The night before the final round of the Golfweek Pacific Northwest Senior Amateur, Kevin VandenBerg spent more than a half hour on the practice putting green. Despite feeling like he had made hardly any putts all week, VandenBerg was only four off the lead.
“Made a little adjustment in my ball position on my putting and I putted very well today,” VandenBerg said Thursday after making five birdies in his final six holes to win the tournament by four shots. “That was the difference.”
VandenBerg finished 54 holes at Wine Valley Golf Club in Walla Walla, Washington, at 6 under. His final-round 67 catapulted him ahead of second-round leader Craig Larson from Kapalua, Hawaii. Larson, who won the inaugural Golfweek Pacific Northwest Senior back in 2022, was 2 under after rounds of 71-68-75.
“The putter really kicked in on the back side,” VandenBerg said of his final round, though he also gave himself plenty of good birdie looks in the closing holes. “Amazingly, yesterday, Craig made everything and I putted like him today. I think he made like 160 feet of putts yesterday and I think I made about that today.”
Wine Valley, which hosted U.S. Open Final Qualifying last month, is a second-shot golf course with many holes featuring multiple sight lines. A player can be out of position and still have a chance to recover. VandenBerg last played this tournament in 2023, and relishes both the layout and the peaceful backdrop.
“It’s a fun golf course,” VandenBerg said. “The better you know the greens when you’re hitting into them, you can kind of use the slope to direct your ball to the hole if the hole is in a bowl or near an edge where it will roll up against it and come back down.”
VandenBerg began the year with a win at the Golfweek Player of the Year Classic. He felt his game went a little downhill after beginning the year well so the victory at Wine Valley was welcome. VandenBerg put new Callaway irons into play earlier in the spring to great effect and also feels that the extra attention he has put on his tee shots is beginning to pay off.
For now, VandenBerg is trying to build to a crescendo as the U.S. Senior Amateur approaches next month. He’ll play a few smaller events in addition to the Sunnehanna Senior Amateur in the meantime.
Players certainly benefit from experience at Wine Valley, and VandenBerg noted that he hit some shots in the final round that went into the memory banks for next year’s tournament. Plenty of local Pacific Northwest talent rose to the top of the leaderboard in all three divisions of the Golfweek event, like Portland’s Greg Chianello, who was third in the Senior division at 1 under.
That was especially true in the Super Senior division, where Pat O’Donnell of Happy Valley, Oregon, and Scott Masingill of Payette, Idaho, both finished at 6 under. The two men, who are in the Pacific Northwest Golf Association Hall of Fame and the Idaho Golf Association Hall of Fame, respectively, played all three rounds together at Wine Valley. They both posted rounds of 68-71-71 to stay neck-and-neck throughout regulation.
As the final round began to draw to a close, O’Donnell keyed into the standings. Masingill has been inputting live scores and O’Donnell asked where they stood. O’Donnell birdied Nos. 17 and 18 and Masingill birdied No. 18.
“I’ve known Scott quite awhile. We play in some of the PNGA events against each other,” O’Donnell. “Such a class guy.”
O’Donnell claimed the title on the first playoff hole.
“It’s hard to putt out here,” O’Donnell said when asked for an assessment of his play for the week. “With it getting windy the last two days, it really was hard to get it close, at least for me. Some of the greens because of the pin placements, they were just hard to get it close. You hope you get it on 30, 40 feet and you’ve got a chance to two-putt. Played good enough, I didn’t miss too many short putts – the 4 to 5 footers. That was kind of the key or the difference.”
O’Donnell, at 71 years old, played up into the Super Senior division this week, which makes the victory all the more impressive.
“It’s been awhile,” O’Donnell said when asked for the last title he won. “That age thing creeps in.”
This time last year, O’Donnell fired an opening 67 to lead the Golfweek PNW event only to have to withdraw later in the week because of a thoracic spine injury that knocked out most of his summer.
“My biggest goal was to get through three rounds of golf this year,” he said.
The timing of the injury kept O’Donnell off the radar for the past year, but already this summer, he has played the Oregon Amateur, where he qualified for match play. He has a full slate of state tournaments lined up through the rest of the summer and fall.
One of O’Donnell’s annual goals in golf is to qualify for the Hudson Cup, a Ryder Cup-style event that pits Northwest pros against the region’s top amateurs. He has played the event the past 18 years.
In the Legends division, Dan Parkinson of Lehi, Utah, went wire-to-wire, finishing 8 over in his victory.
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