Golfers have arrived in Durango for the 56th Navajo Trail Open, but it’ll be hard for this year’s storyline to match last year.
Two friends – mentor and pupil – cruised down the 18th fairway in a deadlock with smiles on their faces as they dueled to the finish. Former University of New Mexico golfer Sam Saunders drained a long birdie putt on No. 17 to finally catch mentor and fellow Lobo Wil Collins. But Collins answered with a 12-foot birdie putt on the finishing hole to cap off a wire-to-wire victory in which the Albuquerque pro showed off a masterful short game en route to the title.
“That was a great shootout between two friends and two Lobos,” Collins said during Thursday’s pro-am round at Hillcrest. “More than anything, it was just a lot of fun.”
This year will be a bit different for the defending champion. In 2016, he had status on the Web.com Tour and began 2017 playing on the PGA Latino American Tour. After his first event in South America, the 38-year-old Collins felt it was time to make a big change.
“Life’s been a little different for me since we talked last,” he said. “I decided early this year that it was time to try something new. I went and played first event in Bogota, Colombia, in February and decided that I didn’t want to do another 20 of those. I just needed to be around my family more, so I took a job in the mortgage business.”
Though he might not be grinding it out week after week on the tour circuit, Collins is still one of the favorites to win and repeat as the Navajo Trail Open champion. After three months without picking up a club, the short-game wizard “accidentally” made it through U.S. Open local qualifying a few weeks ago.
“You can never count Wil Collins out,” Hillcrest PGA Professional Guy Begay said. “He’s such a good putter, and that’s how you win out here.”
Collins swatted it around the par 71, 7,100-yard course no better than many contenders last year. However, he made several out-of-this-world up-and-ins that had spectators and his playing partners shaking heads in awe. He finished at 9-under-par after the three-day, 54-hole event to take home the $5,500 prize.
Collins’ buddy Saunders isn’t in the 2017 field, but the third member of last year’s final group is back.
Braden Baer put together two solid rounds in the 2016 event to get into the final group in the final round of his first professional tournament. Since moving up to Denver this year, he has fine-tuned his game and expects to contend once again this week.
“The first few days last year I didn’t expect much and I played really well,” Baer said. “The third day I started thinking too much, got the expectations going a bit too high instead of just having fun and keeping it simple. I let a bad shot get in my head early. I feel like I know the course a bit better now and I can be more patient when I have to but also attack some of these holes more than I did before.”
Riverdale Golf Club’s Bryan Hackenberg is another Denver-area professional prepared to go low at Hillcrest this week. Hackenberg dropped seven birdies in Thursday’s pro-am en route to a sterling round of 65.
“This is the third year I’ve played in this tournament, and the course just keeps getting better and better,” Hackenberg said. “The greens were pretty firm last year, but they were super receptive (Thursday). I was seeing some good lines on the greens and just trusting my reads. I was able to get the right quadrants, made a few and just kept it going. If you start making putts and getting the speed of these greens down, you’re golden out here. I know from past experience though that this place can get really tricky.”
The tricks at Hillcrest might be handled a bit better by local pros Keenan Holt, Bobby and Tom Kalinowski, Micah Rudosky, Devin Schreiner and Shea Sena – and that could make a difference for one of them down the stretch Sunday afternoon.
According to Begay, if Collins isn’t the man at the top Sunday afternoon, Scottish golfer and Western New Mexico alum Calum Hill is a favorite.
“He’s just a solid player and his game is perfect for what’s needed to do well at Hillcrest,” Begay said. “He was a Division II All-American. He hits it straight; he has a great wedge game; he keeps it below the hole; he makes putts and he seems to always know where it’s going.”
In addition to the 40 PGA professionals in the field, 180 players will make up the five amateur flights. Friday’s tee times begin shortly after 7 a.m. and the professionals will tee off around 1 p.m. The golf course will be closed to the public all weekend, but spectators are welcome.
jfries@durangoherald.com
