Tag: Shoal Creek

Howard men, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi women capture 2023 PGA Works Collegiate Championship titles

Howard, only in its third year of existence, won the tournament for the second straight year, shooting 25-under 835 to win by 57 shots.

Everett Whiten Jr. could do no wrong.

He fired a final-round 8-under 64 at Shoal Creek in Alabama to help Howard win the 2023 PGA Works Collegiate Championship men’s team title. Howard, only in its third year of existence, won the tournament for the second straight year, shooting 25-under 835 to win by 57 shots.

“I feel like if you prepare properly and you execute by trusting the process, things like this can happen,” Howard coach Sam Puryear said. “This is a byproduct of a lot of hard work, a lot of personal belief, a lot of sacrifice. We had a quick two-day turnaround from our conference championship, so there was a lot on everybody’s plate, but it worked out in our favor.”

Whiten’s teammate, Greg Oden Jr., won low medalist honors the previous two years, but Whiten took the crown this year at 14 under. Oden shot 5 under.

In the men’s individual competition, Louisville senior C.M. Mixon birdied the final hole to avoid a three-man playoff and helped him win the title, shooting 2 under.

On the women’s side, it was Texas A&M Corpus-Christi taking home the title, winning by 30 shots at Bent Brook Golf Course for its third consecutive team championship. Junior Lucie Charbonnier won the individual title with a 3-under 68 final round to finish 1 under for the championship, two shots ahead of freshman teammate Lucia Ramirez (1 over) and senior Maria Beltran (3 over). It is Charbonnier’s second consecutive PWCC title.

“I wanted to beat my teammate. She’s just a freshman and I wanted to have (the championship) back,” Charbonnier said. “I told her we’ll just have to play the best and the best wins. If I would have finished second behind her I still would have been happy.”

North Carolina Wilmington senior Phu Khine was disappointed that she couldn’t defend her first PWCC title last year. After winning in 2021, Khine had a labrum injury in her shoulder and could not play in 2022.

She returned this year and stayed within striking distance during the first two rounds. She followed the same formula in the final round, staying steady on the back nine at Shoal Creek to shoot even par.

While she did that, Alabama State’s Allycia Gan struggled, making bogeys on 11, 12 and 13 before a triple bogey on 14 sank her chances. That meant Khine’s 3-over 218 was good enough to win over Charlotte’s Kaiyuree Moodley (4 over) and Gan (7 over).

“It means a lot to me to win in general,” Khine said, “but to win the PGA WORKS, it’s for minorities and giving us the opportunity to get these people together in this event. It’s a great honor for me.”

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At the PGA Works Collegiate Championship at Shoal Creek, Doug Smith is having a full-circle moment

“I’m going to go from holding the trophy to holding the mic.”

Doug Smith got into broadcasting by accident.

He started off doing a podcast with Cheyenne Woods. That led to meeting Golf Channel’s Will Lowery. That got his foot in the door to meet plenty of golf personalities across the country.

Then, as PGA Tour Live started up with its partnership with ESPN+, Smith was approached about joining as a commentator. He eventually signed on and is a part of the broadcast team, even calling action at last week’s Mexico Open at Vidanda.

Come Monday, Smith will call an event as a past champion.

The PGA Works Collegiate Championship begins Monday at Shoal Creek in Alabama, southeast of Birmingham, and it’s a full-circle moment for Smith, who won the championship in 2005 when he played collegiately for Louisville. The championship annually hosts student-athletes enrolled in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and other Minority-Serving Educational Institutions.

“It’s wild for me,” Smith said. “I’m going to be an expert on the broadcast as a past champion. I’m going to go from holding the trophy to holding the mic.”

The PGA Works Collegiate Championship, originally named the National Minority Collegiate Championship, was created in 1986 to highlight golf programs at the most underserved and underrepresented minority-serving institutions on a national stage, and educate and inspire student-athletes to pursue career opportunities in the business of golf.

The PWCC is a 54-hole, stroke-play event contested across five divisions including: Division I Men’s Team, Division II Men’s Team, Women’s Team Division, Men’s Individual Division, and Women’s Individual Division.

The individual competition is open to all minority women and men student-athletes playing collegiate golf at the Division I, Division II, Division III, NAIA and NJCAA level, or minority women and men enrolled in one of the PGA of America’s PGA Golf Management University Programs.

And, in 2023 for the first time, Golf Channel will have TV coverage of all three days of competition.

Golf Channel and Peacock together will present all three championship rounds at Shoal Creek Club on Monday through Wednesday from 4:30-7:30 p.m. ET.

“I get to use words to paint pictures to show what this championship does to your validity as a player,” Smith said. “It’s going to be full circle. It just shows people even if you don’t make it professionally, there’s other avenues in the game.”

Having the tournament at Shoal Creek is also a big milestone, considering the club’s history.

Shoal Creek hosted the 1990 PGA Championship, and it made plenty of headlines around hosting the tournament because club founder Hall Thompson defiantly said the club would not be pressured to accept Black members.

He told a reporter: “We have the right to associate or not to associate with whomever we choose. The country club is our home, and we pick and choose who we want. I think we’ve said that we don’t discriminate in every other area except the Blacks.”

Smith said he hopes it’s a turning point for the club and the PGA of America, which sponsors the championship, not just trying to check a box and be inclusive.

“We can do one of two things: we can keep the status quo or we can work together, have uncomfortable conversations and move forward in a way that’s amicable and representative of the future that we want to be a part of,” Smith said.

“I’m hoping it’s the second part.”

Fran Charles, Smylie Kaufman, Steve Berkowski and Julia Johnson will also be on the broadcast team.

“We are very excited to have the PWCC broadcasted live on Golf Channel and Peacock this year,” Shoal Creek Club president Greg King said. “We look forward to showcasing Shoal Creek as one of the premier golf clubs in the country. More importantly, this opportunity will allow us to highlight the student-athletes, colleges and universities on a national level.”

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Golfweek’s Best 2022: Top public and private golf courses in Alabama

The Robert Trent Jones Trail takes up most of the spots for best public-access golf courses in Alabama, but the No. 1 spot is elsewhere.

The Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail grabs much of the spotlight for best courses in Alabama, and rightfully so. The Trail operates 26 courses at 11 sites across the state, and eight of the top 10 public-access courses in the Yellowhammer State are on the Trail.

But No. 1? That’s a different story.

FarmLinks at Pursell Farms in Sylacauga grabs the top spot on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for Alabama, and alongside Kiva Dunes is one of only two non-Trail courses on the list.

Constructed as a living laboratory of sorts by Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry in 2002, with various types of grasses in use around the property, FarmLinks features one of the prettiest holes in the state. The 210-yard, par-3 fifth plunges 172 feet off the side of a small mountain to a picturesque green, providing views for miles. Most of the other holes feature wide fairways with sometimes hilly terrain before descending into gently rolling landscapes.

VIDEO: Check out two idiots who didn’t know when to come in out of the freezing rain on one of the longest courses in the world.

Golfweek’s Best offers many lists of course rankings, with the list of top public-access courses among the most popular. All the courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time.

Also popular are the Golfweek’s Best rankings of top private courses in each state, and that list is likewise included below.

MORE COURSES: Best Modern | Best Classic | Top 200 Resort |
Top 200 Residential | Top 100 Best You Can Play

Full circle at Shoal Creek: An untold story of one man’s convictions changing racial inclusion at 1990 PGA Championship and golf as a whole

The convictions of one man changed the course of racial inclusion at the major in Alabama — and golf.

Pat Rielly was never afraid to stand up for the little guy.

In 1953, the 6-foot-tall junior reserve forward on the Sharon (Pennsylvania) High basketball team was on his way to play in the state regional finals in Pittsburgh when the team stopped for dinner in Zelienople, Pennsylvania, a borough north of Pittsburgh in the heart of coal and iron country. 

Rielly noticed that his three Black teammates – Charlie Shepard, Charlie Mitchell and Edward Woods – weren’t eating and sidled over to talk to them.

“I said, ‘What are guys doing? Are you saving your $5?’ ” Rielly recalled more than 60 years later. “Mitchell said, ‘They won’t serve us.’ I said, ‘Why?’ All three stared at me and said, ‘You know why.’ ” 

This sort of discrimination was illegal but still prevalent, even in southwestern Pennsylvania, and it sent Rielly into a rage. He was the eighth or ninth man on the team, a sub, but he knew right from wrong. When he approached the owner and asked politely why his teammates were being refused to be served, the owner didn’t hide his contempt. “We’re not serving any (N-word),” he said.

With the courage of his convictions, Rielly said they would not pay until the entire team was fed. The owner wouldn’t budge. Neither would Rielly.

“So, we got up and left,” Rielly said. “We stopped and got something to eat another 20 miles up the road, closer to Pittsburgh.”

To Rielly, his memory of the game, which the team won, paled in comparison to the lesson he learned that day.

“You do the right thing, and sometimes you get criticized for it,” he said. “But when you do the right thing for the right reasons, it turns out the right way always.”

Pat Rielly (pictured, back row, fourth from right) and his 1953 high school basketball team from Sharon, Pennsylvania (Courtesy of the Rielly family)

In the early 1960s, Rielly was traveling with a handful of fellow Marines. They needed a few more hours of flight time and convinced the pilot to fly to Reno, Nevada, the self-proclaimed “Biggest little city in the world,” where Las Vegas-style gambling, entertainment and dining is compressed into a few city blocks. As only Rielly could do, he placed a roulette bet not even understanding the rules and won several thousand dollars at a time when that was a lot of money. He took everyone to dinner and ordered a feast. After paying the bill, he still had a wad of cash left over, so he tipped the waiters generously, loaned some money to his pals and went into the kitchen. The employees stopped what they were doing to hear him speak.

“My mother was a dishwasher,” he said. “That’s why I was able to play golf on Mondays. This game has given me everything.”

Then he handed the dishwashers in the restaurant a stack of cash from his winnings. Most of them didn’t understand a word he said, but they shook his hand and gladly accepted the money.

These two dinner stories illustrate why Rielly was the right man at the right time to be serving as the 26th President of the PGA of America in 1990 when Shoal Creek Country Club in Birmingham, Alabama, was scheduled to host the PGA Championship, and professional golf would be forced to change its rules regarding clubs with exclusionary practices. This was uncharted territory for a golf association and a watershed moment in golf’s race relations. It demanded a leader with a dose of humility just below his confidence.

“His own personal integrity matched the integrity of the game he loved,” said Rielly’s longtime friend and former PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman.

But it wasn’t until more than 20 years later that Rielly learned just how important his role in a long-forgotten dinner played in launching an era of inclusion. Then he insisted this story wait until after he died. Now it can be told.

Video: Among tornado destruction, Alabama course that hosted U.S. Women’s Open suffers significant damage

Among the wreckage was the top private golf course in Alabama, home of the 2018 U.S. Women’s Open, which suffered major damage.

A series of horrific storms ripped through the South this week, killing five people in Alabama and one in Georgia, knocking out power, destroying homes and downing trees across the region.

Among the wreckage was the top private golf course in Alabama, according to Golfweek’s Best, Shoal Creek, home of the 2018 U.S. Women’s Open, which suffered major damage during the storm.

Shoal Creek opened in 1977 and was designed by Jack Nicklaus. Among the members at the famous club is Condoleezza Rice, the former United States Secretary of State under President George W. Bush, who joinedb back in 2009.

Just southeast of Birmingham, Shoal Creek has a history of top-tier competitions – including the 1984 and 1990 PGA Championships – and ranks No. 82 among all Golfweek’s Best Modern Courses in the U.S. built in or after 1960.

According to a story in USA Today, m ore than 20,000 people in Alabama and Georgia remained without power Friday afternoon, according to the utility tracker, PowerOutage.us. Power was also knocked out to over 180,000 customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York due to strong winds Friday.

The damage to the course, as seen in this video:

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Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued an emergency declaration for 46 counties as the severe weather approached, and officials opened shelters in and around Birmingham. She also issued a statement via Twitter late Thursday following reports of residents killed in the storms.

“Significant and dangerous weather continues to impact portions of Alabama, and I urge all folks in the path of these tornadoes and storm systems to remain on high alert,” Ivey said in a prepared statement. “Tragically, we are receiving reports of loss of life. I offer my sincerest prayers to all impacted. Unfortunately, the day is not over yet. Y’all, please stay safe and vigilant!”

In the 2018 U.S. Women’s Open, Ariya Jutanugarn took the title in a playoff over Kim Hyo-joo, needing a fourth extra hole to secure the victory.

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