January 21, 2010

By Jon Levy - Staff Writer

Building on their success from 2009, the 2010 PGA TOUR season is just two tournaments old and, already, Gateway Tour players-turned-PGA TOUR-stars have made their mark on the world’s biggest competitive golf circuit this season.

Finishing four strokes off of the mark two weeks ago at the SBS Championship -- the elite winners only nugget offered to PGA TOUR champs from the season before -- Sean O’Hair and Martin Laird notched a pair of T4 finishes to start their seasons off right; $300,000 worth of right, that is.

Both O’Hair and Laird played on The Gateway Tour just a few seasons ago, and while O’Hair may have a jumpstart on Laird with PGA TOUR experience and earnings, having earned over $12 million via three career victories and an ever increasing world-renown status, Laird is doing his best to catch up after a $1.3 million ’09 season and a victory at the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open. If their weeks at the SBS Championship are any indication, both players are poised for big ’10 seasons, to be sure.

Moving on to last week at the Sony Open -- the first full-field event of the year -- former Gateway Tour players wasted no time crowding the upper echelon of the Waialae Country Club leaderboard with the following seven alumni finishing within the Top 25:

Jeff Quinney - T20
Troy Merritt - T20
Graham Delaet - T25
John Merrick - T25
Blake Adams - T25
Spencer Levin - T25
Tom Gillis - T25

Quinney and Merritt each earned $61,820 for their efforts, while Delaet, Merrick, Adams, Levin and Gillis took home $35,435.72 for theirs. Of the group, Quinney and Merrick lead in PGA TOUR prowess with over $4.4 million and $3.4 million in career earnings since playing The Gateway Tour, but Nationwide Tour standouts Merritt, Adams and Gillis look to make a quick impact on the PGA TOUR after respectively finishing 39th, 3rd and 5th on the development circuit in ‘09, while Levin vies to improve on his 141st position on the 2009 PGA TOUR money list.

Time will tell as to which of the forenamed players are on their way to breakout seasons, and time will most certainly bring a numerous more former Gateway Tour players into the spotlight.

Stay tuned as the PGA TOUR visits the California desert this week for the Bob Hope Classic, where low scores abound, and where a Gateway Tour Alum could easily hold the hardware, come tournament-end.


Click here for full field results of the SBS Championship and here for full field results of the Sony Open, from pgatour.com…

Also, click here for a story by Helen Ross of pgatour.com about former Gateway Tour player, Kevin Streelman, and his upcoming defense of the Kodak Challenge…