In following the amateur game in America, as I have for a very long time, I occasionally see a meteor, a flash of brilliant performance that comes out of nowhere and causes me to wonder, Where did that come from?
I had such an experience last week. Arizona’s Chris Kamin won again, this time by defending his 2022 Arizona Stroke Play Championship.
Who, I wondered, is Chris Kamin, and where did he come from?
Consider what he accomplished in 2022. Kamin (pronounced KAY-min) began the year with a whopping nine-shot win at the Arizona Stroke Play, his first time winning that title. He would go on to win the Arizona Northern Amateur title, the Players Cup and the Arizona Mid-Amateur. That enabled him to make the Arizona team at the Pacific Coast Amateur, and he also qualified for the Arizona versus Utah team match and the Goldwater Cup Matches. He was medalist at his qualifiers for the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Mid-Amateur.
And if that weren’t enough, he teamed with close pal Dan Licursi to win the John R. Williams Four-Ball last fall at Oak Hill Country Club in Pittsford, New York, site of the PGA Championship in two weeks.
Whew.
Suffice it to say he was the state men’s player of the year, and he also received the prestigious Mayfair Trophy, awarded to the man with the lowest weighted scoring average on the season in Arizona. Kamin, 48, dominated the Arizona amateur scene in a state with very deep talent, much of it half of his age.
After a brief rest, Kamin began 2023 with no loss of momentum. He won the Arizona Golf Association Championship in March. And last weekend, he posted a mere six-shot win, three fewer than last year, to defend that state stroke-play title.
He has won six of his past seven AGA tournaments, five of which were state majors.
So, what’s the back story? It’s one you have heard before. Man falls in love with golf, falls out of love with golf, and then rediscovers golf and learns to love it more than he ever did before.
Born in suburban Chicago, Kamin worked as a youngster at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club on the city’s southwest side. He fell in love with the game for the first time, and it came easily to him. But baseball was his first love, and he enrolled at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, to play ball. He was invited to join a short-handed golf team, and soon thereafter golf replaced baseball as his first love.
Upon graduation, Kamin got an office job, but golf was always on his mind. He decided to give up the office gig, and in the fall of 1996, he drove to Arizona and began to play professionally. He started at the bottom, the mini-tour circuit, and without the benefit of formal instruction, he just began to figure it out. He got progressively better each year, climbing the ladder, playing in Canada and Asia, to the point at which he gained Nationwide Tour status in 2005.
By his own admission, he wasn’t very good, but he was making decent money for a guy without a PGA Tour card. Gradually, he realized that the dream wasn’t going to happen, and he found himself in a bad place mentally. During a late 2012 trip to Asia, he broke down in his hotel room. “I’m done,” he told his wife, Amy, by phone. “I quit.” He walked away from the game and got a job in the insurance business.
Kamin found respite in golf. ... he found that golf could be fun. “I was a kid again,” he told me, playing the game for fun and not for a paycheck.
He went through the mechanics of amateur reinstatement, which was granted in 2017, and he began to dabble in the game a bit, but with little excitement. He qualified for the 2018 U.S. Mid-Amateur, but knee surgery in 2019 derailed any thoughts of a full comeback.
And then COVID hit in 2020, and like so many others, Kamin found respite in golf. He played in a few state events, and he found that golf could be fun. “I was a kid again,” he told me, playing the game for fun and not for a paycheck.
In 2021, Kamin got his juices flowing again when he made the first of two consecutive U.S. Amateur appearances, with his father alongside at Oakmont. He set a goal: he wanted to win state player of the year in 2022. You read how that turned out.
Turning 49 this summer, Kamin has discovered the world of mid-amateur golf, a world about which he knew nothing as recently as five years ago. Now he is playing against the college boys at the Trans-Miss Amateur and the Pacific Coast Amateur while wondering whether he will ever see the Coleman Invitational, the George Thomas Invitational or the Crump Cup.
His next goal: to get inside the top 40 mid-amateurs in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, which means an exemption into the U.S. Mid-Amateur at Sleepy Hollow in Scarsdale, New York, in September.
For Kamin, getting an exemption into a USGA event (which anyone can attempt) and not having to qualify is the highest honor. Among mid-ams in the WAGR, he ranks 24th (he’s No. 340 overall) after winning the Arizona Stroke Play and is in good position to earn the exemption.
I am pulling for him. And I am not betting against him.
E-MAIL JIM
Top: Chris Kamin
COURTESY Arizona Golf Association