The holiday season came three days early for Mackenzie Hughes of Hamilton, Ontario. This past Monday morning in Sea Island, Georgia, the 25-year-old Canadian rolled in an 18-foot par putt on the third extra playoff hole and then watched in disbelief as Blaine Barber, Henrik Norlander and finally Camilo Vilegas missed much shorter putts. The end result was that the PGA Tour rookie won the RSM Classic and its $1.08 million payout. For a relatively unknown who is the 17th of 25 golfers from the Web.com Tour to receive a PGA Tour card for the 2016-17 wraparound season, it was a career-defining moment.
Regardless of inflation or the high price of travel on the PGA Tour, $1.08 million in the bank account of a 25-year-old certainly will go a long way. For the recently married Hughes who was planning his honeymoon during the tour’s upcoming six-week break, there is definitely more of a chance that he will be vacationing in the honeymoon suite overlooking the ocean than staying in the bedroom that looks out at the highway.
Hughes’ win is everything for him, especially coming at a time when the fall series of golf tournaments was coming to its conclusion. When the new year rolls around, the PGA Tour’s big guns will be returning to the tournament grind in full force. With 125 exempt golfers coupled with the 50 graduates from the Web.com Tour, Hughes at 17th would have been the 142nd professional golfer to get into tourneys in the winter and spring. Since most of those events limit their fields to 124-132 contestants because of less daylight at this time of year, there were going to be a number of tournaments that wouldn’t have room for someone like Mackenzie Hughes. Now with his overtime victory in Sea Island, his next three years on golf’s top tour are pretty much scheduled for him. He is a PGA Tour champion.
The RSM victory goes with a full two-year exemption on the PGA Tour. That means Hughes is on a priority list of current tour champions. He will play in the Tournament of Champions in Hawaii in early January, has an invite into the Masters in April, is in the field at the Players Championship in May, and has a tee time waiting for him at the PGA Championship next August. While other young golfers are hoping to get into tournaments and will end up on waiting lists or, during inactive weeks, find themselves jumping down to compete in Web.com Tour events, Mackenzie Hughes is way up on the priority list and can set his schedule months in advance. That will definitely help him and his agent work around endorsement opportunities and high-priced exhibitions and charity tourneys.
Of course, even the most serious of golf fans had to ask “exactly who is Mackenzie Hughes?” Because PGA Tour leader boards put the home country flag of the contestant next to his name, we know that Hughes is Canadian. Because of its remoteness to Sun Belt golfing enclaves such as Florida, the South, and California, very few Canadians of note have had any degree of success on the PGA Tour. In fact Hughes is just the 13th Canadian citizen to win a PGA Tour event although when one thinks of Canadian golfers, sweet swinging George Knudson from golf’s golden era and Masters champion Mike Weir immediately come to mind. If his career took a similar path to that of Knudson or Weir, then Mackenzie Hughes ill have a most memorable run on tour. As an aside, seven Canadians have status on the PGA Tour this year, including Weir, Graham DeLaet (the only pro I can think of who has ever come from Saskatchewan) and Nick Taylor.
As one might expect from a kid playing golf in Canada, Hughes was not a known entity to college recruiters. He did end up playing college golf at Kent State, the alma mater of former British Open champion Ben Curtis. He won the Mid-American Conference championship in 2011 and later that summer he captured the prestigious Canadian Amateur. Hughes followed up on his Canadian Amateur triumph in style by winning it again in 2012, and then turned professional later that year. He played on three Canadian national amateur teams.
Hughes started out on his home tour, a 10-week circuit that crosses from Prince Edward Island alongside the Atlantic to British Columbia on the west coast. Early on he captured the Breton Celtic Classic in Nova Scotia. Later that summer he got through 36-hole qualifying into the United States Open at Merion where he missed the cut. When the Canadian Tour concluded in late August, Hughes was atop its money list, meaning an instant promotion onto the Web.com Tour for 2014. His Web.com rookie season was a struggle with just seven made cuts in 20 events, meaning Mackenzie had to return to Canada for the 2015 season. He worked his way back onto the Web.com Tour for 2016 and picked up the win the Price Cutter Classic this summer in Springfield, Missouri. His victory got him inside the top 25 at the end of the season and onto the PGA Tour.
His first event on the big tour was the Safeway Open at Silverado in Napa in October. The way Mackenzie tells the story, he was paired with Phil Mickelson that rainy Sunday in Napa during final-round play. Mickelson was the marquee player throughout the week and all day Sunday as he commanded the largest galleries. Mackenzie was up close and personal, playing inside the ropes with Phil as their gallery swelled to several thousand spectators. Hughes ended up finishing tied for 13th place and pocketed a check for $120,000. More importantly, he learned all about playing in front of an enormous gallery and he learned how to adapt to playing alongside one of golf’s top performers. He had to adapt to the fact that every time Mickelson holed out his putt, the gallery would rush off to the next hole even though he still had to make his own putt. After winning Monday morning, Mackenzie attributed his victory to learning how to play in front of a large crowd that day last month in Napa. He saw it as a positive.
On a final note, it’s hard to know whether Mackenzie Hughes builds from here or whether he becomes a one-hit wonder. For every Jordan Spieth or Justin Thomas, there are others suchas Smylie Kaufman or Emiliano Grillo who have won during their rookie season but have yet to add that second PGA Tour win to their victory total. Yet you have to admire the fact that Hguhes rebounded from a pretty rugged triple-bogey on Saturday to right the ship. He also had an early chip-in birdie Sunday after he missed a couple of greens in a row. You’ve got to give him some credit for winning wire to wire. Yes, the holiday season came early for Mackenzie Hughes
