Denver native Mark Hubbard meets the challenge, Monday qualifying for PGA Tour’s FedExCup Fall opener after missing registration deadline
By Gary Baines – 9/10/2024
The PGA Tour’s “FedExCup Fall” season got started a little earlier than expected — unofficially speaking — for Denver native Mark Hubbard.
The Colorado Academy graduate was expecting it to begin Thursday at Silverado Resort in Napa, Calif., at the Procore Championship, less than 100 miles from where Hubbard played his college golf at San Jose State. Instead it began on Monday at the nearby Yolo Fliers Club in Woodland, Calif.
Hubbard finished 69th in the 2024 FedExCup standings, which easily made him exempt into the field for the Procore Championship, in which he finished 17th last year. Yet there he was trying to Monday qualify for the tournament.
That not-so-little matter of registering for the tournament — a requirement no matter who you are in the PGA Tour’s pecking order — proved to be the snag as Hubbard ever so slightly missed the 5 p.m. (ET) Friday deadline.
“Short answer, I missed the commitment deadline on Friday by about 23 minutes,” Hubbard noted on Monday. “I had some technical difficulties with my phone; I dropped it in a cold plunge on Thursday, so I didn’t really have it for a while, but at the same time I probably should’ve committed a long time ago (to the tournament). I was pretty frustrated after Memphis (the FedEx St. Jude Championship playoff event, which ended Hubbard’s ‘season’) and really just needed to check out from golf, and I did that. And it was a good thing for me mentally and physically for my game, but this is one of the things that fell through the cracks unfortunately. So I’m glad I hopefully took care of business today.”
Taking care of business took the form of Hubbard shooting a 7-under-par 65 to earn medalist honors and one of four berths available through the Monday qualifier — despite a bogey on the final hole. He started the day with an eagle and added six birdies to set the pace.
“I was pretty down in the dumps on Friday, but I feel like I recovered pretty fast and I came out here with a really good head on my shoulders and a good mindset coming into the day,” the former Colorado junior player of the year said. “I don’t feel like I would’ve done that even a couple months ago, so I’m pretty proud of myself for that. … It’s definitely a learning experience. I hope I don’t do this again, and I almost feel bad taking a spot from somebody because I should have just been in the tournament anyways. It’s a weird situation, but at the end of the day, I can take a lot of positives from it.”
A few days earlier, Hubbard could even see the humor in the situation as he wrote on X: “Offseason update: I accidentally didn’t register for the @ProcoreChamp so I’m no longer in the field…but I did just break the pop-a-shot record at @BluejackNation so things are going preettttttty well.”
And on another post on Monday night the 35-year-old wrote: “Welp that’s one way to get out of the @PGATOUR Wednesday pro am…”
Hubbard had a remarkably consistent 2024 PGA Tour season, missing just two cuts in 23 events and posting two top-4 finishes. And now, after being in limbo for a couple of days, he’s set to start the fall season in Napa.
“It’s just one of my favorite events of the year,” Hubbard said. “It’s an area that kind of feels like a second home. My wife is from Sacramento, so all of her family comes out. … I just have a lot of friends and family in the area too. It’s Napa too. I like wine; we call it one of the wives’ majors. It’s just a great week.”
For all the scores from the ProCore Championship Monday qualifier, 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