Ryan Sullivan qualifies for Emerald Coast Traditional after wild travel saga

MIRAMAR Beach front, Fla. – In which there is a will, there is a way.

Ryan Sullivan, who holds conditional Korn Ferry Tour position in 2020-21, did not consider he’d be here. As of Sunday afternoon, he was using a lesson in Charlotte, with tiny intention of competing in the Monday qualifier for this week’s Emerald Coastline Traditional at Sandestin.

Immediately after ‘flushing it’ on the variety, he resolved to make the last-minute vacation to the Emerald Coastline in an try to engage in his way into this week’s discipline at Sandestin Golfing & Beach Vacation resort (Raven). He manufactured 9 birdies, survived a 4-for-2 playoff, and will tee it up Thursday as he aims to much better his place for long term reshuffles.

The 31-year-previous self-described journeyman had a hunch, and it compensated off.

“I satisfied up with a person – Donny Lee – and went in excess of some swing things, and I was striping it. Absolutely hitting it fantastic,” Sullivan recalled Tuesday in Miramar Seashore. “Donny was wanting at me like, ‘I feel you require to go down to Destin and try out to capitalize on this option.’

In a tale straight out the Korn Ferry Commute handbook, Sullivan commenced investigating his solutions. He thought of the 9-hour drive from Charlotte to the Florida Panhandle – “For as very long as I have accomplished this, it is not best, but I was thinking of it” – right before obtaining the previous seat on a immediate flight to the Destin-Fort Walton Beach front airport. Right after an hour-and-a-fifty percent hold off, he touched down all around 10:30 p.m. CT.

He was able to procure a hotel, but there had been no rental cars obtainable. No ride-share or taxis to be found, possibly.

As Sullivan stood in the airport’s ready location, the North Carolina indigenous struck up a discussion with a man sporting a University of North Carolina hoodie. The guy supplied Sullivan a experience to his resort, which was fortunately approved.

The next morning, Sullivan observed himself facing the identical challenge – an 8:40 a.m. tee time in his qualifier at Emerald Bay GC, no experience selections out there, and a 40-minute commute.

In the correct Korn Ferry Tour ethos of ‘people helping people,’ Sullivan received a around-miraculous help.

“The exact same lodge worker who experienced checked me in, she was even now there and observed I was in dire need to have,” Sullivan recalled. “She drove me 40 minutes to the golfing training course with all my baggage.

“When we were being assembly in the parking good deal, she instructed me to satisfy by the pool, for the reason that we needed to be incognito. It was versus organization policy. Pulling out of the lot, she pushed my head down beneath the window, by the floorboards, like some stealth operation. Received to the training course 25 minutes right before my tee time, with all my baggage.

“I looked like Will Smith from Refreshing Prince of Bel-Air.”