Seniors – Syndication Server

Player-of-the-Year races are tight entering Golfweek TOC at PGA National

The 54-hole event will feature four divisions (Senior, Super Senior, Legends and Super Legends) and will be played Dec. 13-15.

In Golfweek’s Senior Player-of-the-Year race, Kevin VandenBerg is all but untouchable. The 58-year-old from Pulaski, New York, has amassed a 3,350-point lead in Golfweek’s National Senior Amateur Rankings to this point in the season and is positioned to repeat as Player of the Year.

That doesn’t mean he’ll stay home for Golfweek’s final event of the season. Instead, VandenBerg, who is coming off top-3 finishes at the International Senior Invitational, Reynolds Senior and SOS Fall Classic, will tee it up at PGA National’s Fazio Course in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, for this week’s Golfweek Tournament of Champions. The 54-hole event will feature four divisions (Senior, Super Senior, Legends and Super Legends) and will be played Dec. 13-15.

VandenBerg is part of a deep field in the senior division, which also includes Iowa golf legends Mike McCoy, the 2023 Walker Cup captain, and Gene Elliott as well as 2019 Golfweek Player of the Year Ken Kinkopf and 2020 Golfweek Player of the Year Craig Hurlbert.

In the Super Senior division, the rankings add some drama to the competition. Greg Goode of Salina, Kansas, recently overtook Jim Starnes of Ft. Myers, Florida, at the top of the rankings. But Goode, who gained big points from his division win at the Golfweek Desert Showdown, only leads Starnes by 43 points.

The Super Senior field for the Tournament of Champions also includes Marcus Beck, the Tallahassee, Florida, resident who won Player of the Year honors in this division last year. Beck is ranked No. 5 in the Golfweek National Senior Amateur Rankings.

Notable names in the Legends division include Pete Allen, defending champion in this event, and Greg Osborne, who, earlier this year, led the Legends rankings at the same time his older brother John led the Super Legends rankings.

Perhaps the most impressive start belongs to Bev Hargraves of Little Rock, Arkansas. Hargraves has the Player of the Year title all but locked up after frontloading his schedule in an effort to do just that. After a top-5 finish in the Golfweek Desert Showdown last month, however, Hargraves began a 45-day stretch of radiation treatment for prostate cancer. In the run-up to the Desert Showdown, Hargraves told Golfweek he might suspend that treatment to compete in the TOC.

“If I need to, I’ll do it,” he said.

And here he is.

Don Donatoni, the Malvern, Pennsylvania, resident who trails Hargraves by 1,610 points, is also in the field.

In the Super Legends rankings, the top three players in the rankings are only separated by 420 points, and all three men will play in the TOC.

John Osborne of Vero Beach, Florida, leads Johnny Blank of Frostburg, Maryland, by 145 points. George Owens of Virginia Beach, Virginia, is another 275 points behind that.

World-renowned sports psychologist Bob Rotella named Yancey Ford Award winner

For his profound effect on the game, Rotella has been awarded the Yancey Ford Award, annually presented by Golfweek.

Bob Rotella’s vast influence in golf has unfolded in two ways. For hundreds of people – both in sport (golf particularly) and business – it was through one-on-one coaching with Rotella, now 75.

For untold thousands more, it was less personal though certainly no less impactful. To date, Rotella has authored or co-authored more than a dozen books on the topic of golf and performance, creating a series of resources for players worldwide looking to improve their experience with the game.

It’s for this profound effect on golf that Rotella has been awarded the Yancey Ford Award, annually presented by Golfweek to an individual who has made significant contributions to senior-amateur golf. Ford, the award’s namesake, is a fellow Virginia resident whom Rotella has come to know on the golf course.

Ford praised the way Rotella has changed the game by providing a mental approach that allows players at every level to maximize their potential.

“Sports psychology has been around for a century, and it really has, but Bob Rotella has made it part of the overall preparation, practice and playing for the best results of golf,” Ford said. “It is now part of the game, and he has influenced all of these people how to be better at playing golf.

The list of professional players who have worked with Rotella through the years is impressive, from Rory McIlroy to Juli Inkster to Davis Love III. His players have racked up a significant number of major titles through the years – seven Masters, 13 U.S. Opens, 16 Open Championships and 16 PGA Championships as well as 7 U.S. Women’s Opens, and the list goes on.

To the broader golf community, Rotella is perhaps best known for his bestselling book Golf is Not a Game of Perfect, originally published in 1995.

After receiving the Ford Award, Rotella reflected to Golfweek that he felt fortunate that he’d gotten to spend his life coaching – something he had always wanted to do.

“I feel quite humbled and very, very fortunate and I have a great deal of appreciation for what I’ve gotten to do and that some of the greatest players in history have trusted me enough to let me spend time with them,” he said.

Winning the award in Ford’s name is special to Rotella because of Ford’s love for and contributions to the game.

“I’ve known him for quite awhile,” Rotella said. “I’ve probably played golf with him five or six times and he’s just a sweetheart of a man and loves golf so I like him.”

Ford vividly remembers his first time meeting Rotella back in the late 1990s, and that’s thanks in large part to the four pages of notes he took from their session. He had his then-secretary type them up and he still has the original copy of individualized thoughts for his game that span course management to relaxation during a round.

“He’s a tremendous guy,” Ford said of Rotella. “First of all, he’s very down to Earth, very approachable. He’s a fantastic listener and he’s got great ears – he listens to what people tell him.”

Ford has observed how the latter quality has allowed Rotella to have a greater impact on students, as well as his ability to translate what a player is doing – and what he or she should be doing – into how to improve.

“He understands the physical aspect of the swing too, which is great,” Ford said. “He wouldn’t have the record he has if he didn’t know all that.”

Outside of his coaching and his work as a bestselling author, Rotella also has poured his expertise into the Rotella-Fedder Excellence Academy for junior golfers, based at the Club at Glenmore in Keswick, Virginia.

A significant part of Rotella’s career also unfolded at the University of Virginia, where he was a professor for more than 21 years and also served as the director of the university’s Sports Psychology Department. While no longer on staff at UVA, Rotella said he still works with several university athletes.

“I loved it when I did it,” Rotella said of his time at UVA. “I had a ball doing it, was totally into it, and when I left, I left so I could spend all of my time with people on a one-on-one basis most of the time who really want to learn about this stuff.”

These days, most of Rotella’s students visit him at his home for an intense two-day session of one-on-one coaching and then remain in touch with him by phone or Zoom. Asked how many athletes he is currently working with, Rotella replied “an awful lot.”

Many are professionals and some are college athletes, but some of his students are players who are in their 50s or 60s and still interested in improving their game. One such student is Lewis Brown, the 61-year-old who won the U.S. Senior Amateur in 2024 after an 11-month break from competition.

Rotella plays a good amount of golf himself, noting that “when I’m not working, I play,” but doesn’t usually compete in tournaments. He has, however, won the Virginia Super Senior Four-Ball three times with different partners.

Rotella, who had hand surgery six months ago, will compete in the Golfweek Player of the Year Classic in January when he accepts the Ford Award.

Past Yancey Ford Award recipients:

2010: Yancey Ford

2011: David King

2012: Debbie and James Rivers

2013: John Harrigan

2014: Charles Busbee

2015: Ronnie Tumlin

2016: Ted Smith (Posthumously)

2017: Urquit Morris

2018: James Bianco

2019: Rondal Gaines

2020: No Award (Covid)

2021: Gene Elliott

2022: Joseph Pavoni

2023: James Popa

Local legend Brady Exber wins Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown despite brutal conditions

“I like the course management aspect of golf,” Exber said when asked how he felt about a week when weather forced him to get creative.

Looking back on a week of brutally windy tournament conditions, Brady Exber admits there were holes at Las Vegas’ Paiute Golf Resort on which he didn’t even try to make par.

“I just didn’t want to make more than a bogey,” said Exber, a Las Vegas local who knows that fall weather in the desert can sometimes bring whipping winds. “I had probably two or three times, just chips from just off the green, that I knew I couldn’t get the ball to stay on the green from chipping.”

Being a Southern Nevada native, Exber is hardened to desert golf in all conditions. That, and he’s exceptionally experienced at the highest level of the game, having won countless Southern Nevada golf titles as well as the British Senior Amateur in 2014 and the Canadian Senior Amateur in 2018.

He added another title on Nov. 8 as he managed the course and the conditions to win the Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown by one shot over Matthew Avril of Vero Beach, Florida. Exber, who won with rounds of 81-79-71 for a 15-over total, dedicated his latest victory to his daughter, Jordan.

Scores: Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown

“I like the course management aspect of golf,” Exber said when asked how he felt about a week that had forced him to get creative. “Whether it’s good weather, bad weather, I like to kind of map out how I would manage the course depending on the weather so I generally – it’s hard to say I enjoyed it because it’s not really enjoyable. I understand it, I can deal with it.”

Exber, 68, barely managed to get in a practice round at Paiute after having come directly from the East West Matches on Nov. 1-3 at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas. The biannual matches pit the 18 best U.S. amateurs from east of the Mississippi with those from west of it in a mix of fourball, foursomes and singles matches.

Exber captained the victorious West team, and left Maridoe high on the concept. His team was highlighted by three-time U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Stewart Hagestad plus numerous other top amateurs such as Drew Kittleson and Trip Kuehne.

“It was a thrill for me to get to watch those guys play,” he said. “I just can’t believe – I really pinched myself that they even asked me to be the captain. It was just great.”

It was his first time in the captain’s position, however, and he found that part of it nerve-wracking – especially when the score was so close.

“To just be out there watching the matches and not being able to do anything other than come on guys, let’s go, you know root for your guys, it was tough,” Exber said. “It was nerve-wracking.

“I will say that our team, they played so hard and especially down the stretch, it was tight right down to the end and our guys just kind of played, out-toughed them. They were gritty.”

While Exber, back in Las Vegas this week, might have benefited from some local feel in the howling desert wind at Paiute, the top two players in the Super Senior division hailed from Kansas. Despite living in a Plains state, division winner Greg Goode noted “we don’t play in this kind of weather back in Kansas.”

Goode, from Salina, opened with 87 when the conditions were toughest, but rallied with a remarkable second-round 77 and capped it off with a closing 75 for a one-shot victory over fellow Kansan Kevin Belknap.

This was Belknap’s first national senior event, and Goode had only recently talked him into competing. It ended up being a very tough test.

“I’ve never played golf where you never had an easy shot,” Goode said, “because of the wind and the speed of the greens, you just couldn’t stop the ball from rolling when it got on the green, the wind would push it around. It really did help you live in the moment, I will say that. It helped you play one shot at a time – you weren’t thinking about anything else.”

After the first round, Goode had felt so discouraged he didn’t even look at the scoreboard until an email from the tournament director that evening that gave the day’s average score: 85.

“I looked at the scores and I thought, I shot an 87, I’m still in it,” Goode said. “I just played really solid golf the last two days.”

And ultimately, as Goode pointed out, “that’s golf.”

With the victory, Goode gained considerable ground in the Super Senior Player of the Year race. He began the week trailing Jim Starnes by roughly 1,200 points.

Neil Spitalny of Chattanooga, Tennessee, won the Legends division at the Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown with consistent rounds of 77-81-81. He was two shots ahead of Michael Paulsen of Fort Worth, Texas.

Richard Hunt of Bixby, Oklahoma, won the Super Legends division by a three-shot margins after rounds of 81-82-77.

Las Vegas local Brady Exber climbs to top of Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown

Las Vegas’s own Brady Exber certainly played like a local on Thursday at the Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown.

Las Vegas’s own Brady Exber certainly played like a local on Thursday at the Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown. As the scores indicate, conditions have been brutal at Paiute Golf Resort for two days, but in Round 2, Exber used consistency to move into a share of the lead.

His second-round 7-over 79 was tied for the lowest in the division, and was one of only eight scores under 80 in the second round. Exber’s round included a birdie on the par-5 third and an eagle on the par-5 11th. Otherwise, he generally succeeded in keeping the big numbers off his card.

Exber is teeing it up in the Golfweek event just days after captaining the West team to victory at the East West Matches at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas, last week. Exber is known as one of the most prolific golfers in the Southern Nevada region, with a long list of Southern Nevada and Las Vegas titles to his name as well as USGA starts.

Scores: Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown

Exber, at 16 over, holds a share of the lead with first-round co-leader Matthew Avril, the Vero Beach, Florida, resident who won the Golfweek Senior POY Classic to start the year.

After that, the leaderboard remains tight, with two men tied for third at 17 over and three men tied for fifth at 18 over.

The top of the Super Senior leaderboard is dotted with Midwesterners, with Kevin Belknap of Wichita, Kansas, still the sole leader at 15 over. Belknap backed up an opening 79 with a second-round 80 and leads Terry Tyson of Perrysburg, Ohio, by a shot.

Greg Goode of Salina, Kansas, had the best round of any competitor on Thursday – a 5-over 77 that moved him into solo fourth.

Neil Spitalny remains in the lead in the Legends division. The Chattanooga, Tennessee, resident fired an opening 77 and despite backing up to 81, leads by five shots.

Another Las Vegas player, Steven Johnson, leads the Super Legends division after rounds of 81-80. He is one shot ahead of Greg Mokler of Timnath, Colorado.

Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown: The elements present a fierce test on opening day at Paiute

Two men from the East Coast fought their way to the lead at the Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown.

Amid the whipping wind they found in the desert on Wednesday, two men from the East Coast fought their way to the lead at the Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown. After a tough opening day at Paiute Resort’s Snow Mountain course in Las Vegas, Doug Stiles of Athens, Georgia, and Matthew Avril of Vero Beach, Florida, share the lead in the Senior division.

Across all four divisions, scores soared in the opening round. The field averaged 84.9 for the opening 18 holes as the wind blew 25-40 mph and the day began at a crisp 40 degrees.

Stiles and Avril both landed at 8-over 80 for the day. Avril didn’t make a birdie, and while Stiles made two, he also had a couple of big numbers on his card. Still, both men made the most of the day and managed to take a one-shot advantage on five players tied for third at 9 over.

Scores: Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown

Among the big group at 9 over is Brady Exber, who is teeing it up this week in his Las Vegas hometown after captaining the West team to victory at the East West Matches at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas, last week.

In the Super Senior division, it isn’t all the surprising that Kevin Belknap from Wichita, Kansas, leads the pack with a round of 7-over 79. Belknap, from the windy plains, fired one of just three rounds under 80 on Wednesday. He leads Stevie Cannady of Pooler, Georgia, by a shot. Cannady, who won the Golfweek Super Senior National Championship in July, birdied the 11th but double-bogeyed the 18th.

The two best scores of the day came from the Legends division, where Steve Cribari of La Quinta, California, and Neil Spitalny of Chattanooga, Tennessee posted rounds of 76 and 77, respectively.

Behind Cribari and Spitalny, the next-best score in the division came from Michael Paulsen of Fort Worth, Texas, who had 82.

In the Super Legends division, Greg Mokler of Timnath, Colorado, leads with 80. Steven Johnson of Las Vegas and Richard Hunt of Bixby, Oklahoma, are right behind him with rounds of 81.

Bev Hargraves enters the Golfweek Senior Desert Showdown eyeing the completion of a year-long POY quest

The 73-year-old started thinking: What might happen if he teed it up in more tournaments?

Bev Hargraves seems to always be in contention, and after so many top-10 finishes in senior amateur events, the 73-year-old started thinking: What might happen if he teed it up in more tournaments?

To start 2024, Hargraves sat down with his wife and pitched an idea. He wanted to play more tournaments to see if the extra starts would launch him to the top of the Golfweek National Senior Rankings for players in his age group (70-74 years old) and land him Legends Player of the Year honors.

It would be a commitment, for sure.

Hargraves still has an insurance agency back home in Little Rock, Arkansas, and works eight to 10 hours a day. He underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery in 2021 and has been battling prostate cancer for the past few years. The latter necessitated him front-loading his competition schedule a bit this year.

Shortly after he competes in this week’s Golfweek Desert Showdown at Las Vegas Paiute Golf Resort, Hargraves will begin a 45-day stretch of radiation treatment that will take him off the national senior amateur circuit.

“What I want to do is to see how I play in Las Vegas and if I can possibly wrap up the Player of the Year,” Hargraves said.

Hargraves won his age division earlier this year at the Golfweek Player of the Year Classic, giving him a huge boost in his quest. He also won the Legends title at the Low Country Senior and tied for second at the U.S. Senior Challenge, a state team event for which he serves on the board.

Golfweek National Senior Amateur Rankings

All of that has Hargraves sitting atop the Legends rankings, with a 1,120-point lead on Don Donatoni of Malvern, Pennsylvania. Expect Hargraves to keep a close eye on the standings even as he undergoes radiation. He has considered the possibility of suspending treatment to squeeze in one more tournament in December.

“If I need to, I’ll do it.”

Through the years, Hargraves’ competitive nature clearly hasn’t changed much, and neither has his game.

“Historically my driving has been the best part of my game,” he said. “I’m not long but usually in the fairway. The part that helps me in every tournament is my short game, chipping and putting, which has always been good.”

The latter he still credits to Paul Runyan, a World Golf Hall of Famer for whom he had the good fortune to caddie during the Mohawk Open, a pro-am played in the 1960s at his home golf course, Helena (Arkansas) Country Club.

“He was a short game guru and he’s the one who kind of taught me different techniques on chipping and putting,” Hargraves said of Runyan.

Hargraves first came to the game as a caddie at 9 years old and began playing two years later. He never had a lesson but observed while he caddied. He took advantage of the opportunities that came to him, like a front-row seat to Runyan.

Regardless, Hargraves’ golf resume is full. He has won more than 80 individual titles in Arkansas, served in various leadership roles in his state association, regional associations and even the USGA (notably, Hargraves was a member of the U.S. Mid-Amateur Committee from 1991 to 2006). He has traveled domestically and abroad to compete in tournaments.

Until this year’s run at player-of-the-year honors, Hargraves, who played collegiately for the University of Arkansas in the 1970s, has typically played just five or six national tournaments a year. As he has gotten older, golf has become the sport in which he remains physically competitive. As a younger man, he liked to compete in baseball, football or anything else that satisfied his natural competitive drive.

When Hargraves turned 45, he turned his focus to playing in the U.S. Mid-Amateur, and he qualified for five of those. He attempted qualifying for the U.S. Senior Amateur at age 56 and has played six of those. He last qualified for a U.S. Senior Am in 2017.

“One thing I do want to do, and it will be hard to do, is qualifying for the U.S. Senior Am,” he said of goals that still remain on the table.

As always, Hargraves continues to seek out the highest level of competition. It’s his “why.”

“I like to compete against the best,” he said.

Golfweek senior POY update: Super Legends division remains a tight race; Kevin VandenBerg continues Senior division runaway

This late in the season, the top players often have separated themselves in Golfweek’s senior player-of-the-year races.

This late in the season, the top players often have separated themselves in Golfweek’s senior player-of-the-year races. And while that is certainly the case in some age groups, the race remains tight in the Super Legends division. Only 110 points separates leader Johnny Blank of Frostburg, Maryland, from George Owens of Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Blank is trying to end a third consecutive season as the Super Legends Player of the Year. In 2023, he finished 1,635 points ahead of Bill Engel of St. Augustine, Florida. Engel, the former Commander of the White Sands Missile Range, is 830 points behind Blank. John Osborne of Vero Beach, Florida, is wedged into that mix too, trailing Blank by only 380 points.

Blank has competed largely in the Southeast this season, logging the most points for winning his division at the SOS Spring Classic and Super Senior in February.

Golfweek awards Player of the Year honors for each of four age divisions: Senior, Super Senior, Legends and Super Legends. Winners will be recognized Jan. 16 at the Golfweek Player of the Year Classic at Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate.

In the Super Senior division, top-ranked Jim Starnes has racked up many of his 7,547 points in the Southeast as well, but he has also made two trips west with impressive results.

Starnes, of Fort Myers, Florida, leads Greg Goode, of Salina, Kansas, by 1,297 points. Starnes reaped big points for his victories early in the year at the Florida Azalea Senior and the Lowcountry Senior Amateur. His trips west to the Golfweek Senior Amateur in Palm Desert, California, and the Golfweek Pacific Northwest Senior in Walla Walla, Washington, both produced top-5 finishes.

Starnes finished 2023 third on the points list for his division, and in 2016 he was named the Senior Player of the Year as the top points-getter.

Golfweek National Senior Amateur Rankings

To claim a POY title is a labor of love that requires men like Starnes to tee it up frequently and to play well. For Starnes, that means 22 to 25 national senior starts, plus a half dozen four-ball events and a few Florida State Golf Association events.

His has long been a name to know in senior golf: Starnes qualified for the U.S. Senior Amateur in 2016 and 2021.

Perhaps no one knows the term “labor of love” better than Kevin VandenBerg when it comes to winning player-of-the-year honors. VandenBerg has a nearly 3,000-point lead in the Senior division and has POY honors all but locked up for the second consecutive year.

VandenBerg aged into senior competition when he turned 55 in 2021. He has not slowed down since. In 2023, VandenBerg, of Pulaski, New York, teed it up in competition 44 times between Golfweek senior events, Society of Senior events, local tournaments and USGA qualifiers.

He’ll beat that number this year. VandenBerg told Golfweek he has already competed 44 times – finishing first, first, second, second and third in his past five starts – and has six more events planned before the end of the calendar year.

VandenBerg will be inducted into the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame on Oct. 27 for a career that includes his sweep (in the summer of 2000) of Michigan’s three major amateur tournaments: the Michigan Amateur, Golf Association of Michigan Championship and the Michigan Mid-Amateur.

In the Legends division, Bev Hargraves of Little Rock, Arkansas, leads Don Donatoni of Malvern, Pennsylvania, by 950 points. Hargraves notably won his division at the 2024 Golfweek Player of the Year Classic.

International Senior Amateur: Jack Hall charges as Atlanta makes a run at Kentucky for team title

As Hall torched the back nine, he not only climbed 29 spots on the individual leaderboard at the International Senior Invitational, he pulled his three-man team right up along with him.

Jack Hall made his only bogey of the day right after making the turn at Cartersville (Georgia) Country Club. He did more than erase it with five subsequent birdies in his final eight holes.

As Hall, of Savannah, Georgia, torched the back nine, he not only climbed 29 spots on the individual leaderboard at the International Senior Invitational, he pulled his three-man team right up along with him.

Hall helped move the Atlanta team seven spots higher in the team competition and into a tie for third. Entering the final round of the tournament, Hall & Co., trail the leading Kentucky team by only four shots with a team representing North Georgia squarely between them.

Scores: International Senior Invitational

The International Senior Invitational, in its second year at Cartersville Country Club, features 30 three-man teams competing in a three-count-two format. A team and an individual champion will be crowned after 54 holes.

Hall, who posted the lowest score of any competitor on Friday, has had quite the year and is competing in Cartersville just a few weeks after finishing in the top 3 at the Canadian Senior Amateur and reaching the second round of match play at the U.S. Senior Amateur. He’s had a handful of other top finishes so far this season, including a T7 at the Trans-Miss Senior and a third-place finish at the Jones Cup Senior.

Billy Mitchell, who has made several recent runs into match play at the U.S. Senior Amateur, is captaining the Atlanta team and contributed a 3-under 69 on Friday. Hall and Mitchell’s combination was tough to match in the play-three-count-two format.

Consider that the Atlanta team outscored North Georgia by four shots in the second round after North Georgia counted rounds of 69 and 70 from Bob Royak and Doug Hanzel, respectively. Both men are past U.S. Senior Amateur champions.

All are chasing the team from Kentucky, which reached 10 under par on Friday as Tony Wise continues to light up Cartersville Country Club. Wise, of Georgetown, Kentucky, has posted rounds of 69-68 and is tied for first individually with Kevin VandenBerg of Pulaski, New York. VandenBerg is the top-ranked player in the Golfweek Senior National Rankings.

The International Senior Invitational at Cartersville (Georgia) Country Club. (Photo by Ron Gaines)

Wise did not make a bogey on Friday, and to help matters, teammate Buddy Bryant of Pewee Valley, Kentucky, contributed a round of 68 as well.

The New York team, with help from VandenBerg’s solid play, is tied for third with the Atlanta team.

The international part of the field is well-represented at Cartersville, too. Team Ireland, led by Joe Lyons, the two-time Irish Senior Men’s Amateur Close champion, is fifth in the team standings at 4 under. Lyons, who won the individual trophy at this event last year, has contributed rounds of 70 and 74.

International Senior Invitational: Ireland’s Joe Lyons returns; three past U.S. Senior Am champs to tee it up

Joe Lyons has officially entered his travel golf season.

Joe Lyons has officially entered his travel golf season. It just so happens that it falls opposite the travel season for most players in his part of the world.

Lyons, co-founder of Lyons Links, which operates luxury golf and sightseeing tours in Ireland and the United Kingdom, lives a life that revolves around the game. Now in the offseason, Lyons, 52, of Galway, Ireland, will play for the Team Ireland at this week’s International Senior Invitational at Cartersville (Georgia) Country Club.

The tournament, in its second year of a three-year run at Cartersville, features 30 three-man teams competing in a three-count-two format. Several states across the U.S. will be represented by a team as will England, Scotland, Germany, Canada and, of course, Ireland.

A team and an individual champion will be crowned after 54 holes, and Lyons happens to be the returning individual champion.

Lyons has been a golfer since he was 9 years old and pours energy into both his own game and his work in golf. From April to September, he sprinkles tournaments into his schedule around the obligations that come with being a golf tour director amid the peak golf travel season.

“I am lucky enough to have an exceptional team around me that makes sure our clients are looked after during those months and allows me to compete in a select number of men’s amateur and seniors events during the summer in Europe,” he wrote by email.

Lyons’ resume is robust. Notably, he has won the Irish Senior Men’s Amateur Close Championship each of the past two years and in February, won the Spanish International Seniors Championship.

“Strangest experience this year was winning the Spanish Seniors Amateur and being prevented from bringing the trophy home on the plane as it was not in line with the airline’s ‘baggage policy,’” Lyons wrote.

Luckily, he noted, he had no such issue bringing home the trophy he won at this event a year ago for lowest individual and it now sits in a place of pride at his home.

Lyons’ golf life spans many arenas, from competitive senior golf to top-notch golf tourism, but he also continues to fly the flag for fiftysomethings by remaining competitive among a younger generation of golfers. Scroll the results of this year’s Amateur Championship at Ballyliffin in Ireland and there, in the top half of the 288-man field, you will find Lyons’ name. He fired rounds of 76-75 but missed the match-play cut.

When asked what goals remain for his game, Lyons, who is ranked among the top-20 players age 50 and over, listed winning the U.S. Senior Amateur or British Senior Amateur Championship when the time comes (he won’t be eligible for either until he turns 55). He also noted he would love to win low amateur at the Senior Open Championship.

With such lofty sights, Lyons is among good company at the International Senior Invitational. The field includes three past U.S. Senior Amateur champions: Doug Hanzel (2013), Bob Royak (2019) and Rusty Strawn (2022).

Kevin VandenBerg, the top-ranked player in Golfweek’s National Senior Amateur Rankings, is also in the field, and so is Mike McCoy, the 2013 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion who captained the 2023 U.S. Walker Cup team.

Kansas City Golf Hall of Famer Don Kuehn, 77, knocked two colossal goals off his list in senior golf this year

When Don Kuehn set out on the senior circuit at the start of 2024, he had two goals in mind: to shoot his age or better for the 500th time and to win his 50th championship title.

The first time Don Kuehn shot his age, he was playing in a senior team event in Louisville, Kentucky. A teammate told Kuehn to make a note of it because shooting his age, he said, was the only stat he was keeping track of in his game.

“So I wrote it down,” said the now-77-year-old Kuehn, who was 66 at the time and had just fired a 65. “And then I wrote some more down, and I’ve been writing them down ever since.”

Shooting your age (or beating it) is a common currency in golf, so mouths will drop at the next part of the story. When Kuehn, of Kansas City, set out on the senior circuit at the start of 2024, he had two goals in mind: to shoot his age or better for the 500th time and to win his 50th championship title.

Kuehn hit the latter when he won the Legends division of the Kansas City Amateur in late July, but the former?

“I had a good feeling that I might be able to get to No. 500 at Pinehurst, and it worked out,” he said.

When Kuehn played the North & South Senior Amateur at the North Carolina resort earlier this month, he shot rounds of 74-73-74, meeting his goal in the final round.

The statistics surrounding Kuehn’s golf game are at once totally remarkable and unsurprising. Kuehn, retired from a career with the American Federation of Teachers, figures he plays just over 200 recordable rounds a year these days. Kuehn, can be found at Paradise Pointe Golf Complex, a country-run in Smithville, Missouri, on most days. There are two 18-hole golf courses there, and Kuehn likes to tee off first most mornings and get in 18 holes in under three hours. Maybe practice a little after that.

Like most players Kuehn’s age, it hasn’t always been like this. During his professional career, Kuehn traveled extensively, and had little time for golf. But several years into the gig, he found himself sitting at the bargaining table one day in Los Angeles with a man who had attended Ohio State right after the Jack Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf era. To kill time, they started talking about golf – namely where Kuehn might be able to play in the city.

“I found out that I was kind of a better person when I got away from the tension and the stress of negotiating a contract for 58,000 people,” he said. “…I played a few times out there and then I started playing a little bit on weekends, on a limited basis.”

Eventually, Kuehn was scheduling his vacation days around golf tournaments. He won his first serious tournament in 1998 – a club championship – and won the Kansas Senior Amateur in 2001.

As the years went on, Kuehn became the only player to win the “Kansas Senior Slam,” which includes the Senior Amateur, the Senior Four-Ball, the Senior Match Play and “The Railer” Stroke Play Championship. He also played the U.S. Senior Amateur twice (in 2005 and 2009) and began traveling extensively for national senior tournaments in 2011.

Kuehn is embedded Kansas City golf lore. He’s also been a member of the Board of Directors for Central Links Golf (the Allied Golf Association formed when the Kansas City and Kansas Golf Associations merged) since 2006. One of his most significant contributions was the first-person history Kuehn wrote about golf in Kansas City, albeit with his own quirky spin.

After being appointed to the chair of the centennial committee in 2012 for what was then the Kansas City Golf Association, Kuehn hatched the idea of creating a character to tell the story in a more compelling way. That became Jimmy the Caddie.

Kuehn imagined Jimmy as a mix between Forest Gump and Zelig, an omnipresent character created in 1983 by Woody Allen.

“Jimmy told the story from a first-person point of view of how golf developed in the Kansas City area,” Kuehn said.

That Kuehn would choose a caddie for his alter ego is not that surprising given that his roots in the game are as a bagman in his native Chicago. He got his first job caddying at the age of 12 at a (since closed) course called Thorngate, which was located in the suburb of Deerfield. Being under the legal age to work, he would either hide when the lady from Department of Labor came around to check work permits or spend his day shining shoes in the men’s locker room, where she couldn’t find him.

When the school year began, Kuehn would ride the bus past his house to the golf course and clean clubs for the assistant pro. At the end of a workday, Kuehn would either receive a few dollars or permission to climb up on the bag rack and pick out a golf club for himself from a stack of trade-ins. He assembled his first set that way and used them when caddies got playing privileges on Mondays.

“I just kind of fell in love with the game,” Kuehn said of that part of his life. “From 12 years old until now, that’s a long time.”