Twenty PGA Tour cards will be handed out at the season-ending Korn Ferry Tour Championship in Virginia on Sunday. It will be a tense weekend for many, but (finally) not for Alistair Docherty.
Docherty secured his long-awaited PGA Tour card last month, and he’s one of 13 player competing this week who have already locked up a spot on the big tour next season. Seven cards are still up for grabs.
It was not an easy route to the PGA Tour for Docherty, who’s had several close calls over the years and just now, at age 32, is getting his first shot on the top tour. He joined this week’s Subpar podcast to talk about his journey.
Docherty’s made nearly 100 Korn Ferry Tour starts to his six on the PGA Tour. He just missed qualifying for the PGA Tour two years ago when he finished two places out of a spot at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship (he was 32nd, and 30 received cards then). And two months later he was a stroke shy of qualifying via PGA Tour Q-School.
“It was tough at the time; I kinda wanted to put the blame on other people,” Docherty said on Subpar. “I had [a Tour card] in my fingertips in the final stage of Q-School and I guess I hit a 9-iron with a lot of adrenaline from 165 yards and flew the green. So you learn from it, you try to get better every day, but in the back of my mind I was trying to blame all of these other people for coming up a little short. That put me in a pretty dark spot.”
But Docherty put together a strong 2026. He tied for second in his second event of the season in the Bahamas and won the Argentina Open three starts later (which got him a spot in the Open Championship, where he missed the cut). He later added another second-place finish at the Pinnacle Bank Championship in August when he lost in a playoff.
He found out ahead of the Simmons Bank Open for the Snedeker Foundation that he had earned his card for 2026, then promptly missed his next two cuts.
“I kind of backed off a little bit,” he said, laughing. “It was a big sigh of relief, kind of took the foot off the gas pedal and definitely didn’t play all that well the last few weeks, but it’s really nice to have a Tour card and I’m prepping for next year.”
You can listen to the entire interview with Docherty here, or watch on YouTube below.
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