It happens annually at this time of year. You can almost set your clock by it. The anti-amateur reinstatement crowd gets its dander up and says that former professional golfers who have been reinstated have an unfair advantage at the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship.
The angst was fueled this year by the fact that seven of the eight quarterfinalists had been reinstated. In fact, the winner and the runner-up were both reinstated amateurs.
While I have enduring respect and admiration for career amateurs, I firmly reject this line of reasoning. Let me explain why.
Over many years, I have counseled young men and women who were contemplating turning professional. Typically, these were youngsters who grew up playing competitive golf on the American Junior Golf Association circuit and landed scholarship money for college. They played college golf but were not standouts. However, they had enough talent to meet this fork in the road where they had a career decision to make.
Without exception, I have told them that they must turn pro. They need to find out if they can play for a living. They have had this dream since they were in high school, and they need to go find out if they can realize it. The worst thing, in my mind, would be for these individuals to wonder at the age of 40, what if?
Should these people be denied an opportunity to do what they have done for most of their life: compete on a golf course? I don’t think so.
The reality is that few really make it as a professional. Most find out that their elevated skill level is just not enough to make a living. Some come to find that they don’t like the lifestyle. Others might run out of financial resources and have the decision to pursue a different career forced on them. And some might even come to understand that they can use golf in another walk of life to benefit their career.
Should these people be denied an opportunity to do what they have done for most of their life: compete on a golf course?
I don’t think so.
The USGA has a policy that allows for former professionals to gain reinstatement after a suitable waiting period. However, it’s a bit of a black box with little transparency. Applications for reinstatement are handled on a case-by-case basis, as they should be. After all, a guy who played mini-tour golf for a few years after college is different from someone who played on the Korn Ferry Tour for a year or two.
It might help if the USGA publicized some real-world examples as guidelines. This player played X number of state opens as a pro and had to wait for X months/years to earn reinstatement. This guy earned a Korn Ferry Tour card once and earned X dollars and had an X-year cooling off period. This other player played Korn Ferry for several years, made X cuts and had to wait X years to gain reinstatement.
Consider the Dillard Pruitt situation. A talented player at Clemson University, Pruitt played on the PGA Tour from 1988 to 1996. During that time, he won once and earned almost $1.2 million. His highest finish on the money list was 63rd in 1991, when he won less than $275,000.
Pruitt quit playing professionally, became a PGA Tour rules official and was reinstated in 2001. In the following year, he won the Sunnehanna Amateur and the Canadian Amateur. His reward: scorn. He was treated as a pariah in amateur golf circles, and so he quit competing.
Should his waiting period have extended longer? Quite likely. But should he have been chased away from the amateur game altogether? No.
Those who are absolutists on reinstatement should consider this: somewhere around 60 percent of the U.S. Mid-Amateur field was reinstated. Without a path to reinstatement, there might not be a U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship.
Think I am wrong with that assertion? Google the 2025 British Mid-Amateur champion. It will come up empty. That event hasn’t been played since 2007. Reinstatement across the pond is available, but few former professional players pursue it. Instead, they quit the game altogether.
That is as undesirable an outcome as Dillard Pruitt’s. Long live amateur reinstatement.
E-MAIL JIM
Top: Justin Hueber, a quarterfinalist at this year’s U.S. Mid-Amateur, is a reinstated amateur who last played as a pro in 2021 after 87 Korn Ferry Tour starts.
STEVE GIBBONS, USG