Ahead of the 2025 LIV Golf season, there was a surprise when Eugenio Chacarra left the circuit weeks after saying he was looking for a new team after parting ways with Fireballs GC.
At the time, the Spaniard expressed a desire to earn a PGA Tour card, saying: "I don’t know if it will work out for the best or not. I know this is what my heart tells me is right and it works for my motivation to wake up and grind and get better, and to say I can be a PGA Tour player one day.”
Now, that dream has moved one step closer after the 25-year-old won his maiden DP World Tour event, the Hero Indian Open. That secured Chacarra’s full status on the Tour for the rest of the 2025 season and, with it, more ways to pursue his ambition of a career on the PGA Tour.
Chacarra’s final LIV Golf appearance was at the 2024 Team Championship in Dallas, which ended on September 22nd. Even though Chacarra wasn’t a PGA Tour member when he joined LIV Golf two years earlier, having signed straight from college golf with Oklahoma State, he is required to serve a 12-month suspension.
That means he won’t be able to play on the PGA Tour until September 23rd this year. However, by that time, he may already be well on his way to earning his card.
Perhaps the clearest way for Chacarra to ensure his PGA Tour status is via his place on the DP World Tour’s Race to Dubai rankings at the end of the season, which finishes in November with the DP World Tour Championship.
Thanks to the Strategic Alliance between the DP World Tour and the PGA Tour, the top 10 in the Race to Dubai rankings, not otherwise exempt at the end of the season, earn a PGA Tour card. Another former LIV golfer, Laurie Canter, is currently at the top of the rankings, and Chacarra will be looking to follow his lead by climbing into the top 10 over the coming months.
If that doesn’t look like coming off for Chacarra, he could pursue his card via PGA Tour Q-School. In 2024, the First Stage of Q-School began on October 8th. Crucially, one of the exemption categories to that stage was being a DP World Tour member over the last three years, including 2024.
Assuming the First Stage in 2025 follows a similar schedule and retains that exemption category, that would allow Chacarra to bypass September’s pre-qualifying and begin at the First Stage. However, if Chacarra’s world ranking is high enough by certain deadlines, he could even make it directly to the Second Stage of Q-School or the Final Stage.
Depending on how far Chacarra progresses through Q-School, he could earn a place on the PGA Tour Americas or the Korn Ferry Tour, each of which offers pathways to the PGA Tour. Even better for Chacarra would be finishing in the top five and ties at the Final Stage, which would hand him a PGA Tour card for the 2026 season.
There is potentially another way for Chacarra to pursue his PGA Tour card should he need to.
There are three DP World Tour/PGA Tour co-sanctioned events – the Genesis Scottish Open, the ISCO Championship and the Barracuda Championship. Each of those, as well as the four Majors, offer FedEx Cup points.
Because Chacarra isn’t a PGA Tour member, he can’t earn those points, but he can earn non-member FedEx Cup points, which are tracked separately. If he accumulates enough non-member points via whichever of those tournaments he competes in, he could earn Special Temporary Membership of the PGA Tour (albeit likely once his suspension has been served). That would grant him unlimited sponsor’s exemptions for the rest of the PGA Tour season.
But can Chacarra even play in co-sanctioned events while serving his PGA Tour suspension? Thanks to his win on the DP World Tour, it appears any potential barrier will be lifted, with a recent example being Canter, who played in the 2024 Genesis Scottish Open as a result of winning the DP World Tour's European Open the previous month, despite his PGA Tour suspension not being lifted until February 2025.
While any events Chacarra played as a Special Temporary Member would still only allow him to earn non-member FedEx Cup points, if he earned enough by the end of the season, it would hand him a PGA Tour card for 2026. Additionally, if Chacarra was granted Special Temporary Membership and won a PGA Tour event, he would automatically earn his card and see his non-member points converted to FedEx Cup points.
