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2024 SENIOR MEN’S PLAYER OF THE YEAR: BRIGHAM GIBBS

By beating Brigham Gibbs in the semifinals of the Senior State Amateur, Jon Wright could have cost his friend a third UGA Senior Men’s Player of the Year presented by Primo award.

Fortunately, Gibbs got another shot at collecting the needed points the following week, and Wright helped him do it. When the pals from The Country Club in Salt Lake City reached the Senior finals of the Utah Four-Ball Championship, Gibbs clinched Player of the Year honors. And then he punctuated his season with a clutch birdie on No. 18 in an eventual 21-hole victory over Matthew Lyons-Fred Larsen at Gladstan Golf Course.

2024 Utah Senior Four-Ball Champions, Jon Wright and Brigham Gibbs.

Gibbs, who turned 60 in late August, was the Senior Men’s Player of the Year in 2017 and ‘21. The natural question for 2025 is whether he will remain a Senior golfer or move into Super-Senior competition.

“For right now,” Gibbs said, “I don’t see any reason to switch.”

So he’ll take on the 50-over crowd for at least another year, as a defending champion of the Senior Stroke Play and the reigning Player of the Year. In 2024, Gibbs posted 282.33 points to 265 for two-time winner Shane McMillan, who missed the Four-Ball event (Wright finished third in the Player Performance Rankings). As further validation of Gibbs’ title, he played in only seven PPR events; the Player of the Year competition counts a senior men’s golfer’s points in his top eight tournaments.

Brigham Gibbs, this year’s Senior Stroke Play champion, is now a three time winner of the Senior Player of the Year award.

Among his most memorable rounds this year was a 3-under-par 69, hitting 17 greens in regulation (and barely missing the other) at Fox Hollow Golf Club in cold, windy conditions on the second day of the Senior Stroke Play. He also liked the way he started the Four-Ball, making four birdies in eight holes on the way to a 1-up quarterfinal win.

“I’ve just always enjoyed competition. Nothing’s changed with that,” said Gibbs, a former professional golfer who attributes his strong play at this stage of his career to “good health and experience; those are probably the two main things.”

He also made some fundamental swing changes in the past couple of years, improving his ball-striking by adjusting his setup and takeaway. Mixing in his always solid short game, Gibbs continues to play some of his best golf. He’s proud of the way he and Wright collectively represented The Country Club with wins in the Senior Stroke Play and the Senior State Am, plus the Four-Ball. The friends have combined to win five of the last seven Senior State Am titles.

UGA Senior Player of the Year feature written by Fairways Media senior writer Kurt Kragthorpe. Photography provided by Fairways Media/Randy Dodson & Garrit Johnson.