During his almost two decades of being a member of the Georgia PGA, Tim Weinhart has 13 career victories in points events, including all four of the Section’s majors and three wins in an event with near-major status.
But the last of Weinhart’s Section victories came in 2012 when he won the Match Play Championship and the Section’s qualifier for the PGA Professional National Championship for the third and fourth time respectively.
Although he was unable to add to his list of Section victories in any of the last three years, it wasn’t for lack of opportunities. Weinhart had a pair of runner-up finishes in 2013 and a second, third and fourth place showings last year. He finished both years second on the Georgia PGA’s points list after claiming the top spot in the standings seven times in 10 years from 2002 to 2011.
Weinhart shared the Georgia PGA record for Player of the Year honors with Gregg Wolff since claiming the award for a seventh time in 2011, but was unable to break the tie with Wolff in the three subsequent years.
Despite a third straight winless season, Weinhart captured his eighth Player of the Year award in 2015, turning in an exceptionally consistent string of performances to easily outdistance his closest pursuers. Weinhart held such a comfortable lead that he would have placed first on the points list even if he did not play in the final Georgia PGA event of the year and the player closest to him in the standings had won.
Weinhart ended the year with 6800 points, more than 2000 ahead of runner-up Mark Anderson. James Mason was third and Sonny Skinner fourth, with both winning multiple Player of the Year honors previously. All three won a Georgia PGA major in 2015, but could not match the consistent success Weinhart enjoyed during the year.
In 2015, Weinhart finished second or third in five of the seven points events, but twice came away with first place points. He tied for second in the season-opening Rivermont Championship, receiving first place points because the tournament winner has not yet achieved Class A PGA status and is not eligible to compete for Player of the Year honors.
Weinhart was third in the Georgia PGA event at Berkeley Hills, but again received first place points, as the top two finishers were amateurs. After a disappointing final round in the Atlanta Open, the first of the Georgia PGA’s majors, Weinhart reached the semifinals of the Match Play Championship, was second in the Section Championship and took third in the recent Georgia PGA qualifier for the PGA Professional National Championship.
“I played solid golf all year round,” Weinhart said after his third place finish in the Georgia PGA PNC at Dunwoody Country Club. Weinhart won the Section award for low scoring average (71.3) for a fifth time, with the honor particularly meaningful for Weinhart because the award is named for Wolff, who Weinhart describes as “probably the nicest man I know. If I aspired to be like anyone, I would want to be like him.”
Wolff was the Georgia PGA’s Player of the Year seven times in an 8-year span from 1984-91, with Stephen Keppler earning the honor four straight years from 1993-96 and both Mason and Craig Stevens winning three times each since then. Weinhart matched Wolff and Keppler with four titles in a row from 2002-05 and won three straight from 2009-11.
Early in his career in the Georgia PGA, Weinhart endured a succession of near misses, losing five times in playoffs, four of them in majors between 2000 and 2003. He scored his first win in the 2004 Georgia Open, one of only two Section members to win that event over the past 20 years. He won three times the next year, including the Match Play and Section Championships, scored the first of his four wins in the Georgia PGA PNC in ’06, and after several near-misses, won the Atlanta Open in ’09 to complete the Section Grand Slam.
Weinhart won the Georgia PGA PNC three times in four years between 2006 and ’09, and played well enough in the event to qualify the national club professional championship 15 consecutive years beginning in 1999, when he tied for second in the Section qualifier.
But his string was broken last year, and Weinhart was determined not to let that happen again.
“That was a very strong motivating factor,” he said with a broad grin, an unspoken testament to how much missing the PNC earlier this year hurt him.
Weinhart effectively locked up one of seven qualifying spots in the PNC for Georgia PGA members the first day of the 36-hole event at Dunwoody Country Club with a 4-under 68 he said could have been “six, seven, eight or nine-under. I hit 17 greens and had a lot of great looks, but I didn’t make anything. I played exceptionally well other than one swing. But my putter was unusually cold.”
Four birdies in a 6-hole stretch starting at the seventh put Weinhart in position for a possible score in the mid 60s, but his lone missed green at the 16th resulted in a double bogey. He rallied with an eagle at the par-5 18th for a 68 to put him in second after the first round, two behind eventual winner Karen Paolozzi.
Weinhart said he was “only focused on winning today,” but managed just one birdie and settled for a 74 to finish third at 142, four behind the winning total.
His third place finish capped a year that Weinhart said was surprisingly good “considering how much I was teaching. My practice time was about non-existent.”
After teaching at the Standard Club in recent years, Weinhart gave his last lesson at the club the morning before he teed off in the final round of the PNC qualifier, and began his new job as the Director of Instruction at Heritage Golf Links the next day.
Weinhart has taught at several clubs on Atlanta’s north side, but says this will be “the first time I’ve been in charge.” He will be working with Heritage head pro Scott Curiel, who formerly held that position at the Standard Club.
Next year’s PGA PNC will be the 17th for Weinhart, who has made it to the PGA Championship five times. One of those years came when he played in the PNC at Turning Stone Resort in upstate New York, about an hour from where he grew up in Rochester.
Weinhart got the last qualifying spot at Turning Stone for the 2006 PGA Championship, the second straight year he survived a large playoff for the final spot in the PGA field. He also has three top 10s in the PGA PNC, and will be looking for a sixth next June.
“That will be cool,” he said of the prospect of playing in front of family members. “I get to go back home.”