The winner of this weekend’s CGA Public Links Championship is guaranteed to make history.
After all, he’ll go down as the final champion of the tournament.
Four months after the USGA announced it will discontinue its men’s and women’s Amateur Public Links Championships after 2014, CGA leadership has decided to make a similar move.
This week’s CGA Public Links Championship — set for Friday through Sunday (June 21-23) at Twin Peaks Golf Course in Longmont — will be the last played, concluding a run of 31 tournaments since the event’s inception in 1983. (Eric Parish, pictured hitting above, will defend his title this weekend.)
As was the case with the USGA, CGA officials believe the Publinks no longer serves its original purpose.
“We’ve been thinking about this for a long time,” CGA executive director Ed Mate said. “At the time the tournament was created, there was a need to have distinction between public and private. Now the line between public and private is blurry — which is good — and there’s no need” for that distinction.
“There was a feeling as long as the USGA conducted a national Publinks, we should do a state Publinks. Now that rationale is gone.”
Mate said the CGA plans to add a new championship in 2014, though what form that tournament might take hasn’t been decided. But he added that whatever replaces the Publinks will be an open-field event, meaning any CGA member will be able to compete, aside from the possible restriction of age.
“In no other tournament that we run do we say, ‘You can play and you can’t’, except for age purposes,” Mate continued. “It got to be really silly, with people having a range membership at a private club not being able to play (in the Publinks), while a college player who has access to a private club could play.”
Currently, the CGA Public Links Championship is limited to “active CGA members who, since January 1st of the current year, are bona-fide public course players who have not held privileges of any course which does not extend playing privileges to the general public or privileges of any private club maintaining its own course.”
Gary Potter, now a CGA governor emeritus, was one of the driving forces in creating the Public Links Championship in the early 1980s. But he supports the decision to discontinue the event.
“I was urging for it to be done away with,” he said. “At the time we started it, we were looking to create more events for more people. It was just one more thing to be meaningful at a time when we didn’t have a lot of activity on the tournament front.
“It served its purpose. The true Publinks player doesn’t really exist anymore. Anyone can enter the U.S. Amateur. We probably started (the Publinks) in Colorado too late; we were already well into the mode of everyone being able to play in every tournament.”
Ninety years ago, the Amateur Public Links gave public golfers a national championship as they couldn’t compete in the U.S. Amateur, which was limited to players from USGA member clubs. But that restriction ended for both the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1979. Nowadays the Publinks events are dominated by college players — or younger.
Every champion of the CGA Publinks since 2000 has won the title the same year he competed as a college golfer. The last non-college player to win was Rick DeWitt in 1999.
Terry Byrnes won the inaugural CGA Publinks in 1983 at Gleneagle Golf Club in Colorado Springs.
“I’m not surprised the state Publinks is scheduled to join the persimmon driver as part of golf’s past,” Byrnes noted this week. “Much has changed in 30 years regarding how and where people choose to play their golf and the CGA offers a handsome slate of competitive opportunities each year anyway.
“I do remember feeling a great sense of pride in winning the inaugural event just outside of Colorado Springs back in 1983. If I had known sooner, I would have tried to arrange to compete in the last event as the Colorado Public Links does hold a special place for me.”
Among the other champions of the tournament are two-time PGA Tour winner Jonathan Kaye (1992), two-time HealthOne Colorado Open champion Derek Tolan (2008) and current Colorado Golf Hall of Famers Mark Crabtree (1990) and DeWitt (1999). Also champions are brothers Zen and Zahkai Brown (2005 and 2009, respectively).
Three players have won the CGA Public Links twice each: Tom McGraw (1987 and ’93), Ben Portie (2000 and ’01) and Nolan Martin (2002 and ’04).
“The tournament (helped) Rick DeWitt and others rise to the top,” Potter said. “That’s kind of neat, being a true Publinks player.”
While the CGA Public Links Championship is going by the wayside, the association holds public players closer to its heart than ever, especially given that the CGA has so much invested in an inner-city public course. The CGA and CWGA have owned and operated CommonGround Golf Course since 2009.
“The whole idea with that is to be affordable and be accessible,” Mate said. “With all the rounds that are played there, that more than makes up for the (84) people who play annually in this (Public Links) tournament. And we are replacing that with another tournament.”
The CGA and CWGA will continue to conduct qualifying for the U.S. Amateur Public Links and U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links through 2014. The men’s APL is the USGA’s fourth-oldest championship, having debuted in 1922. The WAPL was first played in 1977.
