Tour Talk Ep 1: Entering A Professional Golf Tournament

Hello that was so not graceful welcome to episode one if I can get this chair to move of T talks so um I was just ch chilling hang out by myself because here I am in this big empty hotel room all by myself and I was thinking that I could start a

New series where I talk about life on tour while I’m on tour um if this becomes an exciting series and it picks up I will probably be able to do more of this since I plan to keep playing on tour so yeah it would be fun um I feel

Like there’s a lot of things that I could talk about and maybe I could even talk with my friends on tour and things like that so if this is something you guys like to see give it a thumbs up and let’s get started with episode one which

Is going to be about tour status so I kind of mentioned this a little bit in my one of my previous videos where I talked about um status on tour and like what it kind of means to be a member of a tour and how you get into tournaments

So uh I didn’t talk much detail into it but I did ask you guys if that’s something you’d be interested in finding out about because I feel like it’s not something that everybody knows so I figured that that would be a great first episode just to talk about how you

Actually get into professional golf tournaments and yeah so let’s get right into it okay so for those of you guys that don’t know I have played in many different tours all around the world since I turned Pro um currently I’m a member of of I’m here in Taiwan I’m a

Member of the Taiwan LPGA I’m also a member of the China LPGA um I just came in from Australia which is part of the wpga or um it’s a women’s professional Golf Association of austral Asia I think if that’s the full name I’m not sure it’s called the

Wpga um there is also the L of course you guys know ladies European tour um Tai lpj and at home in Malaysia we have something called the Toyota tour as well as the L access series which is also part of the L so oh and also the sunshine tour which

Is the tour in South Africa so as you guys can see I’m a part of a lot of different tours so first let’s get started on how you get membership into a tour so basically anybody who enters Q School uh for most of the Q schools I

Wouldn’t say it’s all of the Q schools but for most of the Q schools if you enter qualifying School you will have the option to pay for for a membership for the tour so paying for a membership of the tour does not mean that you’re are going to get into tournaments on the

Tour getting into tournaments on the tour depends on how you finish will depend on how you finish at Q school so let’s say there’s a qualifying school for let’s say Taiwan so taiwan’s one is very simple it’s top 30 gets cards so and it’s for that year so if you go to

Qualifying School in 20123 and you finish in the top 30 you’re going to get a card for 2024 so the way it works is that changes based on the tour of course uh different tours have different regulations a different amount of people get through but for Taiwan I’ll start with Taiwan because I

Feel like it’s the most simple Taiwan and China have pretty much the same concept it’s top 30 and even if there’s 100 people playing even if there’s 31 people playing if there’s 100 people playing if there’s 300 people playing most of the time so far it’s not changed

It’s going to be top 30 so top 30 get status for 2024 and if you finish 32nd you most likely will not get um you won’t get full status you might get into tournaments maybe like in the middle of the year when people are not so interested um in playing let’s say like

Five events in a row or people like myself who have memberships on other tours might decide to go play like other tournaments elsewhere and so then the field size might open up a little bit where maybe the 31 32 33 may get slots I’ll explain a bit later why that’s it’s

Not confirmed that you will get slots even though you finish like one position off but yeah so let’s say you there’s 200 people playing Q school and top 30 gets their cards even the 199 player can technically just pay for a membership of the tour and become a member of the tour

So that’s why I said just because you pay for membership of a tour does not mean that you are technically a player on the tour you’re you just a member of the tour because yeah sure you can say you’re a player of the tour but in my opinion you can only technically say

That you play on a tour if you play in the tournaments on the tour if you finish 199 out of 200 people in Q School like you’re not going to get into any tournaments that year but it’s your choice whether you want to pay for membership of the tour there are some

Tours where there are several like privileges to being a member of the tour for instance on the lpj and let if you’re a member of the tour you might get some perks of like this discs of golf clubs like certain brands might work with the tour to give you discounts

Or like whoop like whoop the varable fitness device that I wear like you can get membership things like that so there are some benefits and that’s maybe why some people want to pay for a membership but the membership for a tour is not cheap so most of the time I would

Feel like if you do not finish a certain position in Q School you would not pay for membership okay so another thing to explain is now that we’ve kind of talked about Q school for most of the Asian tours that’s how it works for the L and

The lpj it kind of works a little bit differently but I think the overall idea is there I’m going to kind of dive into tournament entries and how it works and why I was talking about just now like you know if you’re 31 in C School you

Might do not get a slot so again I’m going to take Taiwan as an example because it’s easier and I’m here so it’s easier for me to explain it so when you enter a tournament there’s going to be different Cate cies that you’re in so the first few categories which is let’s

Say it goes by alphabets like category a it could be like the winner of the 2023 order of Merit for the Taiwan lpj and then category B could be like all the winners of 2023 events so any event on the Taiwan lpj if you want you might be

In category B it’s not exactly what I’m it’s not the exact category I’m just giving examples of what certain C categories could be so and then category C could be top 60 from 2023 is order of Merit so it’s going to be like if you’re position one to 60 well technically 2 to

60 then you are going to be considered in category C but again take into account if you are in category if you won which most likely you’re in the top 60 you most probably did win the tournament last year or you would be one of the players that have won a

Tournament then you would be in category B so then top the category C wouldn’t be like 6 players but yeah so it kind of would mish mash a little bit obviously you would just get slaughtered into the higher category but so for instance in Taiwan so like I said of course it’s

Going to be order Merit winners tournament winners um things like that but just in general if you look at it like simply put to keep your card you need to be in the top 60 so that’s like to be safe so let’s say we say 1 to 60

Is going to be in category AB CD whatever because like I said most of them are going to intertwine so let’s say there’s 60 players already to enter a tournament in Taiwan there’s only 108 players per tournament sorry 102 players 102 players per tournament and the reason why is because here in Taiwan

They only have a morning session they don’t have an afternoon session like most other tourists do and because of that they can only fit in 120 102 players like that’s the maximum so you do get a much smaller field here and that’s why Q school and finishing certain positions in order Mar becomes

Much more important because the chances of you getting in is even less because of the amount of people that get into each tournament so okay let’s say 1 to 60 already gets a slot and there’s 102 slots so after that it’s going to be the

Top 30 from Q school so it’s going to be 1 to 60 1 to 30 so technically there’s already 90 players and then it’s going to be 61 to 80 from the previous year so that it’s basically going to fill up the field and then it will be like 31 to 40

Probably from Q school and this is why I said like if you are finishing in position like 35 even though you might think like oh I’m only five spots off the qualifying school like qualification the top 30 you could be a whole other category below so that’s

Why things like Q school is super important and like in in Taiwan they don’t even have ties so you could be technically like they could be 10 people finishing at even par which is the 30th position and like you could be 30 31 32 until 40 and there’s no tie so it’s

Going to go based off a certain criteria for score so the thir person that finish 30 ofq is going to person that finish 40 of Q school could be at the same score but because of how it of the comeback you could be an entire category below

And basically not even get a single tournament so yeah that’s why Q school is very very tough and like I said said this is a simpler Q school because it is um Taiwan China and Thailand pretty much works that way where you kind of have a certain amount of people and that is

Basically it like I said you do have a slight chance that you might get into the tournament if you finish like 31 to 40 but past that I think there’s really no chance it would be very very difficult for you to get into a tournament um on the L and stuff on the

LPG as well it’s a little bit different because uh they have different categories so for instance on the because also like I said the size of the playing field here is only 102 whereas for instance on the L is like 132 so that’s 30 more slots so that could be

Position um let’s say it’s 30 people on the L it could be position 31 to 50 so you can see how that would change Q school because like you could finish 40 of and still get into tournaments on L whereas in Taiwan you would not get into a

Single tournament so yeah it’s it changes based on Q school and it’s not based on the amount of people because I would say that it is equally as competitive here in Asia if you guys don’t know there’s a lot of woman golfers here in Asia as well so all the

Q schools nowadays are filling up like crazy and there’s you know there’s a lot of golfers nowadays A lot of people want to play professional golf and I feel like it’s also a kind of a spillover after Co how some people couldn’t like go to Q school for like two years for Co

And then it kind of just spilled over spilled over and then yeah so that is kind of a simplified of the tournament categories and how you get into tournaments but in addition to that like I said it it’s not as simple as that there’s also of course going to be

Things like invite slots so sometimes that takes up slots for people on the order of Merit or ranking system you would you would think um because sometimes invite slots are ranked in a higher category than let’s say the Q School category um like I say

I’m kind of making this up I don’t know the actual categories but I know it’s somewhat along those lines but yeah so there are it’s always up to the discretion of the commun uh committee they could say like oh I want this player to play and that player could

Have finished 40th and Q school but get an invite slot and the 31 player could not get it but the 40th player could get it based on an invite slot so yeah it’s never as simple as like ABCD that this is it but it does make it pretty clear

When you see like okay top 30 gets it if you finish in top 16 the order of marit last year you’ll be pretty safe things like that so that’s a pretty easy way to kind of think about how you get into tournaments so the next thing I kind of

Want to talk about is membership on tours and why the difference between playing on one tour and playing on multiple different tours like I said I’m a member of quite a lot of tours around the world and of course ideally I would just like to be a member of one tour

That’s big enough that I would have a plain calendar for a full year for instance if you’re you’re playing on the lpj you don’t need to be a member of any other tours although most lpj players that are European or not only that are European but there are quite a few LPG

Players that also home memberships on the L so there are a lot of people that end up having more than one membership but certain things that comes to membership is for instance um cost so being a member of the tour costs money you have to pay for membership every

Single year that membership money is supposed to go into the tour and developing the tour goes into our prize fund etc etc I don’t know I don’t know how it works but you do have a player membership each um each year for a tour so again like I said um previously

Just because you pay for membership doesn’t mean that you are playing on a tour so for instance like you like let’s say somebody last year in the 2023 order of Merit finished 120 of on the order of Merit it’s going to be very difficult for that 120 player to get into any

Tournaments in 2024 unless they went back to Q school so if they didn’t go back to Q School chances are they’re not going to get into any tournaments in 2024 but because they were a member in 2023 they will still be given the option to pay for membership in 2024 and you

Can keep on doing that but that doesn’t mean that you’re going to get into it in tournaments it just means that you maintain a member of the tour so certain things that could uh come into account with that is as a member of the tour you if there’s an election you could be

Considered to like you could give your vote so that’s one of the things of being a member of a tour um it varies based on the tour as well but yeah so one of the things like I said you have to pay for membership so being a member

Of a lot of Tours that’s one of things that sucks because you don’t just pay for one membership you pay for eight memberships but the thing is if you pay for all these memberships and you get something out of it um then I feel like it’s worth it of course I don’t mean

Something out of it as if like like a discount but I mean like for instance let’s say I play um let’s say I pay so you have to pay the membership to be included in the order of Merit let me just say that first so let’s say I go and pay

It wow let’s say I play in a tournament and I play well enough and I don’t pay for membership even if you win even if you okay not if you win if you win most of the time you’re given the option to join as a member of the tour but let’s

Say you finish third which is usually a pretty good position and it’s going to jump you pretty high up the order of Merit you still if you’re not a member of the tour you still you can’t pay for membership after and then you’re not

Going to be able to be on order of Merit which then would kind of defeat the purpose of you playing in the tournament on the twit anyway because if you don’t want to be a part of the order Merit which is going to give you a card for

Next year then what’s the point of playing so yeah so it it it of course it changes um based on many many different factors but like I said like um so for me let’s just go back to me so why do I have so many memberships on so many

Tourist and what do what what kind of like is the reasoning behind that so like you guys know I played on the L the L has many co-sanctioned events with many many tours around the world it’s pretty much a global tour right so for instance when the L goes to South Africa

The tour is co-sanctioned with the sunshine tour which is what I played last year so if I play the tournaments on the sunshine tour which is co-sanctioned with the L and as a member of the L if I play well in those events I will get my L ranking as well

So does that kind of make sense so if I pay for membership on the sunshine and the L and play a tournament that’s co- sanction I get points on both tours so that’s why for me obviously I’m not just playing not just paying all these membership fees for fun like it’s not

Cheap and so yeah there’s a lot of things that goes into it also like don’t forget the more tours that you play you also most of the time have a minimum of events that you need to play to keep your card so for instance let’s say you

Play in Taiwan you might need to play six events to keep your card so let’s say you’re member of eight tours and every tour has to play six events minimum like you will there’s no way you can keep all those T cards so you need to kind of know what’s the minimum

Amount that you need to keep and make sure that you’re able to play on tours that you can keep the card on because there’s no point paying for membership like I say it’s a big amount of money and then you play well but then you don’t play the minimum amount and

Therefore you still aren’t able to keep your car for next year so yeah there’s a lot of things to consider um for me um I started off playing here in Taiwan and China so I think I explained this as well before they obviously were not running

The tour for quite a period of time during Co so I already had tour cards for China and Taiwan before covid and then after covid I had my tour card for the L so if I don’t if I had a full card on L I probably wouldn’t have played in both

Taiwan and China like last that’s why last year I was playing like over 30 tournaments which is a lot of tournaments is every other week I’m playing a tournament is because I have to play a certain amount of number of tournaments to keep those cards so and

That’s why and of course if it’s like it’s if it’s so easy like if you play six events and you play six events well and well enough to be in the top 60 then yeah great you can just play six event six events and then go and play on the

Other tours and focus on the other tours but of course we know that’s not it’s not as easy as that you know you you’re not going to always perform the way you want to every single week so you might have to play 10 tournaments even though the requirements six you might have to

Play 10 to get into the top 60 so yeah you have to know how to like kind of balance it out and know like what’s your priority what’s your main tour that you want to keep your card on and then kind of have the other tours kind of as a not

Not like a backup but I mean you never know it’s golf you know if you only have one tour and you’re not able to keep your card for that tour and then you could go to Q School which is one week in a year and have a bad week and have

Entirely zero status for the next year year so that’s the difficult thing especially also because like I’m from Malaysia like the toy in Malaysia is not enough to Su to sustain me as a professional golfer if I only played professional golf in Malaysia like I would end up teaching because there’s no

Way I can make money playing the amount of tournaments that we have like it’s it’s not sustainable so I I don’t have the privilege of having a tour at home which I can like fall back on so like for instance if you’re Taiwanese you can

Always go play in the Alle and then if you lose your C you come back and play in Taiwan for me like I don’t have that privilege so I need to know where I’m putting put my cards in the right spots and try to focus on the spot that I want

To focus on but make sure that I have other things because at the end of the day what I’m trying to do is play professional golf and there’s many routes to take you there you know yes of course I’m trying to like for instance if you want to get your world ranking

Down that’s one of the things that you need to do you need to play tournaments and different tournaments hold different ranking points but you know at the end of the day like if you play well it’s still going to give you ranking points whether you play in Taiwan whether you

Play in China whether you play in Europe whether you play in the US it’s just different points based on different tours and different tournaments but there’s many ways to do it so yeah I think this video is already like 20 minutes long so I think that kind of

Covers it I hope that was a little bit informative um I hope hope that I did not talk your ear off and you guys kind of understood what I’m I was I was talking about and I hope that you can hear me I think you can because there’s

Nobody in this room so I’m talking pretty loudly and there’s also I’m like the furthest room away from everybody so I’m pretty sure nobody can hear me anyway but if somebody can then my bad and if you guys enjoy this video and this this kind of style of video where

I’m just kind of chitchatting um yeah let me know let me know if there’s certain topics that you would like me to talk about and I will catch you in the next one so yeah thanks for watching bye-bye