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The Utah Junior Golf Association can claim to have produced a foursome of current PGA Tour players, and that's not even counting a Ryder Cup contestant.
"Don't forget Rory McIlroy," said Jeff Thurman, the UJGA's executive director.
Well, it already is a slight stretch for the alumni list to include Scott Pinckney, whose family housed McIlroy in Orem one summer when the boys were 11 and later moved to Arizona. Yet for the first time, Utah will have three high school graduates, all born and raised in the state — Davis' Daniel Summerhays, West's Tony Finau and Fremont's Zac Blair — playing together as PGA Tour members.
This is fun for them, and for anyone who played with these guys as they won the historic State Amateur, the Rose Park Open and UJGA events while growing up in golf.
"We all competed against each other as kids, and now we'll be competing on the biggest stage in the game — and we're all from Utah," Finau marveled this week. "Doesn't get any better than that."
So Thurman's pride is justifiable, and the UJGA ties extend to the first event of the 2014-15 tour schedule, Oct. 9-12 at Napa, California. Johnny Miller, the UJGA's chairman, is the host of the Frys.com Open at Silverado Resort, where he's a part-owner and redesigner of the course.
Summerhays is an established tour player, having earned nearly $4 million in the past three seasons. Finau proved himself over a full year on the Web.com Tour, winning a tournament and playing consistently enough to earn one of the 25 PGA Tour cards awarded via the regular-season money list. Blair became one of the biggest stories of the Web.com Tour season by taking advantage of his limited opportunities — and then fading, before delivering a big finish.
The former BYU golfer placed second in the Web.com Tour Championship last weekend at TPC Sawgrass in Florida. The $108,000 check represented his only earnings in the tour's four-event final series, but that was more than enough to give him one of the additional 25 cards, along with Pinckney.
Pinckney, a contemporary of Finau and Blair in the old days, figures into this story one of two ways — or both. He qualifies as a UJGA alumnus, and he also serves as an endorsement of the three lifelong Utahns' talent and drive. Pinckney's family moved to suburban Phoenix partly for the sake of developing his golf game in a warm-weather climate. It worked.
Yet the other three have shown it is possible to get there from Utah. It's hardly easy, partly because of the challenge of building a game at high altitude and taking it to sea level. That's among the reasons Miller once moved his family from Salt Lake City to Napa.
"It's tough, coming out of Utah and making it on the tour. Golf, I'm sorry to say, is easy in Utah," said amateur star Kirk Siddens, who played against the future pros. "The ball flies a long way and there's no super-hard golf courses."
Summerhays and Blair played for BYU and tested themselves in national amateur events. Finau turned pro at 17 and pieced together a career before breaking through in December with a high finish in the Web.com Tour's qualifying tournament — basically, offering the only avenue to the PGA Tour in the new system — and playing well this year.
Blair came out of nowhere twice this season. He played the PGA Tour Latinoamerica in the spring, then finally got access to the Web.com Tour in July and started 7 for 7 in cuts made, including a tie for second place. That got him into the Finals, but he missed the cut in each of the first three events.
He rallied, opening the last tournament with a 63 and holding steady at various checkpoints. In the final round, he birdied Nos. 10, 11 and 12 to secure his immediate future.
Thurman promises the UJGA has "more coming down the pipeline." Those young players certainly have good examples to follow, and Finau and Blair can tap into the experience of Summerhays, who's now a veteran at age 30 and hopes to "help them navigate through their rookie year," he said.
Twitter: @tribkurt