An in-depth look at Qualifying School graduate Corey Shaun's incredible journey to the DP World Tour.
They say that to make it as a sportsperson at the very top level, sometimes you just have to want it more.
They also say that in sport – and golf in particular – it all comes down to fine margins.
Corey Shaun is far from a cliché of a sportsman but if you look at his remarkable road to this week's Commercial Bank Qatar Masters, he has proven that both of those old adages are true.
“That got me into this crazy eight-week stretch of golf tournaments where I went from First Stage PGA TOUR Q School, flying out the next day for Second Stage DP World Tour Q School, as an alternate getting to that Final Stage and then flying back home and onto Australia for two events, then back home for two events and then I flew to Mauritius the night of the final round of PGA TOUR Q School,” said Shaun last week from Bahrain, where he had landed a very late spot in the field for the Bapco Energies Bahrain Championship.
He had in fact been in the Middle East for a week hoping to get a place in the Ras Al Khaimah Championship which never came, but his patience paid off both at Royal Golf Club and this week in Doha despite not initially being in either field.
That determination is typical of a man who between late October and Christmas played in five stages across two Qualifying Schools and three DP World Tour events across four continents and is now grabbing every opportunity he can to make it on the DP World Tour.
Born in Illinois to Chinese parents who moved to the United States in their 20s, Shaun's original family name was Xiang but his father Norman legally changed it as he was “fed up with people pronouncing it wrong”.
It was alongside his dad that Shaun first got into golf, accompanying him to the local club at the age of three with a set of plastic clubs, while also playing alongside his mother Luann.
He played his first junior event at eight and while he was initially “not very good”, rapid improvement came and within 12 months he was winning.
A partly golf-inspired move to San Diego followed and a young Corey played his way through the junior and collegiate system before turning professional in 2018, when his heritage helped him with his first steps in the paid ranks.
“I can speak Chinese,” he said. “I wouldn't say I'm extremely comfortable with every aspect but if you place me in a mall I can get around and I can order food.”
Shaun spent the next two years playing on the PGA TOUR Series-China and while his best finish was a tie for tenth, the experience gave him a sound grounding in what was required to make a living as a golfer.
“It was a good experience,” he said. “It taught me a lot about what it means to be a touring professional, what it means to play more or less a full schedule, travelling week to week and having a routine from Monday to Sunday of a tournament week.
“Even though I largely didn't play well to start out, I felt like I was getting better and better throughout that process.
“The golf courses we played were also very difficult in China, like nothing I'd seen before in the States. That trained me for the mentality to grind it out, you're probably not going to hit the prettiest looking shots but you've got to figure it out and get it in the hole.”
When the world stopped due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Shaun's playing opportunities disappeared but in 2021 the PGA TOUR created the Forme Tour to enable American members of the PGA Tour Canada who could not cross the border to play.
Shaun did not have that status but a combination of Qualifying School, a sponsor's invite to a preceding event and a re-rank earned him a start in the Forme Open, a thumping victory and some belief that “my good golf was pretty good”.
“That was definitely a turning point in my career in my third full year playing professionally,” he said.
“At that point, you never really know how good you can be, you never really know whether you can make it in this game and if your good is good enough but I played very well that week and showed to myself, with my dad's help on the bag, that my good golf was pretty good.”
Finishes of second and fourth in his remaining events on the season saw him seal second place on the Forme Tour Rankings and some status on the Korn Ferry Tour before a run of good results on mini tours increased his confidence even further.
But a back injury forced him to withdraw from the Korn Ferry Tour Qualifying School and while he finished third in his season opener in the Bahamas, it proved to be a false dawn as he would miss 14 of his next 19 cuts and lose his card.
He would spend the next two seasons on the Canadian and Latin American Tours registering just a single top ten but just as he had in China, Shaun used adversity as a tool to get better.
“That first Bahamas event I was in no shape to play,” he said. “I had no preparation and had literally started playing golf again maybe eight days before the tournament, hitting balls for 30 minutes every other day.
“But what happens as a pro golfer when you're playing well, you get a kind of blind confidence. I felt I could make the cut and figure out the year from there and had a really, really good week on a great golf course for me.
“That week made me feel over-confident for what I should have done the rest of year. Instead of properly getting some rest and not developing bad habits I thought, 'I've just finished third, I need to play as much as I can'. But once everything started hitting physically, I just didn't feel as comfortable with my game and missed a bunch of cuts in a row.
“But it really did help me out quite a bit eventually. When you've missed a lot of cuts in a row it's demoralising but afterwards it showed me where I needed to play better and improve.
“I played with probably 80 per cent of the guys who got their PGA TOUR card that year through the Korn Ferry Tour and it showed me that it wasn't as far off as I would think it was.”
The chance to prove himself on the biggest stage was still a long way away but on October 22, 2024, he began that eight-week spell that could prove to be life-changing.
A tie for fourth at the First Stage of PGA TOUR Qualifying School saw him advance in his now home state of California and he began his continent-hopping by heading to Isla Canela Links for the Second Stage of DP World Qualifying School the following week.
It was in Spain that those fine margins, in both sporting performance and personal choices, began to show their importance.
Shaun birdied four of his last five holes in the final round but as one of the earlier starters, he was left waiting to see if he would advance to the Final Stage at INFINITUM.
He ended up being the odd man out in a three-player play-off with Wouter de Vries and Ryan Lumsden. That left him as second alternate for Final Stage and he had a decision to make.
“I lost that play-off and I was really demoralised,” he said. “I shot six under and thought I'd probably done enough to secure a spot but a lot of guys played really well that day.
“Partially from the sting of losing the play-off and partially from thinking, 'I played really good golf and didn't qualify, what am I doing out here?', if I was any lower alternate, I probably would have bought a flight home that same day and I was pretty close to buying a flight anyway.”
He did not and 11 days later, after six rounds of golf separated by a government-mandated weather delay, he finished in tie for 12th to secure category 18 status on the DP World Tour.
“It was such a long week mentally, physically, coming off the previous week as well,” said the 28-year-old, who had not previously played a six-round event.
“At the point of the suspension I was right on the line for the top 20 and ties to get their card. So I just wanted to get it over with, there were lots of different questions running through my mind, but I played a solid final round and it all worked out well. But there was a lot of pressure and a lot of nerves.”
As far as DP World Tour Qualifying School was concerned, it was mission accomplished, but Shaun had not realised when he arrived in Tarragona that his first event would be the following week and it would be in Australia.
So with a flight back to California already booked and a visa to acquire, Shaun headed home for 48 hours before making the 16-hour journey to Brisbane for the BMW Australian PGA Championship.
He arrived Down Under on the Tuesday and after a single “very unproductive” practice round in the pouring rain with a local, youthful caddie, he made the cut on his DP World Tour debut.
The following week he played the opening two rounds of the ISPS HANDA Australian Open with Curtis Luck and Jasper Stubbs and saw countryman and fellow Q School graduate Ryggs Johnston take the title.
“Seeing someone in our category play so well early on, it does show that the good golf from Q School does carry over and you can compete with the mainstays on this tour and all these really strong golfers,” he said.
“The first two rounds I played with two Australians that both finished in the top five and I felt that despite missing the cut by one, it was extremely thin margins that separated what they did and what I did.”
That missed cut, however, presented another opportunity as Shaun, who was not in the field for the following week's Nedbank Golf Challenge, now had the time to get back to the US for the Second Stage of PGA TOUR Q School, so he once again headed home and secured a second-placed finish.
He then headed to Final Stage after discovering he also would not be playing the Alfred Dunhill Championship and opened with a 61 to lead by four before eventually finishing in a tie for 14th and securing status on the Korn Ferry Tour.
But he had already decided his 2025 focus would be on the DP World Tour and he took one more trip to yet another continent in search of precious Race to Dubai points.
“It was such a whirlwind because if I hadn't missed the cut by one at the Australian Open, I wouldn't have got back in time to play the Second Stage of PGA TOUR Q School and if I had got into the South African events, I also would not have played PGA TOUR Q School,” he said.
“To start the year when I secured DP World Tour status at Q School, I knew it was going to be a tough year and I might not get into a lot of events and if I did it was going to be a lot of last-minute flights and alternate list decisions.
“Realistically, I just want to be able to secure status, solidly play well and have the privilege of choosing a schedule next year. Because of all that, I knew that the first few starts meant a lot and that would go a long way for the rest of the year.
“That's why after completing Q Schools and being super tired, I still flew to Australia, I still flew to Mauritius, because I knew that a good finish would go a long way for the category re-rank. I was tired in the moment but I'm glad with how it has gone so far.”
A top ten in Mauritius helped him move up within his category and it is that move that secured his place in the field in Bahrain last week.
But that top ten almost did not happen as Shaun's exhausting, globetrotting schedule began to take its toll in paradise.
“When I arrived in Mauritus it was midday Tuesday and I had no sense of my whereabouts or internal clock,” he said. “I'd been playing way too much golf and I was way too tired physically, mentally and everything.
“Come Thursday, I had a local caddie who obviously didn't know my routine for getting to the tee but I zoned out and completely forgot what my tee time was, I thought it was ten minutes later.
“I realised three minutes before my tee time so I showed up and the starter says 'Corey, good to see you, I thought we lost you'.
“I didn't know what to hit and the other two guys hit an iron the proper distance so I figured it out from there but I was in a lot of trouble that first round.”
There is a lot of golf left to be played in 2025 but for now the hard work is paying off for Shaun, who enters this week 74th in the Race to Dubai Rankings and feeling like a true competitor on a tour he can call home.
“The entire eight weeks proved a lot to me and showed a lot,” he said. “Even though I had some good success in 2021 and early 2022, I hadn't really played very good golf since then.
“I hadn't put together four good rounds where I was satisfied with how I played or how I finished and during that stretch I played against a lot of full card-carrying guys, a lot of really strong names I'd grown up seeing, and I showed myself that I was able to compete with them or even beat them.
“As a golfer, you're never sure where you stand, you just feel like you're pretty good sometimes but you also feel like you're way off sometimes and most of the time it's in the middle.
“I'm looking forward to just trying to play good golf and compete with some players that I've seen throughout my entire junior golf career, that I've played with and looked up to.
“Six months ago when I lost status in Latin America, the thought of playing on the DP World Tour would have been pretty crazy so everything out here now is a privilege and a cherry on top.”
Since May of last year, Shaun has played professional golf on every inhabited continent in his search to find a place to play.
Where his journey will take him in the long-term only time will tell but if hard work and desire are truly rewarded, the only way is up.
