Frederik Kjettrup clinches Korn Ferry Tour card by making PGA TOUR Americas history

Frederik Kjettrup didn’t really know what to expect this summer on PGA TOUR Americas. It’s a professional circuit, of course. It was his first go-around after completing a successful collegiate career at Florida State and finishing eighth on the PGA TOUR University Ranking to earn status. The unknown made it hard to fully grasp the level of play, how deep the fields would go, and how to navigate the mental preparedness that comes with a big-time career change.

“I just wanted to go play well and see where that put me,” he said, “and obviously that’s turned out pretty good.”

For all the introspective queries about how this season could have turned out for the 24-year-old from Aabybro, Denmark (the English pronunciation is ah-bye-bro) the 2024 season in North America has gone well. Extremely well, in fact.

Kjettrup has won three times – his first two starts, along with the season’s penultimate event, last week’s CRMC Championship presented by Gertens, to notch the circuit’s first-ever Three-Victory Promotion. Six players had won twice in a season since 2020, when the Three-Victory Promotion was installed as a reward, but none had managed to tilt a trio of trophies.

Kjettrup earned immediate Korn Ferry Tour membership with his third win and will be fully exempt on the Korn Ferry Tour through 2025 (he isn’t eligible for the Korn Ferry Tour Finals, which uses the Korn Ferry Tour Points List to determine eligibility). Kjettrup, who finished runner-up at the NCAA Individual Men’s Golf Championship earlier this year, won three PGA TOUR Americas trophies in just 10 weeks.

“It feels really good. Words can’t really describe it,” Kjettrup said after his third win Sunday. “A step in the right direction and a step up the ladder. I’m really excited.”

This week marks the PGA TOUR Americas season finale, the limited-field Fortinet Cup Championship at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley’s North Course (the host club of the 2025 RBC Canadian Open). Despite his three wins, Kjettrup will head into the final event of the year ranked second in the season-long Fortinet Cup standings by about 200 points behind American John Keefer. Keefer has been a model of consistency this season, with eight top-10 finishes in nine tournaments. He has one win with four runner-up results. Canada’s Matthew Anderson rounds out the top three in the standings, just 400 points behind Keefer’s lead.

For Kjettrup, his main end-of-season goal has already been achieved as he’s off to the Korn Ferry Tour in 2025. He doesn’t have to stress, per se, about this week’s finale. But he’s still as motivated as ever to end the season the way he started – in the winner’s circle.

“You show up at a golf tournament and you try to win it,” he said.

Kjettrup’s summer success, he said, can be attributed to his putting. After a springtime visit from his coach, he was able to get that more consistent. Pair that with some great ball-striking and he was compiling the tournament-winning scores. But while his game was trending very much in the right direction, he was still working through the big change between college golf and professional golf.

The physical strain on going back-to-back so frequently – without a return to his home base, like with amateur or college golf – was a lot.

“On Tour, you’re playing four weeks in a row and … you just keep going. That’s a big change. You’re just trying to find balance,” Kjettrup said.

Mentally, too, the professional pivot was a lot. In college there’s a tough schedule to work through with classes and homework, working out, and having practice every day – with travel sprinkled in for events. On Tour, there is more time to rest between rounds. But he’s found a routine that works.

“To rest, mentally, is more important than physically. They go hand-in-hand sometimes, but I’ve found it’s (tougher) mentally than physical,” Kjettrup said. “If your mind starts to feel tired, your body feels tired. It might be in your head that’s doing it.”

While Kjettrup’s map is firmly pointed towards the 2025 Korn Ferry Tour, the final destination was very much earned after a celebrated career across the Atlantic as an up-and-coming golf star. He had been to the United States a few times before college on vacation but admitted he didn’t know much about college golf. One thing he did know was, at that point, he wasn’t ready to turn professional yet.

“I figured there was an opportunity to go that way and improve my game and play elite golf courses and in big tournaments,” Kjettrup said. “It was a stepping ladder for me.”

Kjettrup visited a couple of schools – he had just one rule, he wanted to be able to play golf year-round – and as he would be coming from Denmark, going to school on the east coast of the U.S. was almost a given. Florida State stood out for a few reasons.

“The program, facility, the tournaments they played, the alumni that came out … if you wanted to be an elite-level golfer, you could do that at Florida State,” Kjettrup said.

After earning full status for PGA TOUR Americas this summer via PGA TOUR University, Kjettrup said he spoke with his team about an approach to his schedule. With limited Korn Ferry Tour starts on the horizon, they firmed up a strategy to play for that status for next year. If he ended up in half the events he hoped for on Korn Ferry Tour and half on PGA TOUR Americas, then he’d only have played a quarter of a season – which, zooming out, seemed silly. It was “hard to do too much,” he thought.

So, he went out and won the first event of his PGA TOUR Americas career. And the next one. And again, last week. Mission accomplished. Kjettrup has played well and is off to the Korn Ferry Tour for 2025 – things have turned out pretty good indeed.