How Many Golfers Have Earned a 'Battlefield Promotion' to PGA Tour?

Each year, golfers on the PGA Tour's developmental circuit have available to them a special way of earning promotion to the big leagues: If they win enough tournaments, they get to go straight to the PGA Tour. But how many golfers have played their way onto the PGA Tour in this way?

The PGA Tour's developmental tour has gone by various names over the years, including Nike Tour, Nationwide Tour and Korn Ferry Tour. Each year, there is a rule in place on that tour: Any golfer who wins three tournaments is immediately promoted to the PGA Tour. This is known, in the vernacular, as a "battlefield promotion."

The PGA Tour itself no longer calls it a "battlefield promotion," preferring to stay away from analogizing sports to war. The terms the tour uses are "three-win promotion" or "three-victory promotion." No matter what you call it, when a golfer wins for the third time in a single season on the Korn Ferry Tour, that golfer goes straight to the PGA Tour — no season-ending qualifying tournament (or "Q-School") required.

This way of making the PGA Tour has been around since 1997. Since then, how many golfers have earned the battlefield promotion, or three-victory promotion, to the PGA Tour?

List: Golfers With Three-Win Promotions to the PGA Tour

These are the golfers who've earned the three-victory promotion to the PGA Tour by winning three tournaments in one season on the developmental tour:

• Chris Smith, 1997: Promoted on Aug. 10 following 16th tournament played. Third win was the Cox Classic.
• Heath Slocum, 2001: Promoted on Aug. 5 after 17th tournament played. Third win was the Cox Classic.
• Chad Campbell, 2001: Promoted on Oct. 7 after 21st tournament played. Third win was the Monterey Peninsula Classic.
• Pat Bates, 2001: Promoted on Oct. 28 after 24th tournament played. Third win was the Buy.com Tour Championship.
• Patrick Moore, 2002: Promoted on Oct. 27 after 20th tournament played. Third win was the Buy.com Tour Championship.
• Tom Carter, 2003: Promoted on Aug. 31 after 21st tournament played. Third win was the Price Cutter Charity Championship.
• Jason Gore, 2005: Promoted on Aug. 7 after 11th tournament played. Third win was the Cox Classic.
• Nick Flanagan, 2007: Promoted on Aug. 19 after 16th tournament played. Third win was the Xerox Classic.
• Michael Sim, 2009: Promoted on Aug. 23 after 12th tournament played. Third win was the AdventHealth Championship.
• Carlos Ortiz, 2014: Promoted on Aug. 24 after 16th tournament played. Third win was the Portland Open.
• Wesley Bryan, 2016: Promoted on Aug. 7 after 13th tournament played. Third win was the AdventHealth Championship.
• Mito Pereira, 2020-21*: Promoted on June 13 after his 32nd tournament played. Third win was the Country Club de Bogota Championship. (*Two years combined into one season due to postponements and cancellations stemming from COVID-19 pandemic.)

Only one year so far has seen multiple battlefield promotions — in 2001 there were three of them. The earliest promotion in terms of tournaments played was Jason Gore's in 2005. Gore needed only 11 tournaments to record three wins and earn his promotion to the PGA Tour. Once he got to the PGA Tour, Gore won before the end of the year — so far, the only battlefield-promoted golfer to do so.