A player who just earned PGA Tour card has already broken Jon Rahm’s record as an amateur

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After the conclusion of the season, we now know the 10 players from the DP World Tour who have earned their PGA Tour cards for 2026. 

Players on the DP World Tour have taken the opportunity to demonstrate that they can compete with the world’s best players in recent months. 

Some of Europe’s biggest stars from the Ryder Cup, including Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, and Jon Rahm, to name a few, turned their attention to the DP World Tour after their Ryder Cup win in New York. 

Fleetwood won the DP World India Championship, Matt Fitzpatrick won the DP World Tour  Championship, and McIlroy claimed his seventh Race to Dubai title at the end of the season. But these PGA Tour superstars didn’t all have it their own way. 

England’s Marco Penge won the Spanish Open in a field featuring Rahm, and Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen and Laurie Canter were in contention for the DP World Tour Championship. Meanwhile, Keita Nakajima pushed Tommy Fleetwood to the final hole in New Delhi. 

All of these players secured their PGA Tour card for next season after breakout seasons, but Nakajima, in particular, has shown he has the ability to contend with the world’s top talents for years. 

Keita Nakajima broke Jon Rahm’s record as an amateur

Nakajima was an immensely impressive amateur golfer, winning four times between 2016 and 2021.

He took victory at the Japan Amateur Championship as one of his standout wins, helped the international team to beat Team USA at the 2019 Arnold Palmer Cup, and won both the individual and team gold medals at the 2018 Asian Games. 

Nakajima’s level of consistently elite play meant he was ranked number one in the World Amateur Golf Rankings for 87 weeks between 2020 and 2022, smashing Rahm’s record of 60 weeks.

He played a number of professional events as an amateur, finishing second at the Token Homemate Cup and winning the Panasonic Open. He rose to 188th in the Official World Golf Rankings after making the cut at the 2022 Sony Open in Hawaii. 

Since turning pro in 2022, Nakajima finished T12 on his debut at the ZOZO Championship. He won three times on the Japan Golf Tour as a rookie and took his first DP World Tour victory at the Hero Indian Open. 

This year he held the 54-hole lead at the DP World India Championship before falling victim to a Fleetwood surge in the final round, but he showed he can go toe-to-toe with the world’s best in New Delhi. 

Retaining his PGA Tour card will be the biggest test of his career to date, but Nakajima has a stellar record to fall back on in order to achieve this.

How Jon Rahm became the first player to win two Ben Hogan awards

Nakajima’s record becomes all the more impressive when you consider how consistently excellent Rahm was as an amateur.

Rahm played four years at Arizona State University, winning 11 collegiate titles, second only to Phil Mickelson in the school’s history. 

He was the first player to win the Ben Hogan Award, the award given to the top male college golfer in America, twice. 

Rahm was the low amateur at the 2016 US Open, finishing T23 at Oakmont, and made several cuts on the PGA Tour, including an incredible T5 at the Phoenix Open. 

The Spaniard was considered one of the most pro-ready college prospects during his four seasons at ASU, yet Nakajima still surpassed him for the longest time as the world’s best amateur golfer.

And if the Japanese star can have even half of Rahm’s success on the PGA Tour, he’ll be able to call it an incredibly successful career.