Monthly Archives: April 2024

Davis County golf courses Valley View and Davis Park played host to the annual Spring Pro-Pro  and opening rounds of the season-long Four-Ball Championship this week. 

Monday’s Spring Pro-Pro at Valley View also served as the seeding tournament for the Round of 64 of the Four-Ball Championship with local favorites Zach Johnson and Caiden Jones taking the top spot on the leaderboard with a (-9) 63. 

One shot back in the 36-team field were the teams of Jordan Gibbs/Ana Ross, Mark Owen/Dustin Pimm and Dustin Volk/Pete Stone. Team Summerhays, Bruce and Joe, rounded out the top 5 teams at 7-under par. 

With the win at Valley View, Johnson and Jones were seeded second in the following day’s Four-Ball Round of 64 matches. The defending champion team of Tracy Zobell and Ryan Rhees received the No.1 seed and a bye into the Round of 32. 

Jones said, “I’m super happy to be advancing to the next round. This is our second time winning the Spring Pro-Pro but only our first time advancing out of the Four-Ball second round together. Hopefully we can keep playing well and make a deep run”

In the 3-team Women’s Spring Pro-Pro division, Colleen Walsh/Lynsey Myers carded a round of even par 72, 1-stroke better than Darci Olsen and Cassie Campos.

Looking ahead to the Round of 16 which will be played May 22nd at Thanksgiving Point Golf Club, Zobell/Rhees will face the Stonebridge GC Professionals team of Paul Phillips and Clark Garso while Johnson/Jones will take on No. 18 seed team of Ryan Colemere and Jordan Bloxham (photos below). 

Spring Pro-Pro top 5 teams of Volk/Stone and Summerhays/Summerhays also have advanced to the Round of 16.

The Four-Ball Quarterfinal matches will also be played May 22 at Thanksgiving Point. Semifinal matches and the championship match will be played June 26th, hosted by Jeremy Ranch Golf and Country Club near Park City, UT. 

The Spring Pro-Pro and Four-Ball Round of 64 and 32 leaderboards are available on the website, Click Here. 50-teams entered the Four-Ball Championship this year. Click here to see the Four-Ball Qualifier team list. To follow the Four-Ball Championship match play results online, Click Here.

Many thanks to tournament sponsor Charley Carlson and host Professionals Pete Stone and Zach Johnson. 

Utah’s Max Togisala, the 2023 U.S. Adaptive Open – Seated Champion, will tee it up tomorrow at the USDGA Championship at PGA Golf Club’s Ryder Course in Port St. Lucie, Florida. The event will be played April 22-24.

The PGA of America is once again the presenting partner of the Championship, as the former U.S. Disabled Golf Open Championship officially launches its new name, the USDGA Championship.

The USDGA Championship will feature 90 players competing in a 54-hole, three-round stroke-play event beginning with the first round on Monday.

The USDGA’s mission is to provide people with physical, sensory and intellectual disabilities an opportunity to showcase their ability in a golf championship at a high level. Golfers must have a handicap index of 36.4 or lower and a WR4GD pass in order to register.

The 2023 USDGA Championship was won in May by Chad Pfeifer of Nampa, Idaho (Men’s) and Bailey Bish of Tucson, Arizona (Women’s). World Golf Hall of Fame Member and Honorary PGA of America Member Dennis Walters won the Seated Division, and Eliseo Villanueva of Fayetteville, North Carolina, won the Senior Division (50 and over).

Just 17 months after being paralyzed in a skiing accident, Togisala defeated Walters last year in the USGA’s U.S. Adaptive Open with a remarkable round of 2-under par 70 in the second round. Togisala closed with a final round of 80 and finished 18-strokes ahead of Walters. He placed in the top 20 overall in the national championship.

Locally, Togisala plays out of Valley View Golf Course in Layton. Togisala who last competed in this year’s Coral Canyon Amateur, uses a stand-on-command all-terrain mobility rider produced by VertiCat. Learn more about VertaCat by visiting, vertacat.com.

Designed by Tom Fazio, the Ryder Course at PGA Golf Club is named in honor of Samuel Ryder, the namesake and founder of the Ryder Cup. For more information on the USDGA Championship, please visit usdgagolf.org.

There are open books, and then there is Jayme Turner.

The retired Army Combat Medic is a refreshing storyteller who is willing to answer every question in as much detail as necessary.

“If me being straight up and brutally honest telling the world what I’ve been through, if it helps people understand that they’re not in uncommon situations … ” Turner said. “If I can go through that and still have hope in my life, it can work for other people. It’s important for people to know the truth.”

Turner, 47, is a PGA HOPE Ambassador who represents the Utah PGA Section. He begins this conversation talking about his background, where he grew up and how he ended up in the military, which resulted in three combat tours in Iraq. All of it wildly fascinating.

Three years ago, Turner was at the Veterans Affairs clinic in St. George, Utah – where he’s an Intermediate Care Technician (ICT) – and he saw a flier about the PGA HOPE program at Southgate Golf Course. He was asked to recruit Veterans to attend. But Turner didn’t feel right about asking Veterans to do something that he hadn’t done himself.

“I picked my clubs back up again,” Turner said. “After I went through it, it was the first time in a decade that I felt alive. I didn’t have any hobbies. I didn’t want to be social. I was isolated for pretty much a decade.

“PGA HOPE totally changed my life.”

Click here to read the complete feature published April 17 on PGA.Com by Jay Coffin.