Mick Smith was enjoying a post-round beverage at the University Club of Wisconsin, pleased to have successfully defended his Wisconsin PGA Professional Championship title but a bit disappointed that he’d come up short – or so he thought – in the season-long WPGA Player of the Year points race.
Smith, who teaches at The Practice Station in New Berlin, knew going into the tournament in mid-September that his chances of catching points leader Joe Leonard were slim.
What he didn’t know was that the WPGA had increased the point allotment for winning the section’s flagship tournament. The 400 points Smith earned enabled him to leapfrog Leonard, who finished T-15 in the tournament, and claim Player of the Year honors in just his third year as a PGA member.
“I’ve been close the last couple years, so it’s one of those things, when you get closer you want to try and win it,” Smith said. “You just never know how the year is going to turn out. The season for us is six, seven months, so that’s a long time to be playing. Every week, you just try to play well and hopefully that leads to giving yourself a chance at the end of the year to win it.
“So, I was really pleased to get it done.”
Smith, 49, of Summit, claimed the title with 1,301 points and Leonard, the director of instruction at The Oaks Golf Course, finished second with 1,254. Jim Schuman, winner of four consecutive POY titles (2017-’20), finished third with 920 points.
In the race for WPGA Senior Player of the Year honors, Kurt Mantyla edged Schuman, breaking the latter’s six-year stranglehold on the award (Schuman is the only player in section history who has won the regular and senior POY races in the same year, and he’s done it four times).
Kurt Mantyla reacts as a birdie putt drops on Wednesday at Blackhawk CC in Madison. Mantyla is from Wauwatosa.
Mantyla, who teaches at Naga-Waukee War Memorial Golf Course, finished with 1,925 points. Schuman, who teaches at Blue Mound Golf & Country Club, was second with 1,779. Michael Crowley, the head PGA professional at Morningstar Golfers Club, was third with 1,723.
“You look at the names of the players over all the years, it’s pretty cool to be a part of that,” Mantyla said. “’Schu,’ you know how good he is, and then you’ve got Eddie (Terasa). Mark Voeller. Charlie Brown has always played really good. There’s a lot of good players, so it was exciting to come out on top.”
David Bach, an assistant professional at Whistling Straits, earned WPGA Assistant Player of the Year honors with 1,210 points. Blake Jens of Blackhawk Country Club was second with 812 and Joaquin Diaz of North Shore Country Club was third with 778.
Smith, a native of Sydney, Australia, got the 2021 season off to a great start by finishing T-22 in a 312-player field at the PGA Professional Championship in late April. He opened with an impressive 3-under 68 on the Ryder Course at PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie, Fla., and followed with rounds of 74-73-74.
“It was a springboard,” said Smith, who missed qualifying for the 2021 PGA Championship by two strokes. “It gave me a lot of confidence. That was probably the most amount of pressure I’ve been under for a while and to be able to play solid through that tournament gave me a lot of confidence for the rest of the year.”
He would go on to win the Senior/Junior Better Ball with Mantyla, reach the quarterfinals of the WPGA Match Play Championship and tie for 24th place in the Wisconsin State Open. Along the way, he posted 13 top-10 finishes in WPGA events, including five consecutive top-three finishes. He became the first player to repeat as the section’s stroke play champion since Schuman in 2001-’02.
Smith once was a top-ranked amateur in Australia and has played against the likes of U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy, Stuart Appleby and Robert Allenby. He will turn 50 next October and plans to try to qualify for the PGA Tour Champions.
“I’ll be pushing very hard all year to get myself ready and be playing, hopefully, the best golf of my life come the end of the year,” he said. “That would be a great goal to achieve. That’s kind of a lifelong dream, to play on the PGA Tour or the (Champions) tour.”
Leonard won the Stableford Classic in July and made it to the Match Play final before losing to Austin Gaugert, 2-up. He also was the low WPGA professional at the State Open, finishing T-8. He assumed the POY points lead in July and held it until Smith caught him in the season’s final event.
In the senior POY race, Mantyla ended Schuman’s six-year run atop the standings.
“Every section throughout the country, there’s just so many good players, so it’s definitely a proud moment when you can come out on top,” Mantyla said. “It just kind of signifies that this season, I was consistent. I played well in all of the senior events.”
He kicked off his season with an impressive victory at the Wisconsin Senior PGA Professional Championship, shooting 69-69 at Morningstar Golfers Club and then winning a three-man playoff with a birdie on the first extra hole. Crowley and John Freeman of Edgewood Golf Course tied for second.
In the WPGA Senior Match Play, Mantyla beat Bill Graham, Doug Cheever, Voeller and Schuman to reach the final, then edged Terasa in 19 holes to win the title.
“It was big, for sure,” Mantyla said. “Last year, I got my butt kicked by Schuman in the finals. I’ve played hundreds of rounds of golf with Voeller; he’s one of my really good friends. And I’ve been fortunate enough to play a lot of golf with and against Eddie. He’s a (Wisconsin Golf) Hall of Famer and he still can play golf.
“It’s pretty amazing anytime I play against Schuman or Eddie. I just watch those guys play golf. I get a little distracted sometimes playing against them. Just the way that they play. They’re so solid. It’s kind of a treat. I think you learn something every single time from playing golf with guys like that.”
Mantyla was well on his way to completing a trifecta of sorts when he led the Wisconsin State Senior Open with three holes left. But he finished bogey, triple-bogey, bogey at Blackhawk Country Club and then lost to Mario Tiziani on the fifth hole of a sudden-death playoff.
The triple was the result of a “mud ball” and an awkward lie in the 17th fairway. Mantyla tried to lay up on the par-4 but hooked his 7-iron shot out of bounds, then compounded the error by three-putting once he reached the green, missing a 2-footer for double-bogey.
“I had no three-putts for the whole tournament and then I three-putted the last three greens,” he said. “It kind of came out of nowhere. The mud ball killed me. I really feel like I didn’t hit a bad shot and I went 5-over in three holes. I’m like, ‘What just happened?’”
It was a tough way to lose, but Mantyla, who admitted that he sometimes has battled a negative attitude on the course, was able to find a silver lining.
“I felt like I hung in there and played shot-for-shot with Tiz, and we all know how good Tiz is,” he said. “So as much as it sucked losing that way … obviously, I was upset, you don’t want to lose an event that way. But with that attitude change, I was like, all right, I’m going to take the good out of it. I played really, really solid golf. The playoff was fun. The adrenaline was going. That part of it was good.”
Mantyla carried that momentum into the 33rd Senior PGA Professional Championship in October. He posted a 1-over 288 total on the Ryder and Wanamaker courses at PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie and tied for 46th place among the 264 competitors. Crowley finished T-16 and qualified for the 2022 KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship; Mantyla missed qualifying by two shots.
“I played well,” he said. “Made some birdies, had a lot of fun. It was a great experience.”
Bach, a native of Brown Deer, won WPGA Assistant POY honors for the second time in three years. He was rock-solid all season, posting top-five finishes (among assistants) in every event he played.
“I’m pretty happy overall, even though I didn’t win an individual event this year,” he said. “I really just tried to push to stay out in front of the other assistants that could make a run at me in the points.”
The UW-Stout graduate had a good run at the National Car Rental Wisconsin Assistant PGA Professional Championship, shooting 67-71 at Morningstar to tie for the lead in regulation before losing to Diaz on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff.
Bach also finished T-20 in the 204-player field at the State Open.
