Martin Flores

Player Highlights

The Web.com Tour is both a springboard and a safety net. It can launch PGA TOUR careers; it can also provide competitive safe haven for talented players who fail to retain exempt status on the main tour. Just ask Flores, who is making the most of the latter. The former Oklahoma Sooner star returned to the Web.com Tour after four consecutive years on the PGA TOUR. In two of those seasons—2012 and 2013-14—Flores pocketed more than $1 million in official earnings. In 2013, the last PGA TOUR season completed entirely within a calendar year, the Texan finished a career-best 87th in the FedExCup standings. Last year, while making major putting changes—to his putter, grip and stroke—he stumbled to 156th and lost his PGA TOUR card. “I changed almost everything. … I didn’t really feel like it was going to be that big of an impact, but I lost a lot of confidence in competition during the change,” said the 12th-year pro, whose best TOUR finish was a solo third at the Wells Fargo Championship in 2014. The good news? The last time Flores returned to Web.com Tour play, in 2011, his stay was short. He regained his PGA TOUR card by finishing in the top 25, a season highlighted by a runner-up finish at the Rex Hospital Open. And the pattern may be holding. Three top-fives in his first five events of 2016 (T3s at the Panama Claro Championship and the Chitimacha Louisiana Open and a fourth at the Brasil Championship) suggest Flores is once again a man on a mission. He is determined to launch himself back onto pro golf’s main stage.