The PGA’s Korn Ferry Tour will announce its three sponsors exemptions into the Utah Championship next week, and former BYU golfer Peter Kuest could probably have expected an invitation, after finishing in a tie for fifth in last year’s tournament.
“My life hasn’t changed. I am still just a golfer. I like to go fishing and hang out with my friends. It is not like I am a rock star touring the world. I am going out and playing some pretty sweet courses and seeing the country.” — former BYU golfer Peter Kuest on life on the PGA Tour
But Kuest likely won’t be available to play Aug. 3-6 at Oakridge Country Club in Farmington. Instead, the Fresno, California, native plans to be playing in the PGA Tour’s Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, the result of an unbelievable stretch of outstanding golf for the former college All-American who won 10 tournaments during his time at BYU.
“I didn’t have many opportunities to play this year, so when I had them, I had to make the most of them,” Kuest said Tuesday in a Utah Championship-sponsored media call. “I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job of that.”
That’s an understatement.
Without playing status on any tour this year, Kuest, 25, had been playing in state opens and attempting to qualify on Mondays for various tournaments until he put together a phenomenal stretch in May, June and July that has earned him special temporary membership on the PGA Tour for the remainder of the regular season.
That means he will play in the Barracuda Championship in Truckee, California, this week while most of the golfing world will be focused on The Open Championship in Hoylake, England. Next week, he will play in the 3M Open in Blaine, Minnesota, and the following week in the Wyndham Championship with a purse of $7.6 million.
When the Korn Ferry Tour stops in Utah, which has a purse of $1 million, Utahns will have former BYU golfers Patrick Fishburn and Daniel Summerhays to cheer for, but probably not Kuest.
The slender, sweet-swinging Californian’s rise has been nothing short of unbelievable.
What has clicked for the current American Fork resident?
“I mean, it has all been pretty good. I wouldn’t say anything has really clicked. Just a lot of hard work over the last few years. It is starting to get back to where I want it to be, and kinda take off,” he said. “It is all part of the process. We are just trying to stick to the process we know and just go from there.”
Now that he’s earned more than $650,000 this season and injected more confidence and less worry into his golf game and life, Kuest said the success hasn’t changed his life, as might be expected.
“My life hasn’t changed,” he said, speaking on the teleconference from the parking lot of the Tahoe Mountain Golf Club near Reno. “I am still just a golfer. I like to go fishing and hang out with my friends. It is not like I am a rock star touring the world. I am going out and playing some pretty sweet courses and seeing the country.”
He also joked that he’s able to eat at places like Chipotle now, instead of McDonald’s. And he’s made some new friendships and earned the respect of his PGA Tour counterparts.
“Yeah, maybe,” he said, when asked if more people on the circuit know who he is now. “I have had a bunch of guys come up to me and congratulate me on the play. So yeah, it has been really cool to see. There are a lot of really cool guys out here on the PGA Tour.”
Moving on from BYU in 2020 after his senior season was cut short by COVID-19, Kuest won the Utah Open by seven shots in August 2020 and also received exemptions into five PGA Tour events that summer.
However, he failed to make a cut in the first four, then placed 65th at the Barracuda and earned $7,525. He played in the PGA Tour’s Safeway Open in September 2020, one of the first events of the 2020-21 season, but also missed the cut there.
This season (2022-23), his first big breakthrough came May 14 at the AT&T Byron Nelson Classic, where he tied for 14th and earned $163,875. He tied for 57th at the RBC Canadian Open in June.
After he Monday-qualified at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit — where Tony Finau was the defending champion — he played in a practice round with Finau and then opened with a 64 on Thursday.
“It is always nice to play with Tony, just seeing what he is hitting off the tee and how he goes about it,” Kuest said. “Each night he would text me something here or there. It was nice to talk with him throughout the week.”
Kuest eventually finished tied for fourth in Detroit, earning $370,333. That top-10 performance got him into the John Deere Classic two weeks ago, and his T17 finish earned him the special temporary membership on tour until the FedEx Cup playoffs begin Aug. 10-13 in Memphis.
“I knew I could compete out here,” Kuest said. “It was getting the opportunity to go do it, and then freeing yourself up to go do it, and not worrying about all that other stuff. … So it was just the little things like that that give you the confidence to go and do it.”
Kuest said playing freely and freeing oneself of outside baggage doesn’t mean he has a carefree attitude.
“You just try to execute the best you can, and whatever happens, happens,” he said.
Fishburn, who was roommates with Kuest in Provo, said he is using his good friend’s success as inspiration for his own career. Fishburn is 45th on the Korn Ferry Tour points list and running out of time to get into the top 25 and earn his PGA Tour card for next season, which begins in September.
“I am very happy for Peter, and very proud of him. He was a great teammate at BYU. We loved the time we roomed together. We just had a lot of fun together,” Fishburn said. “He’s got as much talent as anyone. It is not a surprise to see what he’s done. He just needed the opportunity.”
Fishburn said Kuest hits his driver as well as anybody he’s been around, but also has a crisp short game and is an outstanding ball-striker.
“He’s got the full package. It is great to see him do what he’s doing,” Fishburn said. “It has given me a lot of inspiration, motivation, to try and get up there and join him and Tony and Zac (Blair) and some of my other buddies. So it is great to see.”
