'I feel like I have a home out here'
Stewart Cink can now say he has won tournaments on every level of golf – junior, college, Korn Ferry, PGA and now PGA Tour Champions.
Cink shook off an early challenge from KJ Choi Sunday and went on to a four-shot win over Choi in the Ally Challenge. It was his first victory on the Champions Tour in his second season playing the senior circuit.
Since turning 50 in 2023, Cink has toggled back and forth between the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour. He felt like he still could play and compete on the regular tour and he’s had flashes of brilliance. But he failed to crack the top 125 this season and now he said he’s at peace with taking his game to the Champions Tour mostly full time.
“I feel like this was the first week of a new priority for me as opposed to winning and OK, now we’re going to shift,” he said after shooting 67-66-66. His 17-under 199 total was four shots ahead of Choi. “After the Wyndham in Greensboro, I was just not in a great place and just kind of decided and talked to my wife and some of my team about, you know what, I kind of think it’s time. Like I’m excited to play at The Ally Championship and The Ascension coming up in a few weeks in St. Louis.”
Cink said he feels at home on the Champions Tour.
Stewart Cink: A change since Tucson meltdown
“I just kind of decided that, you know what, I’m going to focus more time now on PGA Tour Champions and shift on over. I’m not going to completely stop playing PGA Tour events, but I feel like I have a home out here that needs — I need to come and stay in my home. I’m ready. I like it out here, it’s fun and it’s just a real blessing to be able to have this. To compete at over 50, it’s awesome.”
To win The Ally, Cink said he needed to exorcise some demons from an earlier meltdown at the Cologard Classic in Tucson when he wasted a four-shot lead on the final nine with a string of bad holes and lost to Joe Durant.
“It was motivation, for sure, once I got near the lead in the first round,” he said. “I know I’m capable of winning, but we have this funny way of believing in like the two percent of things that happen instead of the 98 percent. Tucson, I think, was probably a two percent, but it happened. I think any human being would probably let that linger in their mind because it hurt, it didn’t feel good at all and I didn’t want to repeat that. Coming out today, I definitely had a goal of sort of rewriting that script in my own mind.”
Cink frequently confides in his wife, Lisa, about his feeling and Sunday was no different. He said she talked to him about not worrying about the result.
“She just gave me like a real good sort of peace of mind about going out there and just letting it all happen and living with whatever happens at the end,” he said. “She knows me so well, almost too well in a way.”
Cink won in his tenth start on the Champions Tour. He became the third first-time winner on the tour this year. He earned $330,000 for the win and moved to 19th in the Charles Schwab Cup standings despite making only six starts this season.
He said Choi’s early push to tie the lead freed him up to play more aggressively.
“When I saw K.J.’s name up there tied with me, I knew it was, all right, it’s time to like put the track shoes on because we’ll have to go get this thing,” Cink said. “At that point another gear came out and I started hitting fairways and I was just like, I was piping the driver and hit a lot of pure irons and made some putts that I needed to. I was just really proud of myself the way I stayed in the moment and just did the best I could on every shot. Today the best I could do was pretty darn good, it was some of the best golf I’ve played in quite a while.”
Gregg Dewalt is the editor of Alabama Golf News
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Featured image of Stewart Cink: PGA Tour Champions
