Turtle Bay turns pro

In its 14th year, Turtle Bay Resort chose to transform its popular amateur golf tournament into an open event. Pros playing for prize money will be thrown into the mix when the Turtle Bay Open tees off Friday.

It is more than a tweak in the title. Amateurs — predominantly juniors — have dominated Hawaii golf the last decade. They have more tournaments to play and much more time to practice than most golf professionals.

This year’s Aloha Section PGA schedule lost the Maui Open and Pro-Scratch events. Turtle Bay now gives it 15 tournaments — six on Oahu — not including Sony Open in Hawaii qualifiers.

Turtle Bay pro Joe Pack is the tournament chair, and one of those on the North Shore who saw a gap in the 2016 schedule and an opportunity to upgrade everybody’s game.

“We are very good at running events,” Pack explained. “We’ve had Champions Tour events, the LPGA, State Opens. From the operations and maintenance side, we wanted to make sure we were doing things to keep our skills sharp. We wanted the amateurs to see what the professional conditions were like.

“When you play with better players you get better. We want to make sure the professionals’ skills stay sharp and provide an environment where the amateurs can see how the pros compete.”

Those in the Pro and Championship flights compete three days. The Women, A, B and net flights only play on the weekend at Turtle Bay’s Arnold Palmer and George Fazio courses.

Purse is based on participation and first prize is a “fairly small” $2,500, Pack says. The Top 10 pros get paid and the total purse — money and prizes for amateurs — is just over $15,000.

Pack calls it a “good starting point” that has attracted Hawaii pros like Corey Kozuma, Alika Bell, Ryan Acosta, Nainoa Calip, Patrick Murakami, Jared Sawada and Spencer Shishido. Most are pursuing opportunities on tours in Asia and Canada, or still pondering options.

“Younger guys just starting,” Pack calls them. “Very, very good players, but the majority are testing the waters as a professional golfer. I’m a golf professional. These guys are trying to be professional golfers. Tiger Woods is a professional golfer. Guys I work with are golf professionals.”

Manoa Cup champs Brandan Kop, Tyler Ota, Matt Ma and Brent Grant, who also won the 2014 Turtle Bay Amateur and practiced there when he played for Brigham Young-Hawaii, dot the Championship Flight landscape. There are also juniors like Andrew Chin, Zackary Kaneshiro, Evan Kawai, Jun Ho Won and Kengo Aoshima, who has verbally committed to Wake Forest.

Then there are a few women and what Pack calls the “Weekend Warriors” in A and B flights, who will get a room with friends and putt out for a change as they enjoy a different weekend challenge.

Turtle Bay will supply food, entertainment, tough rough and slick greens. Astonishing North Shore views are free.

Turtle Bay hopes the “aspiring pros” this year will enjoy it enough that more pros will enter next year — and will have more tournaments to enter in the future.

“I’m super grateful to Turtle Bay,” says Kozuma, a former University of Hawaii-Hilo golfer now working at Hawaii Kai and planning to go to Q-School in Canada. “I understand it’s hard do pro events because you have to get sponsors and raise a purse and get guys to play. A lot of pros here are busy, working, giving lessons. It’s hard to take time off because you have to balance everything — family life, work and practice. You want to be competitive, you don’t want to just donate, show up and not perform.”

This is the final event for golfers to earn points for the 43rd Gov. John Burns Challenge Cup. Last year, the pro team beat the amateurs for the first time since 2006. This year’s Cup is Nov. 14-15 at Mid-Pacific Country Club.