19 different winners in event the last 19 years
The Yamaha Atlanta Open will be played this month at St. Ives Country Club in Johns Creek, and if the tournament’s recent history is any indication, a player who has never won the tournament will come away with the 2016 title.
Over the past 19 years, the tournament has had 19 different winners, with Atlantan Matt Russell winning back-to-back in 1996 and ‘97. Russell, a former Berry College golf team member, won as an amateur in ’96 at the Golf Club of Georgia and repeated the next year at Cherokee Town & Country Club, that time as a professional.
Since Russell’s victory in 1997, a different player has won the tournament every year. Since 1980, only three golfers have won the Atlanta Open twice, with all three first winning as an amateur and later as a professional.
Jon Hough won after completing his college career at Auburn in 1987 and repeated the next year as a rookie tour pro, eventually making it to what is now the Web.com Tour before joining the club professional ranks. Hough has been the head pro at several metro Atlanta golf clubs, and currently serves in that capacity at Bridge Mill.
Moultrie’s Kevin Blanton was a collegiate golfer when he won the 1994 Atlanta Open at the Legends at Chateau Elan, and won again at the Legends in 2001 during his years as a mini-tour pro. Blanton has remained in the state as a representative for Augusta-based golf car company E-Z-GO.
Of the 19 most recent champions, about half of them remain competitive players in the Georgia PGA, with one of the amateur winners since Russell’s back-to-back victories particularly pleased about the site of this year’s tournament.
Bob Royak, a member at St. Ives, won the Atlanta Open at the nearby Standard Club in 2007, and has three finishes of seventh or better since, including a tie for fifth last year at White Columns.
Georgia PGA members who have won the Atlanta Open since 1997 include James Mason (2000, White Columns), Phil Taylor (’02, GC of Georgia), Greg Lee (’03, Marietta CC). Shawn Koch (’06, Dunwoody CC), Tim Weinhart (’09, Heron Bay), Craig Stevens (’11, the Frog), Seth McCain (’12, Chattahoochee GC), Hank Smith (’14, Atlanta National) and defending champion Sonny Skinner (White Columns).
Weinhart, an 8-time Georgia PGA Player of the Year, is very familiar with St. Ives, which hosts an annual pro-am but has not been the site of many Georgia PGA/GSGA events since it debuted in the late 1980s. Weinhart, the Director of Instruction at Heritage Golf Links, worked for a number of years at River Pines and the Standard Club, both a short distance from St. Ives.
Skinner, Stevens and Mason are part of the Georgia PGA’s outstanding group of over-50 members, with all three remaining very competitive against their younger competitors. Mason won last year’s Georgia PGA Championship at Sea Island GC at the age of 64, and both Stevens and Skinner have earned Player of the Year honors since they turned 50, with Stevens going back-to-back in 2012 and ’13. Skinner, the head pro at Spring Hill in Tifton, claimed that honor in 2014.
Skinner shot 9-under 135 at White Columns to win by one over Bradley Smith, who has since left his job as an instructor at Eagle’s Landing to resume his playing career. Skinner, who played the PGA and Web.com Tours for 15 years before becoming a Georgia PGA member in 2006, was fourth or better in the Atlanta Open from 2006-08, did not have another top 10 in the tournament until 2014, when he tied for seventh.
Mason played the Champions Tour for more than a decade after winning the Atlanta Open in 2000 and losing a playoff to Blanton the next year, returning to the event in 2012 when he lost to McCain in a playoff. Mason tied for seventh last year.
Stevens, an instructor at Brookstone G&CC, has 11 top-10 finishes in the tournament since 1995, including a tie for second in 2004 at Pinetree. But he hasn’t placed higher than seventh since then apart from his victory in 2011.
From 2000 to 2010, Weinhart had a win, three runner-up finishes and a third, losing in playoffs to Mason in 2000 and Taylor in 2002. He made three straight runs at victory from 2008 to 2010, placing third, first and second, the latter time by a shot to UGA head pro Matt Peterson in ’08 at Newnan CC.
There is a lengthy list of players who could make it 20 different winners in 20 years, including six Georgia PGA members who placed in the top 10 last year.
Topping that group is Marietta CC Director of Golf Stephen Keppler, who has won the Section’s other three majors a total of eight times, but is still looking for his first Atlanta Open title. Keppler has a pair of runner-up finishes 20 years apart, finishing two behind Blanton in ’94 and losing a playoff to college golfer Cory Griffin in the rain-shortened tournament in 2013 at Polo G&CC. Keppler also came close the year before that, finishing one shot out of a three-way playoff at Chattahoochee GC.
Kyle Owen, Chris Nicol, Todd Ormsby and David Potts all have collected Georgia PGA victories, as well as contending in the Atlanta Open in recent years.
Owen, the head pro at Dunwoody CC, won at Chicopee Woods in 2014, and has a pair of top-4 finishes in the Atlanta Open, including a tie for third last year. Nicol, an assistant at River Pines and a two-time Georgia PGA winner, has four finishes of seventh or better in the Atlanta Open since 2009, including a pair of ties for third and a tie for fifth last year.
Highland CC head pro Todd Ormsby won the 2013 Georgia PGA PNC and has placed fifth and 10th in the Atlanta Open the last two years. Potts, an instructor at CC of the South, won a pair of Georgia PGA events in 2012 when he recorded one of his three top-four finishes in the Atlanta Open since 2009, the most recent in 2014.
A new name in the field is veteran tour player Paul Claxton, who recently was named Director of Golf at Hawk’s Point in his home town of Vidalia. Claxton played four years on the PGA Tour and 16 on the Web.com Tour from 1995-2014, and was the first Web.com player with $1 million in career earnings, winning twice on the tour. Claxton, who played his college golf at Georgia, won the Georgia Amateur shortly after graduating in 1992.
Amateurs have won three of the last nine Atlanta Opens, beginning with Royak in 2007. Dave Womack, a former U.S. Mid-Amateur champion, won on his home course at Georgia National in 2010, with Griffin, a member of the Armstrong Atlantic golf team at the time, winning in a playoff over Keppler in 2013. Royak and Griffin are in the field this month.
Billy Jack, the head pro at St. Ives, said the course will favor players who hit “a straight ball off the tee and precision irons,” envisioning a winning in the 6 to 8-under range.
Jack says St. Ives “is reasonably open off the tee, but there are a few tight holes. If you get on the wrong side of the greens complexes, you won’t get up and down easily.”
St. Ives is one of a number of standout Tom Fazio designs in the state, and Jack said the course is a fairly typical Fazio design in the mold of White Columns, Eagle’s Landing, the Frog and Capital City-Crabapple.
Jack says there are “a handful of long, hard par 4s and a handful of short 4s. The par 3s are pretty strong – 11 and 15 are both carries over water. Three of the par 5s are reachable, the other is not.”
St. Ives has a decent number of hazards in play, especially on the back nine, with Jack pointing out that the trouble “is mostly off the tee” apart from the back nine par 3s.
The course opened in the late 1980s, and was renovated in 2013, with the green surfaces changed to Mini-Verde Bermuda.