For family and country: JU graduate Raul Pereda rallies at the Valley to earn PGA Tour card

PONTE VEDRA BEACH — Raul Pereda wasn’t just playing for himself in the final round of PGA Tour Q-School, presented by Korn Ferry.

It was Para Mexico.

And Por la familia.

Pereda, a 27-year-old Jacksonville University graduate and a native of Cordoba, Mexico, may win some tournaments on the PGA Tour. He may realize every kid’s dream of winning a major or a Players Championship.

But he’d be hard-pressed to come up with another back-nine rally like Monday’s finish at the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley.

Pereda came from one shot outside the threshold to earn a PGA Tour card for the 2024 season to be able to absorb a closing bogey and still proudly hold one of five cards awarded at the end of the 72-hole qualifier in which the players were hit with everything Mother Nature had to offer, further exacerbating the jangled nerves and rumbling stomachs that come with the pressure of trying to reach the Tour.

Pereda chipped in twice for birdie at Nos. 10 and 13, then birdied the par-5 16th hole and willed a gutty 5-foot putt into the hole for par at the beastly par-4 17th hole to finish with a 69 and a four-round total of 8-under-par 272, tying for fourth with Hayden Springer (69) to hit the exact number they needed to finish among the top-five and earn a Tour card.

Pereda brings Mexico back to the Tour

Harrison Endycott of Australia is the medalist at 15-under 265, former Auburn golfer Trace Crowe (67) finished second at 11-under and former Oklahoma golfer Blaine Hale Jr. (71) finished third at 9-under.

But Pereda carried more banners than a Medieval festival: he became the third JU player to reach the PGA Tour, following Donnie Hammond and Russell Knox; he was the low First Coast resident; and he realized a goal of once again giving Mexico representation on the PGA Tour.

After Pereda shot 66 in the third round at Sawgrass to get within the top five, he spoke of what Mexican professionals Abraham Ancer and Carlos Ortiz, now playing for LIV Golf, meant to him.

Pereda didn’t question their decisions and he said they have been helpful to him on his way up.

But recognized the void they left.

“I need to get Mexico back on the PGA Tour,” he said.

After several years laboring on PGA Tour Latinoamerica, Pereda knew he had the right stuff for the PGA Tour when he contended in the early rounds of the World Golf Championship Mexico Open earlier this year, including a hole-out for an eagle-two from 249-yards, the longest holed shot of the PGA Tour season.

Mission accomplished because Pereda is now the only native of Mexico to have exempt status on the Tour.

“I'm very proud of myself for pushing hard,” said Pereda. “This is for them [his family], and this is for my entire country supporting me.”

Team Pereda is large and loving

Pereda, the youngest of five children, came to the First Coast at the age of 14 to live with his brother Paco, an industrial engineer for Continental Tires, at the Sawgrass Country Club. After finishing high school with online classes, Pereda went to JU and starred for the Dolphins for four years.

His PGA Tour card has been five years as a professional in the making. And his brother was present on Monday. So were their parents, Claudia and Francisco, although Francisco Pereda came out only for the finish since he spent most of Sunday in the emergency room because of kidney stones.

“This is what I've been working all my life for,” he said during a post-round interview in which he broke down in tears several times, the release of the intense pressure of Q-School. “And we are there.”

Note the word “we.”

It’s doubtful any PGA Tour rookie will have a larger support group than Pereda. After dropping the final putt he got hugs and backslaps from caddie and six-time European PGA Tour winner Anders Forsbrand, family and friends, JU golf coach Mike Blackburn and athletic director Alex Ricker-Gilbert, former JU player Russell Knox (who had just finished shooting 65 at Sawgrass to tie for 28th and earn full Korn Ferry Tours status), and former PGA Tour player Jeff Klauk, who has become a mentor to Pereda.

Pereda rallied calmly from early disaster

Pereda kept his emotions in check for most of the round, even after errant tee shots into hazards at Nos. 6 and 7 produced a double-bogey and a bogey. He parred the next two holes but turned one shot behind the top five and then missed the 10th green to the left.

He promptly chipped in for birdie to get back within the top-five. After three pars in a row, Pereda missed the green of the 229-yard par-3 14th hole — and chipped in again.

Even after his stumbles at Nos. 6 and 7, Pereda wasn't overly concerned because he had played so many rounds at the Valley Course. He played in four Sea Best Invitationals with the Dolphins and the team often played the course for practice rounds.

"I really know the course like the palm of my hand," he said. "It really helped me put myself in position all day today. The putts didn't drop like the past couple days, but the chips did."

Pereda bashfully said he got good lies on both of the chip-ins. But he also remembered what a sports psychologist told him in the past about a round of golf.

“He said to look at this like a boxing fight,” he said. “You're going to get hit … I got hit early in the round, and I still had 12 holes to go, so I might as well put some punches out there.”

And regardless of what happened in the final round, the good shots or the bad, Pereda kept silently repeating a mantra.

"I was just encouraging myself and calming myself, telling myself go, and you can do it," he said. "You're born for this."

Pereda ‘dances with his emotions’

Pereda’s long-time swing coach, Tom Burnett, said leaning to stay calm on the golf course was part of Pereda’s development.

“Instead of fighting his emotions he started to dance with his emotions,” Burnett said. “He learned how to handle them. He became very good at course management.”

Pereda said years of trying to get his card off the PGA Tour Latinoamerica finally taught him just that: don’t pretend nerves don’t exist, just embrace them.

“I was shaking and I was nervous at some point, but I think that I've gotten to know myself very well,” he said. “It's not that I got it under control, but I knew how to play with it.”

Pereda has gotten so good at that, Forsbrand didn’t feel the need to give him a pep talk after his early stumbles.

“Nothing special,” he said. “He was still in the game. It was two swings that were a little loose but apart from that, he was hitting it well.”

Here's how well Pereda is showing a calmness of mind about his craft: at the second-stage qualifier at the Valencia (Calif.) Country Club., in which the top-13, plus ties, would advance to Ponte Vedra, Pereda finished at 1-under 287 along with six other players tied for 14th, one shot behind Alex Chiarella.

With Chiarella still on the course, Pereda signed his card and then left for his hotel. Chiarella then bogeyed the 18th hole to pull Pereda and the other players at 1-under into a seven-way tie for 13th.

"I was watching the computer ... click, refresh; click, refresh ... going ballistic," said Klauk of following the progress at home. "Then he made it and had already left the course. He didn't know until I called him."

Pereda battles tears on final hole

But that calm almost dissolved at the Valley after Pereda got up-and-down from par at the par-4 17th, a converted par-5. Realizing that a Tour card was within his reach, he said he was in tears after making the putt, then again after finding the fairway of the dangerous par-4 18th, with water down the left side and out-of-bounds down the right.

“I wanted to cry on 17 green after I made that putt ... I wanted to cry when I hit that drive on 18 because that's probably one of the most important tee shots out there,” he said. “I didn't look at the leaderboard putting from off the green, but [when he saw it after lagging to within 5 feet] I was like, ‘yeah, I've got this.’

"Right when I hugged Anders is when I started crying because we've worked so hard the past year, and we've accomplished a lot of things, especially mentally and emotionally, where it's given me the opportunity to be here today and manage everything the best way possible.”

Also in tears was his brother Paco, a key member of his brother’s support team.

“Oh, my goodness,” he said. “I can’t even describe how happy I am. Raul has worked so hard. It tells you how mature he is, the way he handled it today, the amount of pressure.”

Pereda will now rep his family and his country on the PGA Tour. He plans on making the most of this opportunity.

“This is something new,” he said. “I need to be holding my head on how to approach all these things. I've got the game, but I just need to know how to manage everything.”

Blackburn is among Pereda’s supporters who has no doubt.

“You could see that he had something special about him,” Blackburn said. “He was always a great ball-striker. When he put together that 100 yards and in more, he got elite.”

None of it might have been possible had Alex Chiarella parred his final hole at the second-stage qualifier. If that happened, Pereda was asked how he would be spending his week.

"Probably back home and already playing with my friends and just having a good time," he said. "Knowing that I would try again next year."

But Chiarella cooperated and for Pereda, next year is finally here.

Status of remaining Q-School field

• Next 40 Finishers and Ties (solo-sixth through T45): Exempt for multiple reshuffles of the 2024 Korn Ferry Tour season. The first 25 finishers and ties in this category will be subject to the third reshuffle, assuring them starts in the first 12 events of the 2024 season (solo-sixth through T28) (Fully exempt Korn Ferry Tour members are omitted from this list): Satoshi Kodaira (6th/-7), Doc Redman (T7/-6), Danny Walker (T7/-6), Kramer Hickok (T10/-5), Fred Biondi (T10/-5), Spencer Levin (T10/-5), Bryce Hendrix (T14/-4), Ryan Blaum (T14/-4), Noah Goodwin (T14/-4), Sudarshan Yellamaraju (T14/-4), Cooper Dossey (T14/-4), Alvaro Ortiz (T21/-3), Kevin Velo (T21/-3), Kris Ventura (T21/-3), Max McGreevy (T21/-3), Alistair Docherty (T21/-3), Isaiah Salinda (T21/-3), Kyle Westmoreland (T21/-3), Brice Garnett (T28/-2), Daniel Summerhays (T28/-2), Kevin Tway (T28/-2), Russell Knox (T28/-2), Ross Steelman (T28/-2), Braden Thornberry (T28/-2), Trey Winstead (T28/-2).

• Remaining finishers within the category will be subject to the second reshuffle, assuring them starts in the first eight events of the 2024 season (T38 through T45): Étienne Papineau (T38/-1), Dylan Healey (T38/-1), Henrik Norlander (T38/-1), Kevin Roy (T38/-1), Dawson Armstrong (T38/-1), Erik Compton (T38/-1), Myles Creighton (T45/E), Keita Nakajima (T45/E), Rob Oppenheim (T45/E), Jeongwoo Ham (T45/E), Harry Higgs (T45/E), Adam Long (T45/E).

• The next 20 Finishers and Ties (T54 through T72): Exempt status for the Latin America Swing of the 2024 PGA Tour Americas season, in addition to conditional Korn Ferry Tour membership for the 2024 season (Fully exempt Korn Ferry Tour members, conditional PGA Tour members are omitted from this list): Tano Goya (T54/+1), Keenan Huskey (T54/+1), Davis Lamb (T54/+1), Yi Cao (T54/+1), Charles Porter (T54/+1), John Lyras (T54/+1), Christian Banke (T54/+1), Marcus Byrd (T64/+2), Walker Lee (T64/+2), Curtis Thompson (T64/+2), Blake Elliott (T64/+2), Thomas Power Horan (T64/+2).

• All remaining finishers earned conditional Korn Ferry Tour and PGA TOUR Americas membership for the 2024 season

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Raul Pereda stages dramatic back-nine rally to earn PGA Tour card