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Bringing home the hardware
Regan flexes his muscles in the final round to win the 2007 GCSAA National Championship.
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At a very early age, Jason Regan knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. Or, more accurately, what he probably wasn’t going to be when he grew up.
A junior golfer of some ability during his formative years in the small Alabama town of Tuscumbia, Regan often shared road trips to junior golf events all across the southeast with Stewart, a boyhood pal two years his junior. One week, Regan’s family would handle the driving. The next, Stewart’s mom would climb behind the wheel.
The one constant to those trips was the extra passenger they would almost always haul back home after those tournaments — trophies. Lots and lots of trophies. And unfortunately for Regan, the name on those trophies was very rarely his own.
“We’d go to tournaments together, but he was always the one bringing home the trophies,” Regan says.
Those performances were a sign of things to come for Stewart Cink — yes, that Stewart Cink — who has gone on to win four PGA Tour events, almost $19 million in prize money and has been a member of three Ryder Cup teams. They were also a sign for Regan, who eventually shifted his attention to the management side of golf, an art he currently practices as the superintendent at Selma (Ala.) Country Club.
“I figured out pretty early the order of things,” Regan says of those junior golf experiences. “It didn’t take me long to realize those guys who play the Tour have a pretty special talent.”
But following the events of the third week of February in Palm Springs, Calif., Regan now has something Cink will never have (barring an unexpected career change) — a victory in the GCSAA National Championship.
In a final round that featured as many ups and downs as some of the rides at nearby Disneyland, Regan overcame a four-stroke deficit, then weathered a furious late charge by longtime tournament bridesmaid Paul Jett, CGCS, to post a two-shot victory at the Pete Dye Challenge Course at Mission Hills Country Club and add his name to a trophy he could finally call his own.
A desert lifestyle
Regan wasn’t the only one to leave Palm Springs with a smile on his face. While much of the rest of the country was bundling up to ward off the chill from a major winter blast, the desert was playing the perfect host to participants in the GCSAA National Championship and Golf Classic, which was presented in partnership with The Toro Co. for the 13th consecutive year. There was nary a cloud in the sky all week, and temperatures routinely reached the mid-80s during the three days of tournament action.
All told, 505 players traveled to California from all over the United States and Canada to take part in the tournament. Of those, 323 played in the popular four-ball event that preceded action in the Golf Classic.
Five Palm Springs courses welcomed GCSAA during one of the busiest times of the year in the desert. In addition to the layout at Mission Hills CC that was the site of the National Championship, the Pete Dye Resort and Gary Player Signature courses at the Westin Mission Hills Resort (the headquarter hotel for the week), and the North and South courses at the Golf Club at Terra Lago hosted tournament action.
Slow and steady
Two years into a new format for the National Championship (54 holes played on the same course vs. 36 holes on two different layouts each day), this much has become clear about the competition — going wire-to-wire will prove to be a very formidable challenge. With six full rounds of play in the books, the tournament has had a different person in the lead at the end of each of those rounds.
In Palm Springs, two golfers moved to the front after the first round with even-par scores of 72 — 1998 champion Alan Pondel, CGCS at Rockford (Ill.) Country Club and Jeffrey Whitmire, CGCS at Williamsburg (Va.) Country Club. Both of those players found round two a bit more trying, as Pondel shot an 82 and Whitmire an 84 to fall well off the pace.
That left the second round in the hands of Jett, who has clearly become the sentimental favorite to win the event after enduring four previous runner-up finishes prior to this year. He certainly put himself in a good position to do just that with the best round of the week, a 2-under-par 70, which put him three shots clear of the rest of the field heading into the final round. His closest competitor was David Kohley, the superintendent at Silver Lake Country Club in Lockport, Ill., who was at 147 through two rounds.
Meanwhile, Regan was quietly keeping himself in the mix. He opened the tournament with a 76, then fired an even-par 72 in round two, which left him four behind Jett and in the next-to-last group in the final round.
It was a comfortable position for Regan, who had played several practice rounds at Mission Hills in addition to the two rounds of tournament play and knew the tight, hazard-heavy course would require a steady, consistent hand each and every round.
“That was a golf course where if you hit one bad drive, you were probably looking at double bogey,” he says. “There was just so much water everywhere and hazards. I was hitting my driver and my 3-wood pretty well, had a pretty good feel for the layout and figured if I could keep it in play, I’d be OK.
“I knew I would have a bad hole here and there, but I figured everyone else would too. Just keep it in play and you would have a chance.”
Finding the right path
When it comes to his career, Regan has employed a very similar strategy to the one he put into motion in the GCSAA National Championship. “Steady” and “consistent” have been his watch words. They go a long way in explaining why he remains at the same course that offered him his very first shot as a head superintendent nine years ago, after serving less than a year as a second assistant at Valley Hill Country Club in Huntsville, Ala.
“I felt like (Selma CC) was a good opportunity for me,” Regan says simply. “I’ve had to learn some things the hard way, but it’s been nine years now and everything has worked out great.”
The steadiness that has ruled his professional life for the last decade or so stands in contrast to the varied path that took him to this point in his life. After beginning his post-secondary education with two years at Northwest-Shoals Community College in Phil Campbell, Ala., he headed just a few miles down the road to the University of North Alabama, where his golf career ascended from preferred walk-on status to a spot on the all-conference team by the end of the year.
His career goals, however, weren’t as clear cut at that point. “I realized playing golf for a career just wasn’t going to happen for me,” Regan says. “But I knew that if I could just get on a golf course, I knew I’d be happy.”
Backed up by a summer of experience on the maintenance staff at Florence Country Club, where his family held a membership, Regan began to target golf course maintenance as his future career. He left UNA to tackle a two-year degree in recreational grounds management at Catawba Valley Junior College in Hickory, N.C., then finished off his bachelor’s at the University of Tennessee, earning a degree in ornamental horticulture and landscape design.
A rough start …
Regan has contended in the GCSAA National Championship before — he’d been in the final group on the final day on two previous occasions — so he spoke from experience when he told anyone who would listen heading into the final round that he was comfortable with his view of the leaders from the next-to-last group.
“In that final group, there is a little more pressure,” Regan says. “Leading a tournament is a lot different than chasing those leaders. I didn’t put pressure on myself in that final round to shoot a real low number. I didn’t feel like I needed to shoot a 68 or 69 in order to win. I just wanted to go out and play my game, be consistent and wait to see what happened.”
What happened at first wasn’t good, at least for Regan, as he bogeyed two of the first three holes he played. When Jett played those same three holes in 1-under-par (he birdied the par-4 opening hole), the gap between the two players was a seemingly insurmountable seven shots with just 15 holes left.
But just as quickly as people could write off anyone not in the last group, the dynamics of the final round changed. Jett, so strong through the first three holes, began to stumble. He bogeyed 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 and limped into the turn at 4-over-par on the day. Regan, who must have thought his chances of winning were gone after his first three holes, caught fire. He birdied 4, 5 and 9, surged into the turn at 1-under-par and, remarkably, held a one-shot lead with just nine to go.
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Regan remains at the first course to offer him a position as a head superintendent — Selma (Ala.) CC. “I felt like it was a good opportunity for me. I’ve had to learn some things the hard way … but everything has worked out great.” |
And a wild finish
The first few holes on the back nine were about as eventful as the front nine for both Regan and Jett. Regan bogeyed 10 and 13, and Jett posted a double-bogey 5 on the par-3 12th when his tee shot drifted right into the water that guarded that side of the green. With five holes to play, Regan still led by one.
By now, Regan knew something he didn’t when he made the turn — he was the leader. Because the GCSAA National Championship doesn’t have the luxury of digital scoreboards and standard-bearers like you’ll find on the PGA Tour, competitors usually have little idea where they stand on the overall leaderboard. Tournament staffers and rules officials who are following the action attempt to keep tabs on the front-runners and will pass that information on when asked, but that’s about the best players can hope for.
Regan found out he was in the lead on the 13th tee. “It shocked me a little bit,” he admitted. “And then I went out and bogeyed 13 right after that. Obviously, not what I wanted to do.”
But the shock of holding the lead and bogeying 13 wore off quickly.
Regan bore down and extended his lead with back-to-back birdies at 15 and 16. He parred both 17 and 18, signed for his 1-under-par 71 and then returned to the 18th green to see whether that would be good enough for the title.
It was, but just barely. An energized Jett made a furious run over the final three holes, starting with an aggressive birdie on the par-5 16th. He followed that by draining a 15-foot putt for birdie on the par-3 17th, and went to the par-4 18th knowing that a third straight birdie would put him into a playoff.
A picture-perfect drive and an equally pretty second shot left Jett with a chance to do just that. But the putt from about 17 feet out slid just right of the hole, eliciting a frustrated reaction from Jett, who knew another shot at a title had evaporated, and a sigh of relief from Regan, who now knew his first GCSAA National Championship was in the bag.
“For me, this (tournament) is the top of the line,” Regan says. “This has always been a goal since I first played in the event. I’ve been able to play with guys who have had a lot of success in this tournament in the past, and I knew I could play with them. It was always just a matter of if I could string together a couple of good days of golf.
“It has definitely been a goal of mine to win this tournament, so I’m tickled that I actually did and I’m still in a little bit of shock that I won it.”
Florida tops chapter race
Robert Harper from The Club at Emerald Hills in Hollywood, Fla., finished in a second-place tie with Jett in the National Championship, a performance that propelled the Florida GCSA team to a victory in the gross division of the chapter team competition. Harper teamed with Stephen Fox from the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo; 2005 tournament champion Seth Strickland from Miami Shores Country Club in Miami Beach; and Jim Torba from Wilderness Country Club in Naples.
In the net division, a team from the Midwest Association of GCS captured the top prize. Team members were: Edward Fischer, CGCS at the Old Elm Club in Highland Park, Ill.; Brad Johnson from Canterbury Green Country Club in Fort Wayne, Ind.; Paul Schaefer, CGCS at Prairie Isle Golf Course in Prairie Grove, Ill.; and Steve Van Acker, CGCS at Crystal Lake (Ill.) Country Club.
In 2008, the GCSAA National Championship and Golf Classic returns to one of its most popular locales, Orlando. The tournament is scheduled Jan. 27-29, 2008.
2007 GCSAA Golf Champions
National Championship
Overall: Jason Regan, Selma (Ala.) CC, 76-72-71—219
Runners-up: Paul Jett, CGCS, Pinehurst (N.C.) No. 2, 74-70-77—221;
Robert Harper, The Club at Emerald Hills, Hollywood, Fla., 76-72-73—221.
Golf Classic
First Flight
Gross and Net: Douglas Lowe, CGCS, Greensboro (N.C.) CC
Second Flight
Gross: John Pina, La Rinconda CC, Los Gatos, Calif.
Net: Rafael Martinez, Via Verde CC, San Dimas, Calif.
Third Flight
Gross and Net: Scott Miller, CGCS, Maroon Creek GC, Aspen, Colo.
Fourth Flight
Gross and Net: James Curlee, CGCS, Corpus Christi (Texas) CC
Fifth Flight
Gross: Sanford Queen, CGCS, City of Overland Park (Kan.)
Net: Steve Van Acker, CGCS, Crystal Lake (Ill.) CC
Sixth Flight
Gross: David Stone, The Honors Course, Chattanooga, Tenn.
Net: Scott Frase, CGCS, Congress Lake Club, Hartville, Ohio
Senior I Flight
Gross and Net: Greg Hall, Fairwood G&CC, Renton, Wash.
Senior II Flight
Gross: Edward Fischer, CGCS, Old Elm Club, Highland Park, Ill.
Net: Edward Walsh, CGCS, Shelter Harbor GC, Charleston, R.I.
Super Senior Flight
Gross: Howard Fisher Jr., retired, Gualala, Calif.
Net: Edward Mena, retired, Joliet, Ill.
Affiliate Flight
Gross: J. Andrew Drohen, Agrium Advanced Technologies, Sylacauga, Ala.
Net: Michael Williams, A&A Sheet Metal, LaPorte, Ind.
Chapter Team Competition
Gross Division
Florida GCSA: Stephen Fox Jr., Ocean Reef Club, Key Largo; Robert Harper, The Club at Emerald Hills, Hollywood; Seth Strickland, Miami Shores CC, Miami; Jim Torba, Wilderness CC, Naples.
Net Division
Midwest Association of GCS: Edward Fischer, CGCS, Old Elm Club, Highland Park, Ill.; Brad Johnson, Canterbury Green CC, Fort Wayne, Ind.; Paul Schaefer, CGCS, Prairie Isle GC, Prairie Grove, Ill.; Steve Van Acker, CGCS, Crystal Lake (Ill.) CC.
Four-Ball Competition
Net I Division
Jason Green, San Jose (Calif.) CC and William Herbert, Montecito CC, Santa Barbara, Calif.
Net II Division
Ernie Miller, Recreation Centers of Sun City West (Ariz.) and Scott Axon, CGCS, Happy Hollow Club, Omaha, Neb.
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