201cIt\u2019s completely different, in college you\u2019re traveling a lot but it\u2019s not four weeks on the road at four different spots. I need to learn to figure out how to eat more, I\u2019m losing weight.\u201d<\/p>\n
To be specific on that last point, Koivun said he\u2019s lost 10 pounds since turning professional in June, and that\u2019s not counting his week in Memphis with temperatures that hovered above 100 degrees all week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a ton of learning experiences,\u201d Koivun said. \u201cFiguring out my game plan during practice rounds and all the fun stuff like that. I\u2019m excited for a little bit of a break before I get back into grind mode in the fall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Koivun was projected to finish 67th on the FedExCup points list and will need to improve that number in the fall if he hopes to play his way into the first few signature events of 2027. He said he plans to play the Biltmore Championship, a new fall stop scheduled for Sept. 17-20, and will decide what he might add after that.<\/p>\n
Koivun admitted that the postseason points list and a potential spot on the U.S. Presidents Cup team had been on his mind the last few weeks. Although he\u2019s well outside the top 6 automatic qualifiers for this year\u2019s U.S. Presidents Cup team (53rd), he hoped to possibly impress captain Brandt Snedeker with a playoff run to the Tour Championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been weighing on me a little bit and people talk about the Presidents Cup like I should be on the team,\u201d Koivun said. \u201cSimply, I know I can go out there and play and win for the Presidents Cup, I just don\u2019t think I\u2019ve proved that yet to the captain. It definitely weighed on me a little bit and I knew if I made it to the top 30 [and advanced to the Tour Championship] there\u2019d be a decent chance, but even just getting into the playoffs and going out and playing some good golf was a really fun experience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEMPHIS, Tenn. \u2013 Jackson Koivun\u2019s inspired playoff run ended Sunday at the FedEx St. Jude Championship with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-816355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}