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Omar Uresti became the sixth player to win multiple PGA Professional Championships, shooting 11-under 276 to win by three strokes ahead of Frank Bensel Jr. at PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie, Florida, last Wednesday.
The tournament that features 312 club professionals from across the country who vie for 20 spots into this month’s PGA Championship had all the makings of a runaway during the first three rounds. Uresti (above), a 52-year-old former PGA Tour veteran who has made 377 starts and $3.87 million in the big leagues, set a 54-hole tournament scoring record to open up a seven-stroke lead heading to the final day.
It would not be as simple as he made it look during his third-round 65. Uresti went bogey-double bogey-bogey on Nos. 2, 3 and 4. By the time he made another bogey at No. 11, Bensel had made a 30-foot birdie putt on the 13th to cut the margin to two strokes. Bensel, the first-round leader, had trailed Uresti by 11 strokes coming into the final round.
Uresti settled himself with a birdie at the par-5 13th, but Bensel recovered from a bogey on No. 14 with back-to-back birdies to keep within striking distance. The drama ended when Bensel made a bogey on No. 18 just as Uresti birdied No. 16 to double his lead from two strokes to four.
A bogey at No. 17 trimmed Uresti’s lead to three, but it would get no closer.
“Relief, that’s the biggest thing,” said Uresti, the second-oldest winner in championship history. “I’m just very pleased to hang on. ... There are so many great names on (the Walter Hagen Cup). It’s all hard to imagine really.”
Uresti, a former All-American at the University of Texas, has taken advantage of his time competing in club professional events under the PGA Life Member classification. If a PGA Tour player competes for 20 years and pays membership dues, the Life Member status is available as long as education requirements are met and the player does not exceed 10 starts on professional tours each year. There were several former PGA Tour or Korn Ferry Tour players in the field last week, including Neal Lancaster, Jeff Brehaut, Jason Caron and Sonny Skinner.
After never qualifying for the PGA Championship while actively on the PGA Tour, Uresti has now qualified for it five times through the club pro ranks. The champion of the PGA Professional Championship also receives six exemptions into PGA Tour events.
There were 19 other players who will join Uresti at Kiawah Island for the PGA Championship. Rob Labritz and Danny Balin earned their eighth invitation into the event, and Balin will now be playing in his fourth consecutive PGA Championship. Bensel will be playing in his third PGA in as many decades (2004, 2012, 2021).
Half of the 20 PGA professionals who will tee it up at Kiawah’s Ocean Course will be making their PGA Championship debuts. Three PGA professionals who made the top 20 – Ben Cook, Tyler Collet and Brett Walker – are all representing John’s Island Club in Vero Beach, Florida.
Sean Fairholm