Jay Card III had to make birdie on his final two holes at last month’s Astara Golf Championship presented by Mastercard to remain inside the top 10. As is the case on the Korn Ferry Tour, there’s a fine line between want and need. This scenario straddled that line.

He needed it, to secure a spot in the next week’s LECOM Suncoast Classic. He wanted it, but not for the same reason.

Card is a performer, and he wanted to put on a show.

“There’s this grandstand and hundreds of people next to it, and I just can’t wait to hit this golf shot and show these people what I can do,” Card said.

Card is a golfer – that’s obvious. But he plays the saxophone, the flute and the oboe. He picked up the cello when he was a senior in college. His skills with the guitar are improving. His best instrument, however, is his voice.

The 27-year-old has a bass singing voice and has performed in choirs at iconic venues like the Vatican and Carnegie Hall. He gravitated towards opera – “it’s like musical theatre without the dancing, which I like” – in accordance with the specialization of his vocal register. And singing in a language that isn’t English is good for the nerves.

“If you mess up, not a lot of people know,” he said with a smile. “You’re singing in Italian, and you can throw out a random sound and people will be like, ‘OK,’ and you can just keep going along.”

Card, who played almost no golf in college and has very little tournament golf experience under his belt, believes the music side of his life has helped to get him more comfortable as he continues to try to earn a PGA TOUR card. Golf gives him the same adrenaline rush as when he’s on stage.

“It’s that one thing,” he said, “that makes me feel alive.”

Card turned professional in 2018 after graduating from North Carolina’s High Point University with a degree in music, concentrating on vocal performance. He’s from Shelter Island, New York originally – a small town of just 3,200 people in the Hamptons. There were 16 people in his high school graduating class.

Despite Card’s robust resume on the music side of things, that, too, wasn’t even his first career ambition. His high school had band and choir, but he started college as a biology major. He wanted to be a surgeon. He got to college, however, and realized he “hated” going to class. Of course, aspiring doctors must attend medical school, which means more class.

He joined the college choir during his freshman year as a good way to meet friends, but he didn’t quite realize that a full-time pursuit of music can lead to “really amazing” opportunities. Card kept it up and his voice was his passport to the world.

And then came the 2016 U.S. Amateur.

Although he missed the cut at the stroke-play portion, that was the moment he knew he wanted to make a living playing golf. He had just one semester of walk-on golf team experience, but after turning professional in 2018, he started caddying at the iconic National Golf Links of America, which has a connection to another top course, Seminole Golf Club in Florida. He worked there briefly before moving over to Jupiter Hills to park cars. That led to a full-time job at the course, where he would 40 to 50 hours per week and would practice on his days off. For a few years, he would go back and forth between New York and Florida, depending on the season. He had stints at the Dye Preserve, where he met coach Jeff Leishman, and the Bear’s Club.

At the Bear’s Club – a haunt for some of the game’s best – he got to play with Lucas Glover. Glover won the U.S. Open in 2009, hosted at New York’s Bethpage Black, and he was the first TOUR pro that Card teed it up with. Between his efforts with Leishman and some TOUR-winner inspiration, he knew his path.

“I grew up in this small town in New York … and all of a sudden, I’m hanging out and watching Rory (McIlroy) and (Dustin Johnson) hit golf balls. I go from this little island to the best players in the world,” said Card. “It’s been a big help to see what they do and know it’s something I can do as well. It’s not a large stretch of the imagination.”

Starting the 2022 Korn Ferry Tour season with conditional status, Card admits he wasn’t sure if he was going to get any starts at all, based on his finish at Q-School. He Monday qualified into The Panama Championship and earned his way into the field in Colombia on his number. He had never played in an event as big as the one in Panama, he said, so he got some of the big-time nerves out of the way.

He made those birdies on Nos. 17 and 18 at the Astara Golf Championship. He finished in the top 10. And he did it again the next week at the LECOM Suncoast Classic. The season has had, one could say, a nice tune to it so far.

“I’m loving it. The first week in Panama, I started to make some friends out there and be on the road and I was like, ‘This is what I’ve wanted to do my whole life,’” he said. “Things are really good right now. I’m excited to be there to win.”