The Honors Course To Host 117th Southern Amateur Championship This Week

It is fitting that 40 years since Jack Lupton’s grand vision became a reality, The Honors Course will once again serve as host to the event that provided the national golf community a first glimpse at its challenging grandeur.

The Honors Course opened in 1983, the culmination of course architect Pete Dye’s quest to produce for Lupton an unparalleled golfing enclave devoted to the preservation of game in its purest form. Three years later, the Southern Amateur Championship was the first major tournament held at the club, showcasing the course which led to landing the U.S. Amateur Championship in 1991.

The 117^th Southern Amateur Championship will be staged Wednesday through Saturday, the fourth time The Honors Course has hosted the prestigious event.

“This means that we continue to be true to Jack Lupton’s vision and his desire to have The Honors Course to honor amateur golf,” said The Honors Course Director of Golf Henrik Simonsen. “One of the ways is to host local, national and international championships on a championship golf course. That was his goal when he asked Pete Dye to build the golf course.

“It’s ironic that the very first championship we had to the outside in 1986 was The Southern Amateur. That’s why this tournament is so relevant to us because it put us on the scene back then. Players and officials with the USGA noticed to the point where they allowed Mr. Lupton and The Honors Course to host the U.S. Amateur just a few years later. To be able to go from the club’s inception to hosting the U.S. Amateur in only eight years, that’s very unique.”

The 155-player field features seven of the Top 10 ranked amateurs in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, and 48 of the Top 100. Defending champion David Ford, currently ranked No. 3 to earn a slot on the Walker Cup team, is one of three former winners along with Maxwell Moldovan (2021) and Karl Vilips (2017).

The tournament is part of the Elite Amateur Golf Series, founded in 2022 and comprised of seven championships that features the top talent among amateur golf. In addition to the Southern Amateur, other events include Sunnehanna Amateur, Northeast Amateur, North & South Amateur, Trans-Mississippi Amateur, Pacific Coast Amateur and Western Amateur.

“You see on LIV and the PGA Tour, things are becoming more fine-tuned where college players are earning direct status,” Simonsen said. “World ranking is so important to these top players. To create this Elite Series of tournaments makes a lot of sense. It creates a tour within the amateur circuit to allow players to compete with each other on a more consistent basis. The PGA Tour has four majors, and now the amateur circuit has seven mini-majors leading up to the U.S. Amateur.”

The loaded field also includes 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Stewart Hagestad, a pair of U.S. Junior champions in Nick Dunlap (2021) and Wenyi Ding (2022), along with 2022 Elite Amateur Cup champion Caleb Surratt.

Three participants with local connections will be competing. Ireland native Paul Conroy is a member of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga golf team that competed in the NCAA Championships, former Moc Brendon Wilson is the reigning Tennessee Mid-Amateur champion and won the prestigious Gasparilla Invitational in Tampa earlier this year, and McCallie School and UTC product Andrew Weathers claimed a spot by finishing third in a recent qualifier at Black Creek Club.

The Southern Amateur has a rich history of champions who later enjoyed successful PGA tour careers and claimed several majors. Former winners include Bobby Jones, Ben Crenshaw, Lanny Wadkins, Hubert Green, Bob Tway, Justin Leonard, Webb Simpson and former Baylor School golfer Harris English.

Chattanooga has produced a trio of winners in the tournament’s long history. Albert W. Gaines won the second event in 1903, then a pair of Signal Mountain golfers – Ed Brantly in 1957 and Mike Malarkey in 1963– captured titles when the tournament format was match play.

The tournament is open to the public with no admission cost. Patron parking is off the Ooltewah exit, turning left onto Ooltewah/Georgetown Road by Wendy’s and is located 7/10 of a mile on the right. Shuttle buses will transport patrons to the golf course all day, and the clubhouse, restaurant and restroom facilities will be available to all in attendance. The 72-hole tournament will reduce the field after 36 holes to the low 66 scores and ties.

Andy Priest, Executive Director of the Southern Golf Association, is thrilled to return his featured event to The Honors Course.

“This will be a showcase of some of the best men’s amateur golfers in the world,” Priest said. “Between a phenomenal host venue, our history of our championship, the legacy of past champions coupled with this being a Walker Cup year, this will be an exciting week. We’re incredibly excited to host one of the world’s top amateur events at The Honors Couse that is one of our best partners over the past 40 years.”

Having undergone a recent restoration under renowned golf course architect Gil Hanse, The Honors Course will serve as a stiff test for the elite golfers. The winning score of 293 (5-over) from the 1986 tournament still stands as the highest total in Southern Amateur history since stroke play inception in 1964.

“We loved it the way it was, but now we’ve opened up some vistas that we didn’t know we had before,” Simonsen said. “We have always set up the golf course for a true championship test – firm greens, hole locations in fair but difficult positions. This year the greens will be as firm as ever given that we have a brand-new surface completed a year ago with Gil Hanse’s restoration. The fairways are playing very fast. The Bermuda rough has not had the opportunity to mature yet, so it’s not as penal as we’d like it to be. Therefore, the scores might be a little lower than we’d otherwise see, but I’ll be surprised if we see a lot of players under par.”

The Honors Course has also been named as future site for several other national tournaments. The 2024 U.S. Senior Amateur will take place next summer, while the 2026 U.S. Women’s Amateur and the 2031 U.S. Amateur championships are also scheduled.

Paul Payne can be emailed at paulpayne6249@gmail.com