Not many players would have chosen Davis Riley’s path — but not many would refuse to trade places with him now, either. When the two-time All-American left Alabama in December 2018 with a semester of eligibility remaining, he hit the pro circuit with no status at all, but with confidence to spare. Over the first few months of 2019, the Hattiesburg, Miss., native tore through the Korn Ferry Tour’s Monday qualifier events, playing his way into four fields before earning special temporary membership status. By the end of the 2019 season, Riley had played his way into the Korn Ferry Tour Finals — thereby securing full status for 2020, which he almost immediately parlayed into a commanding spot near the top of the tour’s points race with a win on February 2 at the Panama Championship. Now in the envious position of sitting second in The 25, Riley has the luxury of making his own schedule to finish securing a PGA Tour card.
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LYING FOUR: You turned pro right around the same time Braden Thornberry did, but at least Braden had status because of Q-School. You had nothing. How did you decide that it was the right time for you?
DAVIS RILEY: I was in my senior year and had just finished the fall semester — and of course it was a decision that I thought about for a while. It was a tough one, because your teammates, your coaches — there were a lot of people who helped me get where I am today. But I just felt like the timing was right. Everybody that I bounced ideas off or asked for advice told me, “You’ll know when you know.” And I guess I never really knew what that meant until it hit me. It just felt like the time, man. I was ready to go, and I’m happy that it’s worked out the way it has. I was very confident in what I was doing.
LYING FOUR: When you make the jump like that without status, is that scary? Or did you feel like you had nothing to lose, so why not?
DAVIS RILEY: Looking back at it, I think the idea was probably a little scarier than I thought it was at the time. But I had just turned pro; I was just excited to play. I was like, “Alright! I’m a professional golfer now!” Obviously I was still playing the same game, but it felt a little different, and I was just excited to play. I started out doing some Monday qualifiers, and I was just excited to tee it up. I played really well in some of those qualifiers and got into some of those tournaments, and obviously got status through that and a couple of sponsor invites. Looking back on it now, it’s scarier now than it was at the time, but I think that paid off for me because I was just so into the round — like, “This is awesome! I’m a professional golfer! I’m getting to do what I’ve worked for my whole life!” I was so into the moment. A lot of people are like, “Ugh, I’m having to do Monday qualifiers” — but I was just excited to play. And I think that really paid off for me. I didn’t care if I was on a mini-tour or the PGA Tour. I was just pumped up to play as a professional.
LYING FOUR: So what’s the key to Monday qualifiers? There had to be something that you figured out.
DAVIS RILEY: Yeah, I played really well in them. I think I got through four out of the six I played. I just tried to play like another golf round. A lot of people think they have to birdie every hole and play super-aggressive — but no, just play solid golf. Solid golf will take care of itself. A lot of people will try to make five birdies before they’ve even teed up their round. Just get into your round and do what you normally do. Now obviously, you’ve gotta do some things really well, whether that’s making a couple more putts or hitting a couple of approach shots to gimme. You definitely have to do some things special at the right time, because it’s just one day. But I just treated it like another tournament round. I didn’t try to go out there and shoot at every pin or try to play super-aggressive. But play solid, make putts — and the next thing you know, you’ve shot seven or eight under, and you’re right where you want to be.
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LYING FOUR: Obviously, everybody’s goal on the Korn Ferry Tour is to finish the season with a PGA Tour card. But to have started 2019 with absolutely no status and then to play your way into the Tour Finals, you must have come out of that season with a tremendous amount of confidence.
DAVIS RILEY: I did, yes. When I turned pro, at the time my No. 1 goal was to get a Tour card, but obviously I wanted to take that step by step: first I wanted to accomplish Korn Ferry Tour status, then PGA Tour status. And obviously I was a little disappointed not getting a card, because that was my main goal, but I accomplished a lot, and I was very proud of myself. There’s an unbelievable amount of positives from that year. To get status — I think I got full status in May — and then to make Finals and have an opportunity to get my Tour card was a long way from where I started. It was definitely checked off as a successful first year out. Starting out this year with full status gave me a huge amount of confidence, because last year I made the Finals and had a good chance of getting my Tour card on a little bit more than half a schedule. And I’m not having to press and play five, six, or seven weeks in a row like I did last year. Now I’ve got a full schedule; I can pick any tournament that I want to play, so I’ve got as many opportunities as I want. If I could have a good chance on half a schedule, then I felt pretty good about a full one.
LYING FOUR: The first month of the Korn Ferry Tour season is just bananas: you start in the Bahamas, then down to Central America, then Mexico. I think I’d be tempted just to try to survive for the first month, and then to start worrying about the points race after I got back to the States. Obviously, you didn’t do that. Did you begin the season feeling good enough to win right then, or is that just kind of the way it worked out?
DAVIS RILEY: My thought process at the beginning of the year was just that I wanted to come out hot. It’s huge. If you can really kind of lock your card up before the schedule starts getting crazy, where there’s 10 weeks in a row — I just didn’t want a case of having to play the last six or seven in a row, and then get into Finals and be out of gas. If you can play well enough early, you can make your own schedule and take off weeks when you want to during the summer, when the schedule gets really, really packed. But if you’re off to a slower start and pressing during the summer, then even if you do get your card, you’ve played all these weeks in a row and have to jump right into the Tour schedule. So when you play well early, you can take some time off and ease your way into the PGA Tour’s fall series with plenty of rest, instead of going into the Greenbrier after having played 10 weeks in a row.
LYING FOUR: You hear people say that outside the top 50 players in the world, there’s not a lot of difference between the next 300 or 400 guys. And yet, on the Korn Ferry Tour, there is a line that gets drawn at the end of the season: 50 guys get their cards, and everybody else past that line doesn’t. Having been out there now for a little more than a year, do you have a sense of what separates the guys on the two sides of that line? Do you have a sense of what the guys who are graduating quickly are more successful at than other players?
DAVIS RILEY: I don’t know if there’s one specific thing. There’s a fine line: there’s a lot of good players who, at the end of the season, won’t get their card but have the ability to play on Tour. I feel like I was one of those last year: I didn’t get my card, but I felt like I was good enough at the time to play. Some younger guys right out of college just need the chance to get used to traveling and playing so many weeks in a row. There are so many different little variables: playing four or five weeks in a row, as opposed to college where you’re more like one week on, one week off, two weeks on, two weeks off — that kind of thing. And then some guys you’ll see play really well in their second or third season because they’ve seen the courses before; in your first year, you don’t really know the courses like guys that have been out there for three or four years. So there’s a bunch of little things. As far as skillsets, you’ll see some variances between the top 50 and the bottom half; that’s just how it is — and on the PGA Tour, also. But between the guys that are right on the bubble and the guys who make it, there is a pretty fine line. If you asked me whether there’s a lot of difference between the guy who finished 20th on the points list and the guy who finished 30th, there’s probably not a whole lot of skillset difference — it’s just finding a way to dig deep and make it happen. I don’t think anybody would tell you there’s a lot of skillset difference between those two guys.
LYING FOUR: You’ve played a handful of PGA Tour events over the past 12 months. When you show up at those, is there a noticeable difference in talent, or is it pretty close to what you see on the Korn Ferry Tour?
DAVIS RILEY: The difference between Tour and Korn Ferry, I think, is the depth of play; there are just more all-around good players. But it’s just as hard to finish up high on the Korn Ferry as it is on the PGA Tour. If I play well, I think I’m gonna be up high on the Korn Ferry; and if I play well on the PGA Tour, then I think I have a chance to be right there in contention. So I don’t think you have to do something special or crazy to be in contention at a Tour event. But it might be a little deeper throughout the whole field.
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[EDITOR’S NOTE: When Lying Four spoke to Riley on February 23, he was ranked No. 1 in The 25. As of this post’s publication, he is ranked No. 2.]
LYING FOUR: Being as close as you are to a PGA Tour card — I mean, obviously nothing is official until the end of the season, but everyone on the Korn Ferry Tour would trade places with you right now — how does that feel compared to where you were at the beginning of the season? Does winning so early change your approach to the rest of the season?
DAVIS RILEY: I’ve played really well. I missed the cut at Lakewood National, and I was a little bummed out because I felt like I was playing good. I mean, I only missed it by two, so obviously I wasn’t way off, but it took me a couple of days to get over it. And then I realized, “Hey, you’re No. 1 on the points list. If somebody told you at the beginning of the season that you’d be in the 1 spot five weeks into the season, you’d take it, right?”
LYING FOUR: No kidding.
DAVIS RILEY: I just kind of had to talk myself out of it, because I was a little bummed out. It’s just never fun missing cuts. But being in the 1 spot after five weeks — you can’t ask for a better position. Obviously it would’ve been nice to have played well to be further ahead, but I can’t complain where I’m at. It’s 100 percent where everybody wants to be, and I’m lucky to be in that spot. It’s a great opportunity. Nothing is written in stone, but I’m just going to take it week by week. Hopefully I’ll be in that 1 spot at the end of the season. That’s the plan. But I’m trying to treat every week like everybody’s at zero. If you’re up near the top every week, then you’re going to wind up where you want to be.
LYING FOUR: So what’s the toughest part of pro golf? Is it the on-course pressure, is it not having enough time to practice, is it the travel? What’s the hardest thing?
DAVIS RILEY: Just traveling and keeping your body fresh is a big obstacle. On Korn Ferry, you’ve gotta finish in the top 25 of the regular season or top 25 in Finals, so it’s almost like you’ve just gotta keep going. And you feel like you need to pull the reins in, but you’re just racing for points and racing for points. You’ve gotta play stretches when you have to play four or five weeks in a row. Just keeping your body fresh, I think, is a big obstacle — when you’re not playing golf, finding time to really decompress and take care of your body, with workout and recovery kind of stuff. And everybody has their different ways of doing that. Everybody gets nerves, and everybody feels pressure — but just learning to use that, like when you were playing golf in college or as an amateur, and having fun with it — is important. If you start treating it like a job, then you’re probably gonna struggle. I’m lucky to have a great group of guys on the Korn Ferry Tour that I get to run around with. If you don’t have that group, then I guess it could get lonely at times. But I’m lucky to have former teammates and others that I hang around with. It’s fun. It’s almost like a brotherhood out there, because we’re all friends with a lot of guys, and that makes it a lot easier.
LYING FOUR: I’m always interested in how Tour players keep up their games, because so much time is spent playing that there’s less time to practice. What are you working on right now?
DAVIS RILEY: I put in a lot of work this offseason with my swing coach, Josh Gregory, so at the moment, I feel like everything is solid. Right now it’s just little stuff — ball position, posture, alignment, stuff like that. At the moment, with my full swing, the main thing is just staying in posture throughout my swing. I feel like my motion is pretty good. It can be tough finding time, but I’ve been lucky — Josh is easy to communicate with, so I send him video. That’s one of my goals: to get video to him at the beginning of every week so we’re not playing catchup, and we’re always moving forward.
LYING FOUR: Other than nailing down a PGA Tour card, do you have other goals for this season? Is there anything to keep chasing if it becomes a mathematical certainty that you’re gonna be playing the PGA Tour next year?
DAVIS RILEY: Yeah, of course. I definitely have a few goals, but one of them that I marked out was the finish in the No. 1 spot and be Player of the Year for the Korn Ferry season. And I’m doing a good job so far. There’s a lot of daily and intermediate goals that I have to meet to get there. I call it “A-to-Z thinking” — you can think of the big picture, but there are a lot of steps that you have to go through to get there, so you have to go through that progression. If I accomplish the stuff that I can do on a daily basis and be consistent in that, then I’m gonna get where I want to be.
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