Tag: mini tour

A year after driving all night to play a mini-tour event, Eric Cole is hot again at the 2024 John Deere Classic

It wasn’t too long ago that a $20,000 payday would have kept Eric Cole’s golf dreams alive.

It wasn’t long ago that a $20,000 payday was the kind that kept Eric Cole’s dreams of playing professional golf alive.

Now, the reigning PGA Tour Rookie of the Year has a little different comfort level when it comes to his finances. After posting seven top-10 finishes this season, Cole has already made over $2 million in 2024 and he’s currently near the top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings, meaning the prospect of more big paychecks is well within range.

And after firing a 62 in the opening round of the John Deere Classic on Thursday, Cole followed with a workmanlike 68 on Friday, staying just behind leaders C.T. Pan and Aaron Rai after the early wave. He’s 12 under through 36 holes.

But a year ago at this time, while in the throes of his rookie year on Tour, Cole drove through the night, after playing 10 straight weeks, to play in a mini-tour event that had once kept him afloat. The final Frank B. Fuhrer Jr. Invitational was held in 2023 after the tournament’s namesake died.

Cole, who won the event in 2014 at a time when he had to put tournament entry fees on a credit card, never forgot how important the event was in his development. A year ago, he drove nearly eight hours after playing the Travelers Championship to Pittsburgh Field Club in Western Pennsylvania.

“That one was really impactful for me in continuing my dream of playing the PGA Tour,” he said on Friday. “I thought it was really important to be there, and it had a huge impact on me continuing my dream of playing the PGA Tour. With it being the last edition it felt like the right thing to do and an important spot to be.”

It’s that kind of mentality that’s helped Cole remain grounded through any hiccups he’s had on Tour. After a stretch of three straight missed cuts in late May and early June, Cole rebounded by making the weekend at both the Memorial and this year’s Travelers, and then finished sixth last week at the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit.

“I feel unbelievably lucky to be out here on Tour. I think that’s probably why I play as much as I do. So it’s just a great spot to be playing, and I like I said, I’m very fortunate and lucky to be out here, so I try and play as much as I can,” he said. “I don’t think about it too much. I’m definitely, like I said, very thankful. I’ve played golf in a lot of places and taken a long road to be here, so happy to be here.”

Last year was his breakout year, one in which he turned 35. He played 37 events with seven top 10s, including two seconds. One of those was the Honda Classic (now Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches) where he lost a playoff to Chris Kirk.

All of that resulted in Cole capturing the Tour’s Rookie of the Year, 50 years after his mom, Laura Baugh, won the same award on the LPGA Tour. He was the second-oldest player to be named top rookie behind Todd Hamilton, who was 39 when he won in 2004. The Rookie of the Year Award was established in 1990.

On Friday, he stayed steady, even holing out from the bunker on his penultimate hole for an unconventional birdie.

Cole knows this next stretch is pivotal — a big run in the Quad Cities could put him in good position for the FedEx Cup Playoffs, and set up 2025 to potentially get into signature events next season.

But a year after he drove through the night to play a mini-tour event (which he won and then donated the $20,000 winnings back to the family for charitable causes), Cole is still aware that he’s been one of the lucky ones, and he hopes his story can be an inspiration for those with whom he played on smaller tours for years.

“I’m still friends with a lot of guys that play mini-tours. I check on their scores all the time and see how they’re doing. Hopefully, they see how I’m doing and realize that it’s not that big of a difference between what they’re doing and what I’m doing now,” he said. “Hopefully, it’s kind of like maybe some light at the end of the tunnel or something to where they’re not that far from being out here and competing on the PGA Tour.

“Playing mini-tour golf and maybe some bad golf in there teaches you a lot of things about yourself and everything like that. So it’s taught me a lot. Everything I am today is probably because of a lot of those experiences.”

Meet the 39-year-old mini-tour player who qualified for her first U.S. Women’s Open in 15 years

“There’s an inner belief that you just have to deep down know that hard work will pay off.”

Jean Reynolds turns 40 in September and recently qualified for her third U.S. Women’s Open. The last time Reynolds qualified for a Women’s Open was 2009 at Saucon Valley, back when she was the top player on what’s now the Epson Tour. The 5-foot-2 Reynolds garnered plenty of attention back then when she played her way into contention.

“I really didn’t know if this would happen again,” said Reynolds, who currently holds no tour status of any kind.

Reynolds never has been a cookie-cutter player. After a strong junior career, she was recruited to play golf at the University of Georgia but quit the team after she arrived in Athens, opting for a more conventional college lifestyle. She joined a sorority, studied abroad in Austria, and quit playing competitive golf.

And then, after she graduated with a degree in Child & Family Development in December of 2007, the well-rounded Reynolds was back inside the ropes, refreshed and ready to grind.

She won twice on the developmental tour in 2009 and ultimately tied for 17th at Saucon Valley. She’d never guess that it’d take 15 years to get back to a Women’s Open.

Jean Reynolds at the 2009 U.S. Women’s Open.

Last week, Reynolds flew to Virginia for the Belle Haven Country Club qualifier in Alexandria. She birdied the last two holes of a 36-hole qualifier, draining a 25-foot putt on the 17th, to close with a 69 and co-medal with China’s Ruixin Liu at 5 under. Only two players from the qualifier advanced to the championship, held May 30-June 2 at Lancaster Country Club.

“There’s a lot of validation for me,” said Reynolds. “All the sacrifices, it was worth it. What I believed in myself and my game was true. I still can play, and I still can play with some of the tops. I’m not crazy!”

In the midst of Reynolds’ rookie season on the LPGA in 2010, a lean year for the tour, a shoulder injury popped up from seemingly out of nowhere after the British Open. She’d already played too many events, however, to qualify for a medical exemption.

In 2012, Reynolds underwent shoulder surgery and took 18 months to rehab. Because she didn’t play four years consecutively on the LPGA, she didn’t qualify for Class A status. Faced with the decision to use that degree and start at rock bottom with a real-world job, or start at rock bottom again in the pro ranks, Reynolds opted to stick with the job she loves.

It was back to the Epson Tour, where she continued the grind.

When an EF-4 tornado struck Reynolds’ beloved hometown of Newnan, Georgia, in 2021, she went back to help with the cleanup efforts and wound up with tears in her rotator cuff. It took six Platelet-Rich Plasma injections in each shoulder to keep her competitive days alive.

Reynolds still lives at home with her parents and jokingly calls them her “roomies.” The real MVP of the family, she says, is Chubb, the yellow lab named after former Georgia running back Nick Chubb.

“They allow me to do what I love to do,” said Reynolds, “and they’ve believed in me the whole time.”

Jean Reynolds poses with her beloved dog Chubb. (courtesy photo)

Last summer, Reynolds missed the cut at Stage I of LPGA Q-School, which meant she left the California desert without any Epson Tour status. She called it a sucker punch but tried to see the silver lining.

“I’ve always kind of done things a little bit different anyways,” she said.

Over the winter, Reynolds played on the NXXT mini tour, winning the NXXT Women’s Championship at Rio Pinar in Orlando.

In the lead-up to the Women’s Open, she’ll play on the Annika Women’s All Pro Tour in Texas and, hopefully, the Monday qualifier for the Mizuho Americas Open at Liberty National Golf Course in New Jersey. As a non-member professional, Reynolds will be toward the end of the line when it comes to landing a spot in the qualifying field.

With so few players 40 and over competing on the LPGA these days, Reynolds will be one of the oldest in the field at Lancaster. Reynolds says she’s in better shape now at 39 than she was at 29. She hits it about 260 yards off the tee, 10 yards farther than she did 15 years ago at her last Women’s Open appearance.

Given all that she’s been through since 2009, there’s no doubt she heads to Lancaster more grateful than ever.

“There’s an inner belief that you just have to deep down know that hard work will pay off,” she said. “You hope sooner than later.

“You have to believe it.”

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