The first call Scott Stevens makes after every tournament is to his mother, Tricia, and father, David, back in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Only on Sunday he did it as tournament champion, after winning the PGA Tour Canada Royal Beach Victoria Open presented by the Times Colonist, on the third playoff hole at Uplands over fellow American Jake Knapp.
“My parents have sacrificed,” Stevens said of his golf career. “It’s lonely sometimes out here and you need the support.”
It’s part of chasing the dream.
The $36,000 first-place prize was important for Stevens, but it was just another building block. The golfers at Uplands, crossing the road in the parking lot between holes, did so under a billboard featuring PGA Tour Canada alumni and current PGA Tour players Corey Conners and Tony Finau. All the current players on PGA Tour Canada hope there are bigger things in their careers.
“The money is a nice bonus but the ultimate goal is the Korn Ferry Tour and then the PGA Tour,” Stevens said.
Only a few will get there, of course. But everybody playing at Uplands on Sunday was at a level — as author Roger Kahn once said about the minor pros — where you are good enough to dream.
Stevens has already played in six career Korn Ferry Tour tournaments.
“The players are so good out here this week — any of the 156 starters could have won — and it’s such a fine line from here [to the Korn Ferry Tour],” said Stevens, a 2019 graduate of the NCAA Div. 1 University of South Carolina Fighting Gamecocks.
Stevens and Jake Knapp, an NCAA graduate of the UCLA Bruins who played 36 events on the Korn Ferry Tour last season, finished tied after four rounds at 16-under 264. Stevens sank a clutch putt and birdied the 18th to force the extra holes. He then birdied all three sudden-death playoff holes, and Knapp the first two, as Stevens won on the third playoff hole by one stroke as the high drama stretched into the evening.
“It was a blur, to be honest,” Stevens said.
“The fans made it special in the rain. It was a dream come true. It is something I will remember forever. There are a ton of big names on this trophy.”
Cooper Dossey, two-time NCAA Div. 1 All-American out of Baylor University, was third at 15-under 265.
The top Canadian was Joey Savoie in fourth place at 14-under. Savoie won the low-round trophy at Bear Mountain two years ago in the Canada Life Series tournament. The native of La Prairie, Que., out of NCAA Middle Tennessee State, represented Canada in the 2019 Lima Pan Am Games and was Canadian amateur golfer of the year in 2018 and competed in the RBC Canadian Open that year.
The second overall Canadian, in a two-way tie for fifth place at 12-under, was Etienne Papineau, who grew up with Savoie on the south shore near Montreal.
“This was an amazing course with unbelievable conditions and greens that were perfect and the kind I haven’t played on in a long while,” said Papineau, the 2015 Quebec amateur champion, who played NCAA Div. 1 at West Virginia University for the Mountaineers.
As with several of the Canadian golfers, Papineau caught the red-eye out of YYJ on Sunday night to be in Toronto on Monday morning for the RBC Canadian Open qualifier. That might seem like a whirlwind for the lay golfer, but that’s life in the pros.
“It makes for long days, and a lot of travel, but it’s our profession and what we choose to pursue,” he said.
Top Island golfers were Jeevan Sihota of Gorge Vale, tied for 31st at 6-under, Maxwell Sear of Royal Colwood, tied for 41st at 5-under and Riley Wheeldon of Comox, tied for 46th at 4-under.
Jimmy Jones, son of the late LPGA player Dawn Coe-Jones of Lake Cowichan, was tied for 26th at 7-under.
The golfers at Uplands were trying to follow in the footsteps of the likes of the top-two finishers of the last normal pre-pandemic Victoria Open in 2019 — both winner Paul Barjon and runner-up Doc Redman went on to the PGA Tour. They are part of a total of 54 PGA Tour Canada alumni to have advanced to play on the PGA Tour since 2013 with 16 PGA Tour victories between them.
More than 250 PGA Tour Canada alumni have gone onto play on the Korn Ferry Tour — one step from the PGA Tour — since 2013, with 50 victories between them.
The golfers this season are chasing the full-season exemption into the 2023 Korn Kerry Tour for the top placer in the 2022 PGA Tour Canada Fortinet Cup season points standings, with the second-through-fifth-place finishers earning selected provisional starts on the 2023 Korn Ferry Tour. The top-two season finishers, and top Canadian, on the PGA Tour Canada this year will also earn exemptions into the 2023 RBC Canadian Open.
The Royal Beach Victoria Open was the opening tournament of the 11-event 2022 PGA Tour Canada season. Next up is the ATB Classic from June 16 to 19 at the Edmonton Petroleum Club.
