How a former BYU golfer became one of golf’s best stories this summer

The PGA’s Korn Ferry Tour will announce its three sponsors exemptions into the Utah Championship next week, and former BYU golfer Peter Kuest could probably have expected an invitation, after finishing in a tie for fifth in last year’s tournament.

But Kuest likely won’t be available to play Aug. 3-6 at Oakridge Country Club in Farmington. Instead, the Fresno, California, native plans to be playing in the PGA Tour’s Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, the result of an unbelievable stretch of outstanding golf for the former college All-American who won 10 tournaments during his time at BYU.

“I didn’t have many opportunities to play this year, so when I had them, I had to make the most of them,” Kuest said Tuesday in a Utah Championship-sponsored media call. “I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job of that.”

That’s an understatement. 

Without playing status on any tour this year, Kuest, 25, had been playing in state opens and attempting to qualify on Mondays for various tournaments until he put together a phenomenal stretch in May, June and July that has earned him special temporary membership on the PGA Tour for the remainder of the regular season.

That means he will play in the Barracuda Championship in Truckee, California, this week while most of the golfing world will be focused on The Open Championship in Hoylake, England. Next week, he will play in the 3M Open in Blaine, Minnesota, and the following week in the Wyndham Championship with a purse of $7.6 million.

When the Korn Ferry Tour stops in Utah, which has a purse of $1 million, Utahns will have former BYU golfers Patrick Fishburn and Daniel Summerhays to cheer for, but probably not Kuest.

The slender, sweet-swinging Californian’s rise has been nothing short of unbelievable.

What has clicked for the current American Fork resident?

“I mean, it has all been pretty good. I wouldn’t say anything has really clicked. Just a lot of hard work over the last few years. It is starting to get back to where I want it to be, and kinda take off,” he said. “It is all part of the process. We are just trying to stick to the process we know and just go from there.”

Now that he’s earned more than $650,000 this season and injected more confidence and less worry into his golf game and life, Kuest said the success hasn’t changed his life, as might be expected.

“My life hasn’t changed,” he said, speaking on the teleconference from the parking lot of the Tahoe Mountain Golf Club near Reno. “I am still just a golfer. I like to go…