Fifty-one-year-old Steve Allan recently became a winner on the PGA Tour Champions for the first time, claiming the title at the Galleri Classic in March. The win was only the third of Allan’s career, and his first victory in 23 years, since his win at the 2002 Holden Australian Open.
On this week’s episode of Subpar, Allan described the long and winding road his professional golf career has taken with hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stoltz. The lesson for the rest of us? Never give up.
“I lost my card on the PGA Tour at the end of ’05,” Allan said. “I got it back for, ’07, ’08, ’09, and then lost it in ’09, and lost it completely, like, didn’t even finish top 200, so no Korn Ferry. So that’s a bit of a reality check. But I still felt like, at the end of ’09, it was only 12 months from the end of ’08 when I had maybe my best little run on the tour.
“I’d had an awful start to ’08, and at the end of 2008 I finished, I think it was third at Turning Stone where Dustin Johnson won his first tournament. I finished seventh here at Grayhawk where I was sort of almost pushing for the lead and messed up the end. I think it was a 4th at Mississippi as well, and so it’s like, I’m not that far removed from that, so I feel like it’s still there.”
After losing his PGA Tour card, Allan had an opportunity to play on the newly formed OneAsia tour.
“A lot of the best Australians weren’t playing OneAsia because they were all on the PGA Tour, the European tour, the Japanese tour, so I was able to get a few invites, and that sort of kept me going for a couple of years,” Allan said.
Allan made his way back on the Korn Ferry Tour and came close to regaining PGA Tour status in 2015 but narrowly missed.
“I eventually lost my Korn Ferry card too, and then I’m playing in ’18, not very well, and then ’19 I played genuinely well through the year, I made it through three PGA Tour Mondays.
“So I played well enough not to give it up, and by this point, I’m deep into my 40s, I’m like, the Champions tour is on the horizon,” he continued. “Unfortunately that year I got really sick at Q-School so I couldn’t play, and then we had the Covid year, so next thing it’s a few more years down the track, and you know, at that point, I really knew I wanted to give the Champions tour a crack because I still love playing the game, I still like competing. And it was just a matter of getting to 50. And then as you know, it’s one of the hardest tours to get on, so there was no guarantee, but I was gonna give it a crack.”
Allan gave it more than a crack, finishing T3 at the 2024 PGA Tour Champions qualifying tournament to earn a full exemption on the PGA Tour Champions last year. At the end of the year, he finished just shy of the top 36 exemption cutoff, though, and had conditional status for 2025.
In March, he got a spot in the Galleri Classic field when Steve Stricker withdrew. Then, he won the tournament with rounds of 69-65-67. Now he has full status for both this year and next.
For more from Allan, check out the full Subpar episode below.
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