Stepping Up

48th-place finish on season-long points list earns Colorado native Chris Korte fully-exempt status going into 2027 Korn Ferry Tour season; former Air Force golfer Kyle Westmoreland notches third top-5 showing of KFT season

By Gary Baines 

It’s been a gradual but steady climb in the pro ranks for Colorado native Chris Korte.

Over the last seven or eight years, the Regis Jesuit High School and University of Denver graduate has done time on just about every developmental circuit affiliated with the PGA Tour. He played on PGA Tour Latinoamerica from 2019-21, PGA Tour Canada in 2023 and PGA Tour Americas in 2023-24.

And in the 2026 season, after coming in with conditional status on the Korn Ferry Tour, he took another step this year. On Sunday, the 30-year-old former CGA Match Play and Amateur champion finished 28th in the Korn Ferry Tour Championship in Glen Allen, Va. With that, he ended up 48th on the KFT’s season-long point list. By being in the 21-60 range in final points, he’ll start out a Korn Ferry Tour season — in this case 2027 — with fully-exempt status for the first time. That despite Korte missing two months of the season with a wrist injury.

Korte used a second-place finish at the KFT’s Argentina Open in early March, and 12th- and 16th-place showings in the late summer to secure an exempt spot on the KFT in 2027.

Korte will be joined on the 2027 Korn Ferry Tour by former Air Force Academy golfer Kyle Westmoreland, who tied for fourth in the Korn Ferry Tour Championship to jump into 43rd place on the final KFT points list. Westmoreland, who played in the PGA Tour in 2022-23, went 66-68-67-67 in Virginia to finish four strokes behind Tour Championship winner Austin Hitt.

It marked Westmoreland’s third top-5 finish on the 2026 KFT campaign. 2027 will be his fifth season playing full time on the Korn Ferry circuit.

Other players with significant Colorado ties will likely join Korte and Westmoreland on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2027 — depending on how things play out the rest of 2026 on other circuits and at Q-school. The first of those players might very well be former University of Colorado golfer Justin Biwer as he’s is on pace to earn full KFT status based on his season-long showing on PGA Tour Americas.

With the top 10 finishers on the final Americas 2026 points list earning KFT cards for next year, Biwer is in the No. 5 spot entering the Americas-season-ending Dominican Republic Tour Championship Oct. 15-18. Biwer has a victory and four top-10 finishes in all in the 2026 PGA Tour Americas season.

The top 20 finishers on the Korn Ferry Tour 2026 money list as of Sunday landed 2027 PGA Tour cards. That included Ross Steelman, who won the Blue Championship at TPC Colorado in Berthoud in July and ended up atop the points list. By finishing No. 1, Steelman lands spots in the 2027 U.S. Open and Players Championship. Also advancing to the PGA Tour are 19-year-old Blades Brown, the stroke-play medalist in the 2023 U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills Country Club; and Tommy Morrison, the runner-up in the 2026 Blue Championship. For the entire list of 2027 PGA Tour recipients via the Korn Ferry Tour, CLICK HERE.

About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com