Davis Riley’s ball was already underwater. His round risked heading that way, too.
After a hot start to his second round at the Chitimacha Louisiana Open, Riley had cooled down — and then come up short in the water fronting the par-3 eighth hole. After an uncharacteristically sloppy start to the tournament (he’d opened Thursday morning with three straight bogeys), the former Alabama star and Korn Ferry Tour phenom had begun Friday outside the cutline. He made up that ground quickly on Friday afternoon, opening birdie-eagle and adding another birdie at the fourth. After four pars in five holes, though, Riley had rinsed his tee shot at the eighth, risking a number that would give away all the work he’d done in the round’s first few holes, and perhaps cost him his weekend plans.
From the drop zone, Riley pitched onto the green to 12 feet — far from close enough to guarantee a bogey that would only cost him one shot. He took his putter nonchalantly from his caddie, then quietly slapped himself on his back with the putter grip — like penance for a sin. Through it all, he never said a word: not on the tee when the ball splashed down, or when his pitch finished disappointingly far from home.
With all the round’s momentum on the line, Riley measured the putt, struck it, and eyed the ball all the way into the hole. The tiny gallery following Riley’s group shrieked, well aware of the stakes that had been at hand. One of Riley’s playing partners, who’d also found water off the tee, putted out and threw his ball into the pond. Riley offered no such tantrum. That’s not to say he wasn’t angry. He just didn’t have to throw his ball to show it. You could read it on his face.
By now, that face has seen every inch of ground on the Korn Ferry Tour, and then some. After establishing himself as one of amateur golf’s biggest stars at Alabama, Riley turned pro halfway through his senior year in December 2018 without any tour status. Over a span of four months, Riley tore through the Korn Ferry Tour’s Monday qualifier circuit, playing his way into four fields before earning full status for the 2020 season. And when he won just three weeks into the year and shot to No. 1 on the Korn Ferry Tour’s points list, his graduation to the PGA Tour seemed all but certain.
Then came COVID.
With the pandemic came the PGA Tour’s decision not to relegate any of its players in 2020; with that decision came the result that the Korn Ferry Tour would not graduate any players in 2020. Instead, 2020 and 2021 were combined into a two-year marathon season. When Riley finished 2020 in third place on the Korn Ferry Tour’s season-long The 25 points race, normally it would’ve meant promotion to the PGA Tour; but in the pandemic-necessitated “super season,” third place earned Riley the same thing that it earned the player in 203rd place: zilch.
“Obviously it was really tough at the time, figuring out that I had it right where I wanted to get a PGA Tour card,” Riley said. “But you can only control what you can control.”
Now, though, with 2021 underway, the halfway point in the Korn Ferry Tour’s season is behind Riley. Nothing is mathematically certain, but unless Riley is struck by lightning before Labor Day, he will almost certainly secure a PGA Tour card through The 25, if not before: one more Korn Ferry Tour win would be his third of the season, which would bring an immediate “battlefield promotion.” Either way, at some point this year, Riley will arrive on the PGA Tour with a skillset and track record that have made immediate impacts his entire life.
“The kid’s got the best golf swing I’ve ever seen, but he’s also got one of the sharpest minds in the game,” said Will Zalatoris, the Korn Ferry Tour’s top-ranked player, who finished second at the 2021 Masters and has all but graduated to the PGA Tour. “It’s just a matter of time before he’s gonna be a top-10 player in the world. There’s no question about it. It’s not an if. It’s just a when.”
For a player with such a steady game, the 24-year-old Riley has always been a fast starter. At the private high school he attended in Hattiesburg, Miss., Riley won four straight state championships, finished runner-up at the U.S. Junior Amateur in both 2013 and 2014 (behind Scottie Scheffler and Zalatoris, respectively), and was named the country’s top high school golfer by USA Today. The summer before his freshman year at Alabama, Riley played his way through U.S. Open sectional qualifying and earned a start at Chambers Bay (he missed the cut after shooting 73-80, but was still three shots better than Tiger Woods).
And in his first season of college golf, Riley finished second on the team in average strokes per round, and earned a PING All-America honorable mention — which he followed as a junior in 2018 with a spot on the PING All-America third team.
“He was definitely not what I would call the everyday freshman,” Alabama coach Jay Seawell said. “Every step he’s ever taken, I don’t think he’s been uncomfortable. That’s pretty rare for a freshman, to be pretty comfortable in his game when he gets to college.”
From the beginning, Seawell said, Riley showed a confidence uncommon for his age — and the skillset to back it up. There are no glaring weaknesses in Riley’s game, so he doesn’t find himself in trouble often; through early April, Riley averaged 313 yards per drive — which, on the PGA Tour, would put him just behind Dustin Johnson — and he ranks in the Korn Ferry Tour’s top 40 for both greens in regulation and putting average. But when a shot gets away from Riley, he’s got the game throughout his bag to get back in position — which leaves him less skittish over those tough shots to begin with.
“He wasn’t risky,” Seawell said. “He was just comfortable being aggressive.”
Even Seawell didn’t expect Riley’s most aggressive shot, though. In December 2018, with no status on any professional tour, Riley turned pro — leaving behind his role as the best player on a top-five college golf team for zero guarantees. Over the next 12 months, Riley clawed his way all the way up the Korn Ferry Tour’s ladder: first by playing his way into fields through four Monday qualifiers, then by earning enough status to finish the 2019 season, followed by making up enough ground in the season-long points race to sneak into the Korn Ferry Tour Finals — which earned him full status for 2020.
“A lot of people are like, ‘Ugh, I’m having to do Monday qualifiers’ — but I was just excited to play,” Riley said in 2020. “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.”
And when the Korn Ferry Tour’s 2020 season began, Riley picked up where he’d left off by winning just three weeks into the schedule, at the Panama Championship — a win that catapulted him to the top of The 25 rankings, and into prime position to earn a PGA Tour card later in the year.
Then, the world stopped.
To ask Riley about his pandemic-induced extra year on the Korn Ferry Tour is a glimpse into Riley’s personality. His disappointment is apparent: on his face, in the way his shoulders drop when the question is put to him. He says all the right things; if there is anger, he doesn’t give voice to it. But by all rights, Riley and at least 24 of his colleagues should be on the PGA Tour right now, earning 10 times as much money and racking up world-ranking points. Instead, he’s grinding against an unseasonably cold, early spring wind, in front of a dozen or so followers on a grey Friday in southwest Louisiana, fighting to make a cut that will earn him a few thousand dollars.
If there is a silver lining to it all, it’s that the Korn Ferry Tour’s three-month shutdown in 2020 offered Riley a rare sabbatical. The Korn Ferry Tour’s points system offers refuge to far fewer players than the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup standings; on the PGA Tour, 125 players guarantee their own full status every year — but on the Korn Ferry Tour, just a fifth of that number graduates on points. The result is that the Korn Ferry Tour’s system pressures players to play every event, with as few off-weeks as physically possible. The COVID shutdown not only gave Riley a physical respite, but allowed him time to tighten up his game during a period when he already was playing well — and to feed off the growth of his roommate, Zalatoris, who himself was on the brink of a meteoric rise.
“Obviously, when we signed the lease in November [2019], we didn’t know we’d basically spend the next seven straight months together,” Zalatoris said. “It was fun pushing each other. I learned a lot from him; he learned a lot from me. One guy gets up at 6:30, the other guy gets up at 6 — the next day, we’re both up at 6; the next thing you know, we’re both up at 5:30. We were always pushing each other.”
A year later, Zalatoris is effectively playing full-time on the PGA Tour, making Riley one of the Korn Ferry Tour’s biggest next big things. When his game is clicking, Riley is nearly boring in his consistency. Early during his Friday round in Louisiana, Riley drove the ball just short of the green at the 386-yard second hole, then casually pitched in for an eagle. At the sixth hole, a 189-yard par-3, Riley’s iron shot found the wrong side of the green — but a long lag putt left just a two-footer for par, which he kicked in.
If there is a minimalism of drama in Riley’s game, then it fits with the rest of his aesthetic. In a grey Footjoy pullover, black cap and pants, Riley walked quietly. When he’s paired with friends, he says, he enjoys chatting; on Friday in Louisiana, though, he was quiet. When he spoke, it was to his caddie or to himself. Halfway through Riley’s round, the temperature dropped, and the wind blew harder. At the 14th, Riley’s approach shot came up short; he quietly chastised himself (the F-word was involved). Three holes later, after another short approach found a greenside bunker, Riley spent several moments standing off to the side of the fairway, one fist on his hip and his head down, simmering. But there were no words. Off the course, Riley is friendly and talkative — smiling and easygoing. But on the course, he’s a heated pot with a lid on: quiet and unremarkable from a distance, but upon close inspection, roiling underneath.
The moments when anger surfaces are the situations when Riley’s talent for recovery pays off. After pulling his drive left of the 14th fairway, Riley found his ball on a downhill patch of dry, bare dirt. He waited for the wind to die down; when it didn’t, he clipped the ball off the earth, over a creek, to about 20 feet of the hole. A few minutes later, after his tee shot flew over the green at the par-3 16th, Riley skulled his second shot back over the green — then pitched in for par. And on the 17th, after his approach had come up short in a sand trap, Riley got up and down for another tough par.
On a tour where week-to-week consistency is critical and cold streaks can ruin an entire season, Riley’s dual penchants for cashing in on opportunities and bailing himself out of trouble have been invaluable. In his first four events of 2021, Riley has made all four cuts, finished T26 or better in three of them, and has only three rounds above 72 (two 73s and a 74). With four months left in the Korn Ferry Tour’s two-year-long, 43-tournament “super-season,” Riley ranks fourth in the scramble for 25 automatic promotions to the PGA Tour; nothing is promised, but suffice it to say that he approaches the schedule’s final four months with plenty of margin for error.
That penchant also earned him a weekend in southwest Louisiana. After beginning the Friday round below the cut line, a hard-earned 68 cleared the way for an eventual T14 finish, Riley’s 11th top-25 finish of the season. Even at an average PGA Tour event, a similar effort would’ve brought Riley $125,000 or more; in Louisiana, Riley pulled in $10,200. The irony of Riley’s past 18 months is that, by now, he has clearly demonstrated that he’s ready for the PGA Tour, that he has earned his place there — but unlike his decision to leave college early, being ready isn’t enough.
“There’s a very fine line between guys who are out here and the guys up there [on the PGA Tour],” Riley said. “It’s no surprise, and you see it every year: guys come up through the Korn Ferry, and then just kill it on Tour. I’m not going to be surprised at all if you see a few of us at the end of this year go out and make a good name for ourselves playing on the big tour.”
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