The Korn Ferry Tour is full of big hitters; in 2020, 43 players averaged at least 310 yards per drive (compared to 29 on the PGA Tour). But Chad Ramey is discovering that less is more. The former Mississippi State star and two-time All-SEC winner enjoyed a career year on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2020, despite posting his lowest-ever driving average (295 yards, good enough for 126th on tour). In his third full Korn Ferry Tour season, Ramey posted six top-10 finishes (in the top 3 four times) and missed just three cuts in 22 events. The difference, Ramey says, has been a renewed attention to his short game. And it shows: in 2020, Ramey ranked 19th on tour in scrambling (up from 64th in 2019) and 27th in putting (up from 94th). Along the way, Ramey also became one of the most accurate drivers on the Korn Ferry Tour, hitting fairways more often than just two other players. All of it added up to leave Ramey ranked ninth on the Korn Ferry Tour’s The 25 points race — with conditional status on the PGA Tour for 2021, and well positioned to make a charge at full PGA Tour status when the second half of the Korn Ferry Tour’s “super season” picks up in February.
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LYING FOUR: Take me back to the shutdown in March. You had just finished second in Mexico, and then the plug gets pulled. What was that like?
CHAD RAMEY: At the moment, I was a little disappointed in it. Those first five events, I hadn’t done anything special; I think I’d made two, maybe three cuts, and just hadn’t gotten anything going. And then I finally had a really good tournament and finished really well. It was kinda like I’d gained some momentum and was ready to get going, and then we just got shut down. In hindsight, it might have been one of the better things to happen — because living in Mississippi, the golf courses stayed open. So during that shutdown, there was nothing else to go do: it was either go to the golf course or sit inside at home. So I’d just go to the golf course every day to practice.
LYING FOUR: Where do you stay when you’re at home?
CHAD RAMEY: I would stay with my parents in Fulton at Fulton Country Club, a little nine-hole course. That’s where I did most of my practicing. And every now and then, I would go down to West Point at Old Waverly and see Tim Yelverton and V.J. Trolio.
LYING FOUR: I really like those guys. You’re at the point in your career where you could work with just about anybody you want to. What is it about those two guys that you enjoy?
CHAD RAMEY: I’ve been with both of them forever. I’ve been with V.J. since I was about 8 years old, so right about 20 years. I’ve been with Tim ever since he got to West Point, and I don’t remember the exact year, but I think I was about 12 when he got there. So I’ve just got a really long history with both of them. I like the way they go about teaching. I just feel like they’re good for me.
LYING FOUR: So what was your practice routine like during the shutdown? What were you working on?
CHAD RAMEY: So, this year — and I think it had a direct correlation with me playing better — I probably worked on my short game as much as I ever have. If I had to put a percentage to it, I’d say 80 percent of my time, I was either putting, chipping, or hitting wedges. And the other 20 percent, I would hit full shots and hit drivers.
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LYING FOUR: The thing that jumps out at me about your season is how consistent you’ve been. What’s been the difference between this year and, say, 2019 and 2018?
CHAD RAMEY: Short game. If I don’t hit it as well, I can still score pretty good because my short game’s saving me. And then whenever I do hit it well, I get to throw a few more lower scores out there. One of the big things that me and my dad are always talking about is consistency: if you’re gonna be really good, then you’ve gotta be super-consistent. Anybody can play with anybody for one day, or two days — but to string four rounds together, and to string an entire season together, you’re gonna have to be super-consistent. I don’t know exactly what I did to do that, but every aspect of my game, we’re trying to make it as consistently good as we can.
LYING FOUR: Yeah, your scrambling numbers this year are really good. I’d be surprised if this isn’t the best scrambling year of your career.
CHAD RAMEY: I think it definitely was. I put a lot more time into it. I’m not saying that I never practiced it before, but I just went more out of my way this year and thought, “Y’know, my wedges, chipping, and putting — I’m gonna really focus on them and get them where they need to be.” And it helped, because whenever I started doing that, I saw some really good results pretty quick. I was pretty easily convinced that the way I was going about things was the right way to do it, because I got pretty immediate results from it.
LYING FOUR: It’s funny to hear you say that your short game has helped you out when you’re not hitting the ball well, because your driving accuracy numbers were great this year.
CHAD RAMEY: And that’s another thing. With me working with V.J. and Tim, and with them working out of the same facility, we’re trying to make my pitching and chipping motion very similar to my full-swing motion. So the way I look at it is that all those times I was working on pitching and chipping, and working on hitting wedges, it was helping my ball-striking at the same time — because the motion that I use on chipping and pitching is the same motion that I want to do with a driver. I didn’t notice it until after the season was over — how good my driving accuracy was — but I would up being third.
LYING FOUR: I’ve had that same conversation with Tim. I went to see him one time, and he said, “OK, pitch this ball out of the bay.” And I addressed the ball, but I opened my stance and put the ball way back in my stance, and I had my hands way out in front of it, and he said, “I see what you’re trying to do here, but why would you hit this any differently than you hit any other shot?” I’d never thought about that before.
CHAD RAMEY: And maybe that goes along with the consistency — if I’m literally trying to make the same motion on a 15-yard pitch as with a 280-yard drive, I feel like you’d have to be more consistent because you’re just making the same move over and over. And when you get a different club, you’re not trying to make this move, versus with a driver trying to make that move. It seems like it’d be harder to be consistent if you’re constantly changing.
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LYING FOUR: Let me ask you about Canada in 2017. I was looking back over your season there, and it looked a lot like your results this year on the Korn Ferry Tour. In your first four events there, you missed two cuts and finished outside the top 40 in the other two starts. But over your next eight events, you made seven cuts and had four top-10s. Do you remember that period of time? Did something click, or is that just kinda how it all worked out?
CHAD RAMEY: I’ve been kinda notorious in the past for figuring out what schedule and what process works for me, and I get in a little bit of a groove. It’s repetitive: I know, “If I do this, this, and this, then I’m gonna play well.” It will always change a little bit, but I think on both those stretches where I played really good for a long time, I think I just got in a really good process of what I knew I had to do and what worked for me, and I would just stick to that process week in and week out, and just let the results happen. As long as I take care of the stuff that I know I have to do, I’m gonna be OK.
LYING FOUR: So after three full years now on the Korn Ferry Tour, do you have a sense of what separates guys who are consistently in the top 25 versus guys who struggle a little bit more?
CHAD RAMEY: Yes, I think I do. For me, anyway, I keep going back to my wedges. I know everybody in the past has always preached that to me. But this year, that’s the only thing that put me over the top. Obviously, I did hit my driver really well — but just getting the scrambling numbers up and making birdies whenever I have wedges in my hand, and just rolling the ball really well with the putter. In the past, I’ve been a notoriously good ball striker, but I didn’t quite have the other pieces there. It’s just a fine line between Korn Ferry and the PGA Tour, because there are so many good players on the Korn Ferry Tour; it’s gonna be the little things that separate you. Having a good fundamental swing is always good, but it’s just those little things that you might take for granted a little bit — that’s the only difference in getting over the top.
LYING FOUR: How much attention do you pay to the points race during the year?
CHAD RAMEY: I honestly try not to pay attention to it at all. Sometimes, after a tournament, I’ll take a quick peek just to see where I stand, but that’s just one thing that I try not to pay attention to. Even when I’m on the golf course — and I didn’t have to worry about it a ton this year, because there weren’t many fans and weren’t many leaderboards — but even when I’m on the golf course in a tournament, I don’t look at leaderboards. I know they’re always gonna be there and you might accidentally take a peek at one, but I can’t control what other people are shooting, so I’m just gonna go out and do the best I can, and I’ll see where I stand when the day’s finished.
LYING FOUR: Well, you must know that you finished in the top 10 this calendar year, which gets you limited status on the PGA Tour. Is that something that you’re gonna be able to use in 2021, or do you kinda have to keep racking up Korn Ferry points?
CHAD RAMEY: I think I’m still gonna have to get a lot of Korn Ferry points. I mean, the ultimate goal is to get full status on the PGA Tour, and through the Korn Ferry Tour now, that’s almost the only way. You could Monday in or get into a PGA Tour event and finish really well, but unless you string three or four good finishes together — or you just finished top-2 or top-3 in one event — it’s just extremely hard to get any status that way.
LYING FOUR: Well now you’ve got another two or three months until the Korn Ferry Tour starts back up; it’s almost like another shutdown now. What’s your offseason gonna look like?
CHAD RAMEY: For the most part, nothing’s gonna change. We’re not making any kind of swing changes or motion changes; the pieces that we have now, we’re gonna try to make a little bit better. For me, the most important part is that I just want to stay on top of that short game and wedges — to keep that where it’s at and try to make it a little better, and just try to roll everything over into next year.
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