Even the biggest golf Tour in the world can make clerical mistakes. And the PGA Tour/Korn Ferry Tour management has proven the same today. You would think that the incredible database they manage, they would have the right systems in place to ensure that the correct players receive exemptions based on which tournaments they participate in. However, Rayhan Thomas would certainly disagree with that as he had to pay the price for the shocking error that led to him missing out on an important KFT event this week.
Instead, it was MJ Daffue who took his place in the field. Does that name sound familiar? Well, you might have seen him play in the ISCO Championship on the PGA Tour earlier this year. That was supposed to be his last PGA Tour event as per the validity of his card. But he made another appearance in the Barracuda Championship a week later alongside Max Homa. Daffue moved to the KFT, but continued to play in tournaments he wasn’t technically qualified for, as confirmed by Monday Q Info.
This week, he plays in the Pinnacle Bank Championship on the Indian Creek Golf Club. He has taken the spot from Rayhan Thomas, who had officially qualified for the event after finishing 107th on the points list. As Monday Q Info’s tweet reads, MJ Daffue shouldn’t have made the field because “he wasn’t able to keep his PGA Tour card through his medical. He should have been taken out of the ‘PGA Tour not exempt for current PGA Tour event’ category on the KFT priority list.” Had that been applied, then the 36-year-old would have been the 4th alternative for the field.
As the tweet reads, “His father had flown in from Dubai for the event, and Rayhan sat on the range the entire day and headed home after the last tee time had teed off, and no one had withdrawn. The Tour is working with Thomas to find a solution and will allow Daffue to finish the tournament, because the error was on their end.” While they can’t allow Rayhan to jump into the event midway, they will try to work out an amicable solution with him. However, as far as Daffue’s participation in the Pinnacle Bank Championship goes, the KFT can’t do anything because it was their mistake that led to him being on the field.
A clerical error by the PGA Tour has lead to something that I have never heard of.
MJ Daffue is currently T4, but he is not supposed to be in the field. And Rayhan Thomas, who sat on the range all day Thursday as the first alternate, before not getting in, should be in the…
— Monday Q Info (@acaseofthegolf1) August 8, 2025
It’s good to see that the Tour is taking responsibility for its mistake. However, it doesn’t put both Thomas and Daffue in ideal positions. This is not even the first time such an incident has disrupted a professional golf tournament this season. Something similar happened earlier this year in women’s golf that caused a lot of controversy.
Golf’s leading Tours and clerical errors; a common occurrence
In early 2025, the LPGA Tour fans saw the return of a surprising face on the field. Former Women’s British Open champion, Sophia Popov, finished 136th on the CME rankings at the end of the 2024 season. She had also come off a long break after suffering an injury in 2022 and having a baby in 2023. So no one expected her to qualify for the 2025 Founders Cup earlier this year. For the next few weeks, she also played in the Honda LPGA Thailand and the HSBC Women’s World Championship, neither of which she should have qualified for.
It was only after further investigation that it was found that Popov was placed in the wrong priority list by the LPGA Tour. That superseded her above Saki Baba, Hira Naveed, and Peiyun Chien in the three tournaments. That means the three players missed the tournaments because the 2020 AIG Women’s British Open winner was put into a list she wasn’t technically qualified for. The Tour compensated Baba, Naveed, and Chien later. However, it’s hard to determine how big a loss they might have actually suffered by not getting the opportunity to fight for the titles.
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