Luke Clanton has a chance Sunday to accomplish a feat that hasn’t been achieved in almost 70 years.
Clanton enters the final round of the John Deere Classic in a tie for sixth. With the Florida State junior having tied for 10th last week at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, should he finish inside the top 10 at TPC Deere Run, he’d become the first amateur to notch top-10s in back-to-back starts on the PGA Tour since Billy Joe Patton tied for eighth at the 1957 U.S. Open and 1958 Masters.
“I’m having fun just playing golf right now,” Clanton said Saturday. “… Trying to play the best I can, no matter what comes with it comes with it. I’m 20 years old, still trying to figure out what I’m doing.”
Clanton, ranked third in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, said last week that he planned on spending four years at Florida State. That, of course, could change should he earn a PGA Tour card before graduating. Clanton doesn’t even have to win a Tour event to do so; he currently has seven of the 20 points required by PGA Tour University Accelerated, a program that awards Tour status to amateurs that achieve certain elite benchmarks. Among other things, Clanton gets a point for every Tour cut made and an additional point for a top-10 finish in a Tour event.
A top-10 this week would move him to nine points, and for every ranking spot he improves in WAGR, he’ll get an additional point.