Regardless of the winds, rain, and snow that impacted Lake County recently, the world of professional golf remains in full swing. The PGA Tour was at Torrey Pines on the San Diego coast last week. The European Tour was in the Middle East for the playing of the Dubai Desert Classic. Patrick Reed ran away from the rest of the field in San Diego with a five-stroke victory while Englishman Paul Casey won in the desert by a solid four strokes. Both men added more than $1 million to their bank accounts and both men are in position to represent their respective teams in the Ryder Cup Matches this September at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin.
Yet for every big win, there are a lot of little wins in golf. Such was the case this weekend as well. Tien Lee grew up in Cincinnati and received a golf scholarship to attend Claremont College in Southern California. Lee was a solid NCAA Division II golfer who was a four-time D2 All-American. He was the individual champion of Division II in 2010 and won the Jack Nicklaus player of the year award. Like many other talented collegians, he turned pro after graduation and set out to make his mark on the myriad of mini-tours in route to the PGA Tour.
In 2013, Lee qualified onto the European Challenge Tour. He competed during the 2014 season with little success. In the fall of 2014 he went to the Web.com Q School and finished tied for fourth place. He was off to America’s version of AAA minor league golf for 2015. That too didn’t go as well as planned either. Tien entered 20 tournaments and made just five cuts. The following year he gave the Mackenzie Tour in Canada a try. He would spend the next four years trying to make it in Canada. A top-three finish on the Mackenzie for the season automatically gets you a spot on the Web.com. Yet during those years, Lee would enter 33 Canadian tourneys, record four top 10 and pocket a grand total of $21,103. His best year was in 2019 when he finished 51st on the Canadian Tour’s order of merit. He also qualified into a handful of Web.com tourneys. When the dust finally settled, Tien had zero top 10s in 29 tries and ended up with $16,249 in earnings on the Web.com Tour. Tien Lee had eight years of mini-tour golf under his belt and had very little to show for it.
Tien is 30 years old and has kept his dream going. Two weeks ago, he went to pre-qualifying for San Diego. He birdied his last hole to advance to Monday qualifying. Mondays on the PGA Tour are called “Four Spotters” because of the 128 golfers in the field, four will get into that week’s tour event. Lee got one of those four spots and was suddenly in the field at his first PGA Tour event, the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, the site of the 2021 U.S. Open.
Teeing it up alongside the big boys at Torrey Pines, Lee shot 1-under-ar 71-72 to make the cut on the number. His weekend scores were 75-74. He ended up tied for 69th place and made $15,375 for his efforts. It was his biggest paycheck as a professional golfer. As he left San Diego on Sunday evening, Lee was driving to Phoenix to try and qualify into the Four Spotter on Monday (he didn’t). Patrick Reed won last Sunday. In many ways, so too did Tien Lee.
Halfway across the globe, Kurt Kitayama was teeing it up in the Dubai Desert Classic. Kitayama was born in nearby Chico and attended Chico High School. A talented junior golfer, Kurt is a past NCGA Junior Tour’s golfer of the year. In 2009, he finished in third place at the Junior World Golf Championship at, of all places, Torrey Pines. Kitayama is 5-feet, 6-inches tall and yet he also played basketball at Chico High. When I say he played basketball, I really mean he played basketball. During his senior year, he was his team’s co-captain as well as the starting point guard. In the 2011 North Section finals, Kurt dropped 31 points on rival Pleasant Valley High School as Chico took home the section title.
Golf was always in Kitayama’s future. He is from a golfing family. His older brother played for Hawaii-Hilo. Kurt received an offer to play for collegiate powerhouse UNLV and had a solid four years in Vegas, winning the Jackrabbit Invitational in both 2014 and 2015. After graduation he turned pro and floundered on the Web.com Tour in both 2016 and 2017. In 2018, Kurt played on the Asian Development Tour and won a tournament in Malaysia. He graduated to the Asian Tour and had a runner-up finish at the Thailand Royal Cup as well as a pair of fourth-place finishes in the New Zealand Open and the Asia-Pacific Diamond Cup.
Kitayama went to European Tour Q School in November of 2018. He played extremely well at Valderama and finished in a tie for third place to earn his European Tour card for 2019. In just his second appearance on the Euro Tour, Kurt won the AfriAsia Bank Mauritius Open. Three months to the day later, he won the Oman Open on the Arabian Peninsula. Kitayama had won twice on the European Tour in his first 11 events. Later that year he finished runner-up following a five-way playoff in the Turkish Airlines Open, losing to Tyrell Hatton.
This past weekend, Kurt Kitayama finished in 20th place at Dubai. He seems to have found a home on the European Tour. He currently ranks 34th in the Euro Tour’s points list. Yes I’m sure that Oman and Dubai and Mauritius are light years away from Chico, but having a regular place to tee it up means you can set your calendar and plan your year in advance. He has had some minimal success in the majors, making two cuts in the PGA Championship. At age 28 he is entering his golfing prime and Europe is giving him the opportunity to expand his game.
Some 30 years ago, I was an amateur golfer who sometimes got last-minute, waiting-list invites into tournaments on the Golden State Tour, a mini-tour throughout California and Arizona. At the Sonoma Open at Sonoma National, I made the cut right on the button. I was paired that final day with Mr. Lu from Taiwan. Mr. Lu isn’t exactly a household name although I did reconnect with him when he played in the 2015 U.S. Senior Open at Del Paso in Sacramento.
The top three finishers on that mini-tour day in Sonoma were Scott McCarron, the winner, Kevin Sutherland, and Esteban Toledo. All three later played on the PGA Tour and all three have had success on the PGA Champions Tour. If I recall correctly, I came in tied for 38th place. It’s still one of my proudest accomplishments in tournament golf. As for Tien Lee, who claims he’s come up short on more than 50 PGA Tour Monday qualifiers, last weekend was his best effort as a pro. The continuing career of Kurt Kitayama in Europe is also noteworthy. It seems like there can be lots of ways to win at golf without hoisting the trophy at the end of the week.
