Diverse group of Utahns will play in the Utah Championship, without fans

While playing two rounds of a Korn Ferry Tour event in Florida last week, former BYU golfer Patrick Fishburn barely noticed that spectators were missing. He will sense the fans’ absence far more in Farmington.

The nature of professional golf in the COVID-19 world will “really sink in for me,” Fishburn said, when he tees off Thursday morning at Oakridge Country Club in the Utah Championship presented by Zions Bank.

No spectators are being allowed into the venues of PGA Tour-sanctioned events. That’s part of an effort to protect the golfers, along with provisions that include a charter flight from Florida to Utah, recommended hotels, testing for players and caddies and screening for anyone entering the property.

“It’s definitely kind of a weird atmosphere,” Fishburn said.

The irony is that for most of three decades, the Utah Championship attracted hardly any fans in Provo, Sandy, Lehi or Farmington — until the past two years, when Fishburn’s Ogden-based following and Daniel Summerhays’ Davis County supporters created genuine galleries.

This week, other than maybe getting glimpses through the chain-link fences on Shepard Lane or from BYU golfer Cole Ponich’s parents’ home along Oakridge’s No. 2 fairway (No. 11 for tournament play), fans will have to be content with two hours of Golf Channel live coverage each afternoon.

Summerhays will play the first two rounds in a threesome of golfers who spent significant portions of their childhoods in Farmington. He’ll join the two amateurs in the field: his nephew, 17-year-old Preston Summerhays, and Ponich, a Davis High School graduate. The pairing is not completely random nor hand-picked. Sponsor-exempt players, such as the Summerhayses, are aligned with Monday qualifiers, including Ponich, who posted a 63 at TalonsCove in Saratoga Springs.

Daniel Summerhays hopes to play through the weekend at Oakridge, before phasing into a new career as a Davis High golf coach and part-time teacher at age 36. He has earned nearly $10 million in 13 seasons of pro golf, between the Korn Ferry and PGA Tours, but lost most of his access to tournaments after a disappointing 2019 season — even while creating a local stir by contending at Oakridge, where he finished sixth.

“I’ve got four kids and they’re getting older and requiring more, and I want to be part of that,” Summerhays told Fairways Media.

So he’s among a diverse group of five Utahns of ages 17-50 in the Utah Championship field, all at varying career stages.

Preston Summerhays, a high school senior who has committed to Arizona State, is the reigning U.S. Junior Amateur winner and two-time defending champion of the State Amateur. He shot 73-71 at Oakridge last summer, missing the 36-hole cut by two strokes and coming away believing he could compete at that level.

Ponich, a BYU sophomore, beat Summerhays in extra holes at Oakridge in the final match of the 2018 Utah State Jr. Amateur. He played in the Junior Ryder Cup later that year.

Sandy resident Mike Weir, who turned 50 in May, keeps waiting to make his PGA Tour Champions debut, due to COVID-19 cancellations. That tour is scheduled to resume July 31 in Michigan. Players in his age group are eligible for Korn Ferry Tour events, as preparation for senior golf.

Fishburn is on the rise, having advanced to this tour by winning the last event of the Mackenzie Tour of Canada’s 2019 calendar. He further improved his access to the 2020 Korn Ferry Tour schedule by tying for fourth place in a tournament in Colombia in February. He’s 44th in the points standings, and the top 25 finishers will graduate to the PGA Tour — in September 2021. That’s a concession to this season’s altered schedule, after a 14-week interruption. Fishburn and other players will retain their current status next year, as part of a revised, two-season competition.

“I’m just happy we’re playing again, for sure,” Fishburn said.