The annual Siegfried & Jensen Utah Open golf tournament will celebrate its 100th edition in two years, but organizers will have a hard time replicating the excitement of the 98th edition, which begins Friday at Riverside Country Club in Provo and runs through Sunday.
The 2024 Utah Open features one of the most interesting and diverse fields in recent history, starting with the return of a former champion from long ago, Jay Don Blake. The 1988 winner received a PGA Tour exemption to play in the tour’s Black Desert Championship in his hometown of St. George in October.
This event, Oct. 10-13, will be Blake’s 500th start on Tour, and he is likely using the 98th Utah Open as a warm-up. He’s obviously not a bad player on the golf course, having won the 1980 NCAA Championship while at Utah State University and the 1991 Shearson Lehman Brothers Open while on the PGA Tour.
Blake competed in two PGA Tour Champions events last season and will tee off at 8:10 a.m. Friday on the No. 10 tee with former champion Dusty Fielding and St. George’s Hayden Christensen.
The field includes at least two former BYU stars who are playing on the PGA Tour this season: Zac Blair and Patrick Fishburn. Both are former Utah Open winners.
Blair won the $22,000 first-place check on his 33rd birthday last year by edging former University of Utah golfer Javier Barcos of Spain in four playoff holes. Blair and Barcos both shot 15 under par (201) in the 54-hole tournament to reach the playoff.
Neither Blair nor Fishburn made the FedEx Cup Playoffs this year, so both were able to play in Utah this week before the tour’s final eight or so tournaments resume in September. The Black Desert Championship at Ivins is the third event in the PGA Tour’s fall series and will be played a week before the Shriners Children’s Open at TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas.
Blair will tee off on the first tee at 1 p.m. Friday with his brothers and former BYU star players Clay and Cole Ogden.
Fishburn will start at 1:10 p.m. Friday from No. 1 with former BYU players Carson Lundell and Austen Christiansen.
Can a former Dallas Cowboy succeed in Utah?
As if having Blair, Fishburn (2017 Utah Open winner) and Blake in the tournament wasn’t enough, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo is also in the tournament for the fourth year in a row. Romo, an NFL commentator for CBS, learned about the tournament because he is good friends with Park City native BJ Staten, the 2014 Utah Open winner.
Romo, who finished 39th last year at -2, tees off at 1:20 p.m. with Staten and Ryan Kartchner.
The Utah Open has always featured women, and this year is no different. Former BYU and Utah Valley golf coach Sue Nyhus, a professional player, is participating, as is current BYU golfer Adeline Anderson Wach.
Wach won the Utah Women’s Open last week at Timpanogos Golf Course in Provo and then the Utah Women’s Stroke Play Championship at Mountain Dell on Wednesday, beating six-time Women’s State Am champion Kelsey Chugg by one stroke.
The Utah Open will feature three brothers in its field for the first time since 1966, when Lynn, Bruce and Gary Summerhays teed off at Ogden Country Club; coincidentally, Jack Ridd and his sons Kean and Craig also participated in the tournament that year.
The 3 Shelley brothers
• BYU golfer Tyson Shelley, who missed the cut at the U.S. Amateur in Minnesota on Tuesday, allowing him to play in the Utah Open. The 21-year-old won the prestigious Pacific Coast Amateur last summer and medaled at the Men’s State Amateur at Ogden Country Club last month.
• Jackson Shelley, a rising senior at Skyline High who committed to BYU and placed fourth at the Salt Lake City Open last Sunday.
• Austin Shelley, who moves from Olympus to Skyline this year and recently won the Utah PGA Junior Major Championship at Hobble Creek Golf Course.
Keep an eye on these golfers
Other amateurs to keep an eye on include 2024 SLC Open champion Martin Leon of Chile (via the University of Utah and Rutgers), rising Lone Peak senior and BYU freshman Kihei Akina, State Am champion Cole Ponich, BYU golfer Zac Jones and SLC Amateur champion Bowen Mauss, who has signed with Arizona State.
For two outstanding young amateurs, it will be their last competitive tournament for a while; current BYU golfer Cooper Jones is going on a church mission to Peru, while Utah Junior Amateur champion Lincoln Markham (a BYU freshman) will tee it up in Spokane, Washington.
Some of the top local pros in the field include former BYU golfers Carson Lundell and Rhett Rasmussen, Todd Tanner of Sandy, Casey Fowles of Delta, Braydon Swapp of Ogden, Dustin Pimm of Bluffdale, Pete Stone and Tommy Sharp of Salt Lake City, Zach Johnson of Farmington and former University of Utah golfer Mitchell Schow.
Schow will head to Italy for European Q School later this month, he said after finishing fourth at the SLC Open last Sunday.
