Narrow miss of TOUR card fuels Joey Garber into 2023

Joey Garber is a big proponent of everything happening for a reason.

In a gut-wrenching, tear-jerking, emotionally poignant moment at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship presented by United Leasing & Finance, Garber made a double bogey on the par-4 14th hole Sunday before rallying to close with four straight birdies. He posted 15 under and had an outside shot to regain a PGA TOUR card, but it was not to be. He fell 4.5 points short of Kyle Westmoreland for the 25th and final TOUR card via the Korn Ferry Tour Finals Points List. Through tears, Garber talked about how special it was to play as well as he did in front of his mom. He tried. He put in an effort. He didn’t give up.

Four months later, Garber “continuously” thinks about that stretch of golf and that day and that tournament.

Garber would have earned a TOUR card with a three-way T12 or better at Victoria National GC; he finished in a five-way T12. Oh, what could have been.

But he pivots quickly. A mental tweak for the 31-year-old. He’s not old by any means but experienced enough to know the past is in the past.

“Now I’m thinking about it more as I’m gearing up for the season,” said Garber, as he gears up for the Korn Ferry Tour’s season-opening The Bahamas Great Exuma Classic at Sandals Emerald Bay, which begins Sunday. “Golfers really lean on moments they can carry momentum from and that’s where I’m trying to look at, ‘OK, I didn’t have a consistent year; I didn’t think I played my best golf, but when my back was against the wall, I was able to perform, and that came through in those last four holes.’ I’m taking that out of it more and more.

“For a week or two it was definitely an adjustment from thinking I was going to (be playing the Fortinet Championship) to being at home with my kids.”

And here’s where things turned out alright for Joey Garber, the father.

Garber and his wife, Victoria, have a daughter Blakeley. Their son, Pierson, was born at the end of 2022. The little guy contracted Respiratory Syncytial Virus, or more commonly referred to as RSV – an infection of the lungs and respiratory tract in children. He was in the hospital for about a week. Thankfully, he’s improved now. But still gets sick more often than most his age.

“At that point I quickly forgot what had happened (at the Korn Ferry Tour Championship) and moved on to this year,” said Garber. “He’s a tough little kid.”

‘Perspective’ is often trotted out as a hackneyed cliché when it comes to speaking on professional athletes-as-parents. But Garber can’t help but look through that lens when it comes to this upcoming season. Anyone who has had children, he said, knows that they ground them in a way they never thought possible.

It's been a dream of his to have a family and “it’s been a blessing,” he said, to have played on the Korn Ferry Tour when he became a father, in order to have time off to spend with his kids in the Tour’s offseason. It’s an adjustment to parent via FaceTime, but there’s a nice comfort level these days. That, he explains, can only help him and his golf game.

“The last couple years the timing of everything with me having children and COVID … golf had somewhat taken a back seat,” Garber said. “This offseason with my son three months old and my wife was going back to work, it was a good opportunity for me to be dad for a while and enjoy that time.

“I’ve picked up practicing the last couple weeks and mainly just getting back to the thoughts of the good times last year and working on trying to build on that and remember what I did in those moments and try to take that into practicing.”

Garber still resides in St. Simons Island, Georgia, where it’s never been easier to get a game in. Thirty or so touring pros live nearby, and if he’s in the mood to sharpen a few things, it’s not difficult to find a competitive setting. Those games, he said, continue to help show where he’s at on a measurable level against seasoned PGA TOUR pros. If he manages to get in their pocket, it’s a good realization that he’s not too far from where he needs to be. He can get into a better frame of mind the next time he tees it up in a tournament.

With the 2023 Korn Ferry Tour campaign around the corner, Garber, who was the last Mr. 26 of The Finals 25 era, will have extra motivation to regain PGA TOUR status over the next eight months. His best result of 2022 came at the Astara Golf Championship presented by Mastercard, where he finished fourth – but he also missed nine cuts in a row through the summertime stretch, a key time to climb the Points List.

He calls 2022 “a strange year” after his solid start (he made his first five cuts in a row and had three top-11 finishes in that stretch), the poor run in the summer, and then building himself back up at the end of the year. He’s got a different frame of mind now.

“I don’t think I have any more time to be complacent,” said Garber. “A more sense of urgency being in my early 30s because I’m committed to playing this game as long as physically possible.

“I do feel like my opportunity to get out there and take advantage of where the golf game is headed and the amount of money that’s up for grabs right now … everyone has a sense of urgency right now.”

Urgency – no doubt about it. Good results early will always help. And given how 2022 ended, it seems like there’s a reason for something good to happen to Joey Garber in 2023.