Sunnehanna Country Club
courtesy Sunnehanna Country Club
This week will mark the 85th playing of the Sunnehanna Amateur at Sunnehanna Country Club. Over the years, many of the greatest players in golf have walked the fairways in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, including Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Ben Crenshaw, Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth and Jay Sigel.
Sunnehanna participants have gone on to win 102 major championships (divided among 48 players), including 45 since 2000. They’ve won more than 1,000 PGA Tour events. Although it has long been one of the nation’s most prestigious amateur tournaments, Sunnehanna may need to adapt in the near future, especially with the creation of PGA Tour University, said John Yerger, the tournament chairman.
“With a changing landscape, how do we make our tournament relevant to younger people who want to play?” Yerger said. “It’s really about not just preserving tournaments but making sure amateur golf remains relevant and an important part of the history of golf.”
The Sunnehanna Amateur started out as the Sunnehanna Invitational in 1936. It included a Calcutta, but gambling issues caused the Sunnehanna board to end the Calcutta in 1950. A year later, the tournament was discontinued.
In 1953, club president Charles Kunkle Jr. and other members wanted to bring championship golf back to Sunnehanna. But they wanted it to be different from other tournaments at the time, which were primarily match play. They decided on medal play.
“The 72-hole medal play format was really unheard of in amateur golf,” Yerger said. “This tournament really became a trailblazer.”
Eventually, the Sunnehanna Amateur became part of the club’s and Johnstown’s DNA.
“The tournament was a big part of the social fabric of the club,” Yerger said. “You would have great bands like Count Basie and Duke Ellington. They’d have three nights of entertainment.”
“Where we have shined is finding players other tournaments wouldn’t invite or identifying them, like Neal Shipley, J.T. Poston and J.J. Spaun.”
john Yerger
Yerger himself played in the tournament along with his brother and friends. His family moved to Johnstown in 1969 and immediately got involved in hosting tournament competitors at their house, like many others in the community did. Years later, he hosted Edward Loar, who won back-to-back in 1999 and 2000.
“He would come home, plop on the couch and take the remote control,” Yerger said. “So not only did I lose my couch for the week, I also lost my remote.”
The pair became friends, and Yerger said this is a critical aspect of the tournament.
“Hopefully they leave with great memories of the families they may have stayed with or the tournament or the golf course, really the whole experience,” Yerger said.
The club takes pride in the strong field the tournament has traditionally attracted and its work recruiting talented players who are relatively unknown.
“Where we have shined is finding players other tournaments wouldn’t invite or identifying them, like Neal Shipley, J.T. Poston and J.J. Spaun,” Yerger said.
Last year, 17-year-old Tyler Watts went from a relatively unknown junior to the youngest champion in Sunnehanna history. He’s now ranked among the top 15 amateurs in the world.
But there’s a growing list of challenges when it comes to running the tournament. One is local.
“In our case we deal with a community that was a steel town so we’ve seen an economic decline in our community,” Yerger said. “So to continue to host a tournament like this against that backdrop is difficult. I think you have a small group of very committed people who understand what the tournament means not just to the club but to our community as well.”
More pressing, however, is the changing landscape of summer amateur golf, which Yerger believes poses a danger. Some elite amateur tournaments like the Sunnehanna have decades of history but are not designated as points-earning tournaments in the PGA Tour University Accelerated program, which provides amateurs who are freshmen, sophomores or juniors in college with a pathway to the tour, thus making those tournaments less attractive to top players.
Although summer tournaments such as the Northeast Amateur, Southern Amateur and Western Amateur offer one PGA Tour University Accelerated point to their champion, Yerger suggests more summer tournaments should be designated to offer points. He also suggests the USGA could take a page from the R&A, which supports amateur golf by offering an exemption into the Open Championship for the leading performer in a series of three amateur tournaments: the St Andrews Links Trophy, the Amateur Championship and the European Amateur.
Despite the changing landscape, Sunnehanna remains a valuable training ground for players seeking to advance to the next level, Yerger said.
“If you want to get ready for the tour you have to learn how to travel,” Yerger said. “You have to learn how to play 72 holes. You have to learn how to make the cut.”
Everett Munez
