[PHOTO: Golf Digest US]
We’ll get to the other 19 Korn Ferry Tour graduates in a moment, but there’s a new guy to cheer on the PGA Tour, especially for Australian fans who feel a kinship with our rugby and cricket-loving brothers from South Africa: Christo Lamprecht.
Lamprecht is a 6-foot-8 South African who played college golf at Georgia Tech and who won the The Amateur Championship in 2023 to get into that year’s Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, where he held the lead on the first round. Since leaving college and turning pro, Lamprecht has combined his gobsmacking distance off the tee with deft short game touch to win the Korn Ferry Tour’s Pinnacle Bank Championship in August. With more solid play over the past two months, Lamprecht earned one 20 promotions to the PGA Tour for 2026.
Here are some cool facts you should know about Lamprecht, who is a very good chance to be one of the breakout stars on the PGA Tour in 2026:
• He came through Louis Oosthuizen’s academy in South Africa, a beneficiary of the training and resources from the golfer he idolised growing up. Oosthuizen has previously praised Lamprecht’s mentality and serenity on the course even more than his physical abilities. Aside from Oosthuizen, Lamprecht’s favourite golfer growing up was Rory McIlroy.
• Lamprecht spent his college career at Georgia Tech, where he was a two-time All-American.
• He wears a size 13 shoe, which is modest for a man of his stature, he played competitive tennis until his early teens and still loves pickleball, and after a promising junior career in golf, a massive growth spurt at age 15 resulted in the total breakdown of his game, along with the need for new clubs every six months or so. Not until he stopped growing did the skill return.
• He once played with Tommy Morrison, a 6-foot-10 player at Texas, and Morrison looked down on him and said, “hey big guy.” Lamprecht’s response: “Fair enough.”
• When told that his accent sounds almost American, Lamprecht already had been needled by his friends. “I’ve gotten a lot of trouble probably the last year and a half with all my friends back home in South Africa. Apparently I’m a full-blown American now, which I don’t like,” he said. “But yeah, it’s bad. I don’t know why it’s changed. I can’t change it back. I don’t know what’s happening.”
Meanwhile, Lamprecht’s fellow graduate, Johnny Keefer, finished atop the season-long Korn Ferry Tour standings, locking down his PGA Tour card for while also earning spots in next year’s US Open and Players Championship.
OTHER NEWS: One of Europe’s rising stars earns Masters invite, PGA Tour card for 2026
Keefer, 24, ended a lights-out campaign on the PGA Tour’s feeder circuit by finishing 12th at its season finale in French Lick, Indiana. The Baylor University product won twice on the Korn Ferry Tour and logged nine top 10s to finish No. 1 on the points list.
Aside from the exemptions into TPC Sawgrass and Shinnecock, Keefer avoids the reshuffle in priority list that other Korn Ferry graduates face.
Nineteen other players earned promotion to the PGA Tour, highlighted by Lamprecht and Chandler Blanchet, who won the KFT Championship on Sunday with a six-under 66.
Blanchet, in his fourth season on the Korn Ferry Tour, also won the Price Cutter Charity Championship in August to finish second in the standings. Other notables to get their tour cards include Austin Smotherman, Neal Shipley, who went viral while playing with Tiger Woods at Augusta National en route to the low amateur at the 2024 Masters, as well as Pierceson Coody.
Mitchell Meissner was the odd man out. Entering the week at No. 21, a T-37 finish kept him on the wrong side of the number.
Here are the 20 players that earned their tour cards through the Korn Ferry Tour:
1. Johnny Keefer
2. Chandler Blanchet
3. Austin Smotherman
4. Neal Shipley
5. Emilio Gonzalez
6. Hank Lebioda
7. Adrien Dumont de Chassart
8. S.H. Kim
9. Christo Lamprecht
10. Davis Chatfield
11. Zach Bauchou
12. Pierceson Coody
13. S.T. Lee
14. Jeffry Kang
15. Kensei Hirata
16. Trace Crowe
17. John VanDerLaan
18. Marty Dou
19. Sudarshan Yellamaraju
20. Pontus Nyholm
