News

Check out what has been happening in Utah Golf.

Utah Golf Association Co-Men’s Player of the Year

 

Zach Jones’ Eight Big Wins in Seven Months Earns Co-Player of the Year Honors

 

By Kurt Kragthorpe

 

 

Zac Blair’s winning the UGA Player of the Year award in 2014, while turning pro in mid-March, is an achievement that almost certainly never will be matched. His friend Zach Jones came close, though.

 

Jones became the 2019 UGA Men’s Co-Player of the Year in basically a half-season, thanks largely to his four victories during the Dixie Swing as a Lone Peak High School senior. Jones now is serving a mission in Mexico for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and will join BYU’s golf program in 2021.

 

His early season surge resembled what Blair did in 2014 before launching a PGA Tour Latino America schedule that eventually led him to the big tour in the same year. And that’s not entirely a coincidence. Playing a lot of golf with Blair has given Jones a mentality of “trying to win everything,” according to his father, Clark.

 

Jones pretty much did so in southern Utah, winning everything but the Coral Canyon Amateur, and usually in convincing fashion. He took the St. George Amateur and the Sand Hollow Amateur by four strokes each, won the Dixie Red Hills Amateur by five shots and finished three points ahead in the UGA Winterchamps.

 

Jones wishes he could have played better in the State Amateur (losing in the second round of match play) and the U.S. Junior Amateur (losing in the first round) and is not sure he deserves to share the Player of the Year award with Preston Summerhays, who won both tournaments. Even so, Jones packed a lot of great golf into his half-season.

 

Zach Jones totaled 420 points on the Player Performance Ranking and is the 2019 UGA Men’s Co-Player of the Year.

 

Tournament Wins:

St. George Amateur

Sand Hollow Amateur

UGA Winterchamps

Red Hills Amateur

Fox Hollow Amateur

The Oaks Open (Low Amateur)

Utah Junior State Amateur

U.S. Junior Amateur Qualifier (Reached Match Play)