WA’s Karl Vilips and former Joondalup Country Club star Aldrich Potgieter will both play on the PGA Tour in 2025 after earning top-30 finishes in the Korn Ferry Tour’s season-ending rankings.
Entering last week’s Korn Ferry Tour Championship in 18th position in the standings, Vilips responded to a nervy 75 in Round 1 with rounds of 70-71-70 to finish T20th and end the year 19th on the points list.
It continues a remarkable rise for the former child prodigy, who honed his golf game as a junior in Perth before moving to the USA to complete high school. Vilips went on to play golf for Stanford University, where he graduated as recently as June before joining the Korn Ferry Tour.
Affectionately known as ‘Koala Karl’, Vilips made a fast start to life on the tour, finishing as runner-up in just his third event in Chicago in July before going one better a week later to land the Utah Championship – two results that virtually guaranteed his promotion to the PGA Tour.
Karl Vilips is PGA Tour-bound after a flying start to his pro career
Although a South African national, Potgieter has Australian citizenship and learned his trade at Joondalup Country Club, with his victory in the 2021 WA Men’s Amateur Championship as a 16-year-old an early indication of his prodigious talent.
Potgieter went on to the Amateur Championship in the UK the following year, earning him starts at the 2022 Open Championship and the 2023 US Masters and US Open.
He turned pro immediately after the 2023 US Open, joining the Korn Ferry Tour, and in January of this year won The Bahamas Great Abaco Classic to become the youngest winner in the tour’s history at 19 years, 133 days.
Although he endured a nervy Tour Championship – at one point projected to finish just outside the top 30 – the 20-year-old closed his account for the season with a three-under-par 69 to finish T40th and claim the 29th PGA Tour card for 2025.
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