Golf: Crunch time for Alker

Just one good weekend of golf separates Steve Alker from completing a trio of Kiwis on next year's PGA Tour. Photo / Getty Images.

Just one good weekend of golf separates Steve Alker from completing a trio of Kiwis on next year's PGA Tour.

Alker has everything to play for at this week's Cox Classic in Omaha, which marks the end of the regular season on the second-tier Web.com Tour.

The 43-year-old is currently 22nd on the order of merit, just inside the top 25 players who, at the end of the tournament on Monday morning (NZT), will earn cards to play on the PGA Tour in 2014.

Alker, who finished in a share of 50th place in Tennessee last week to remain inside the cut-off on the money-list, will tee off tomorrow alongside Australian Matthew Goggin and Argentine Miguel Angel Carballo.

Compatriot Tim Wilkinson - who like Danny Lee has already booked his place on next year's PGA Tour - believed Alker would make it three Kiwis on the top tour if he continued his recent form.

"Steve just needs another solid week and he'll be fine,'' Wilkinson said. ``He is right on the bubble and it can be a pretty volatile week with a few nerves.

"It is a bigger purse so people can jump a few places. But a solid week and he'll be there. He doesn't need to do anything amazing he just needs to consolidate his position.''

Alker won the Utah Championship earlier this year to turn around his season and, since then, has played well enough to remain inside the top 25. He has made US$139,313 from 12 events and the Web.com Tour has projected a benchmark of US$142,000, an amount which has traditionally been safe.

If Alker has a poor weekend and slips outside the top 25, he can still play his way onto the game's most lucrative tour through a new four-tournament playoff featuring players who finish in positions 26-50.

Meanwhile, world No 1 amateur Lydia Ko will play in a highly-rated threesome as she opens her title defence at the Canadian Open on the LPGA Tour.

Ko will play the first two rounds alongside England's Charley Hull and local hope Jennifer Kirkby, with the trio teeing off tomorrow at the Royal Mayfair Golf Club in Edmonton.

"There is pressure,'' Ko said of her position as the defending champion. ``But I'm just going to think about my own game, one shot at a time.''

Last year Ko became the youngest ever winner on the tour - aged 15 years, four months and two days - and surpassed the feats of American Lexi Thompson by more than a year.

She also became the first Kiwi to win an event on the LPGA Tour and only the fifth amateur, the first since JoAnne Carner in 1969.