For the second time this year, Stephen Keppler will compete in a Champions Tour major with very little recent tournament experience.
Beginning Thursday, Keppler will play in the U.S. Senior Open at Salem (Mass.) CC after competing a little over a month earlier in the PGA Senior Championship. It will be Keppler’s fourth start in a senior major in the last three years, as he also qualified for the PGA Senior in 2015 and the U.S. Senior Open last year.
Keppler, who played in the PGA Championship four times, including 2001 at Atlanta Athletic Club, is accustomed to playing on a big stage, but with one notable exception, has not quite played up to his expectations.
In his seven starts in majors on both the PGA and Champions Tours, Keppler has yet to make a cut, and will be looking to end that streak when he tees it up at the Donald Ross-designed Salem CC. Last year’s U.S. Senior Open was also played on a Donald Ross design, and was Keppler’s first ever appearance in a USGA event.
Keppler, the Director of Golf at Marietta CC, has plenty of experience in both PGA Tour and PGA of America events, but was unfamiliar with the USGA until last year.
In his first start in a senior major in 2015, Keppler played in the PGA Senior at French Lick Resort in Indiana, and said the tournament “did not feel a major.” The course “is out in the middle of nowhere,” he observed, and the club’s facilities were not completed in time for the tournament.
That changed last year when he played in the U.S. Senior Open at the famed Scioto CC in Columbus, Ohio.
“As soon as you stepped on the grounds, you knew it was a major,” Keppler said. The scores reflected the status of the championship, and Keppler came up three shots short of making the cut with scores of 78-72—150.
In the recent PGA Senior at a Donald Trump course in suburban Washington, D.C., Keppler said he “played awful” posting back-to-back scores of 78. He had an outside chance of making the cut after playing his first 12 holes of the second round in even par, but went 7-over for his next five holes before closing out his round with his third birdie of the day.
Keppler said he “had a great time” at the tournament, but with only a handful of competitive rounds coming into the event, was not in his best form.
The main reason Keppler has played a limited tournament schedule this year is that he is transitioning from being primarily a player (when not fulfilling his responsibilities at Marietta CC) to that of a spectator.
Keppler’s son Jonathan is a member of the golf team at Florida State, and Keppler, who also played his college golf at FSU, spent most of his son’s redshirt freshman season on the road watching him play.
“I’d rather watch Jonathan,” says Keppler, who says his reduced amount of playing time “doesn’t bother me.”
After having played five tournament rounds this year prior to the PGA Senior, Keppler managed exactly one competitive round between the PGA Senior and U.S. Senior, but it wound up being a pretty good one.
Keppler shot 5-under 67 in a U.S. Senior Open qualifier at St. Ives to earn medalist honors and earn a return trip to the No. 1 event in senior golf. Keppler bogeyed his opening hole (10), but followed with back-to-back birdies at 13 and 14 before saving par with a 15-foot putt on 17 after driving in the water. He closed out his first nine with a birdie on the par-5 18th before adding three more birdies on the front, holing a 40-footer on the par-3 fourth and reaching the par-5 seventh in two.
Whether he can maintain that level of play at the U.S. Senior Open is a mystery to Keppler.
“Who knows? I don’t play much and I don’t know what I’m going to show up with.”
The one thing Keppler does know is that father-son roles will be reversed from the recently completed college golf season. Jonathan will be on his dad’s bag for the fourth time in Keppler’s four starts in senior majors, and would probably not mind having to go 72 holes for a change.
Keppler was the Georgia PGA’s most celebrated player in the 1990s, winning four straight Player of the Year titles along with the Section Championship three times, and the Georgia Open and Match Play Championship twice each. He captured his fourth Section Championship in 2011, 21 years after winning his first, and added a victory at Berkeley Hills the next year and the Georgia PGA Senior title in 2014. But his most famous golf achievement remains a third place finish.
While he was in the midst of his run as the Georgia PGA’s most dominant player, Keppler competed in the 1995 BellSouth Classic at Atlanta Country Club against a field of PGA tour pros. Keppler had enjoyed little success in the tournament in three previous attempts, but the fourth time turned out to be the charm.
Turning in the best performance by a club pro in a PGA Tour event in decades, Keppler placed third, three shots behind Mark Calcavecchia at 14-under 274, posting an under-par score in all four rounds. Keppler shared the 54-hole lead with Jim Gallagher and did not crack under the final round pressure, closing with a 71.
Keppler was paired with Gallagher in the final round, and will be in the same group for the first two rounds at the U.S. Senior Open with Jeff Gallagher, Jim’s brother. That should be a more comfortable pairing for Keppler than he encountered at the PGA Senior, where he played the first two rounds with Scott McCarron, No. 2 on the Champions Tour money list and a two-time BellSouth Classic champion.
Also qualifying for the U.S. Senior Open was Champions Tour member Scott Parel of Augusta, who played a practice round with Keppler at the Senior PGA, and Savannah amateur Allan Small.
Keppler is not the only Georgia PGA member playing in a major championship this week. Druid Hills assistant pro Karen Paolozzi will be playing in her third straight Women’s PGA Championship, one of the majors for the LPGA Tour.
Paolozzi has finished as runner-up each of the last three years in the LPGA Teaching and Club Pro Championship, earning her a spot in the PGA Women’s Championship after all three. Like Keppler, Paolozzi has yet to make the cut in her major appearances, but managed to finish ahead of Michelle Wie last year.
This week’s Women’s PGA Championship is being played at Olympia Fields outside Chicago, the host course for the 2003 U.S. Open.
In addition to qualifying for one of the top tournaments in women’s golf, Paolozzi has also made several appearances in national PGA of America events, competing against almost all-male fields. Paolozzi has qualified for both the club professional and assistants’ championships.
Paolozzi posted the highest finish ever for a female competing in a national PGA event last year, tying for seventh in the PGA Professional Championship. She qualified for the event for a third time this year, tying for 46th in the recent club pro championship in Oregon.
In 2015, Paolozzi became the first female to win a Georgia PGA event against a male field, winning the Section’s qualifier for the national club pro championship, which led to her top 10 finish at nationals the next year.
Paolozzi also won the 2014 Georgia Women’s Open and will be shooting for her second victory in the event in July at Pinetree CC.