McNabb, Quinn, Pillar punch their tickets to 2021 Senior PGA Championship with solid finishes at PGA Golf Club

    The Philadelphia Section PGA will have three representatives in the field for next May’s KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Okla., not really all that surprising to anyone who follows the fortunes of what has to be one of the strongest groups of 50-and-older players of any Section in the country.

   Dave McNabb, the head pro at Applebrook Golf Club and Laurel Creek Country Club’s Dave Quinn finished in a tie for 16^th place in the 32^nd Senior PGA Professional Championship, supported by The Golf Channel and John Deere, which wrapped up Sunday at the PGA Golf Club’s Wanamaker Course in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

   They will be joined by John Pillar, the director of golf at the Country Club at Woodloch Springs who ended up in the group tied for 24^th place. The top 35 finishers in the Senior PGA Professional Championship punched their tickets to Southern Hills.

   Hopefully, we’ll have enough of a handle on the coronavirus pandemic by next May to allow the Senior PGA Championship, a PGA Tour Champions major, to be played. This year’s Senior PGA Championship, scheduled to be held at the Harbor Shores Resort in Benton Harbor, Mich. was cancelled, one of many casualties of the pandemic in 2020.

   It was probably not quite the finish McNabb envisioned, but it got the job done. The 54-year-old struggled a little down the stretch with a double bogey at the 11^th hole and bogeys at 14 and 16 around a birdie at the 12^th as he closed with a 3-over 75 that left him with a 1-under 286 total.

   Quinn, also 54, just missed out on a ticket to Harbor Shores in last year’s Senior PGA Professional Championship at the Omni Barton Creek Resort & Spa in Austin, Texas. He wasn’t about to let this opportunity get away.

   Back-to-back birdies at the 16^th and 17^th holes enabled Quinn to finish off a solid 2-under 70 in Sunday’s final round and join McNabb in the group at 1-under 286.

   The  53-year-old  Pillar had defeated McNabb in a playoff to win the Philadelphia Senior PGA Professional Championship for the second year in a row in August at Concord Country Club. Pillar was not at his best a year ago at Barton Creek, failing to survive the 36-hole cut.

   But after opening with a shaky 3-over 75 at the Wanamaker Course, Pillar put together three solid rounds of golf, a 1-under 70 at the Ryder Course and rounds of 1-under 71 and even-par 72 back at the Wanamaker Course on the weekend to finish with a 1-over 288 total.

   Pillar did some serious grinding at the Wanamaker Course in Sunday’s final round with two birdies, two bogeys and 14 pars on the scorecard.

   Nobody was going to wrest the title and the winner’s check of $26,000 away from Omar Uresti, the 52-year-old former PGA Tour performer who closed with a 3-under 69 and cruised to a six-shot victory at 18-under 269.

   Uresti pulled away from the field with a string of three straight birdies at the 11^th, 12^th and 13^th holes that left him hoisting the Leo Fraser Trophy at the end of the day.

   Uresti, a Life Member from Austin, Texas, became just the fourth player to own wins in both the PGA Professional Championship and the Senior PGA Professional Championship. His 2017 victory in the PGA Professional Championship at the Sunriver Resort came at McNabb’s expense as Uresti defeated McNabb in a playoff.

   Still, whenever McNabb tees it up in the same club-pro event with Uresti, McNabb gets a trip to a major championship, whether it was the PGA Championship, one of the four major professional championships, in 2017 at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C. or next spring’s PGA Senior Championship, a major on the senior circuit.

   Scott Hebert, the 51-year-old head pro at the Traverse City Golf & Country Club in Traverse City, Mich., made a strong defense of the title he won a year at Barton Creek as he fired a sparkling 5-under 67 in Sunday’s final round to earn runnerup honors at 12-under 275.

   Paul Stankowski, a 50-year-old Life Member from Flower Mound, Texas, made a run at his fellow former touring pro Uresti, but Stankowski’s 4-under 68 left him in a tie for third place with Bob Sowards, a 52-year-old instructor at the Kinsale Golf & Fitness Center in Powell, Ohio, at 11-under 276. Sowards closed with a 2-under 70.

   Hebert and Sowards are two of the other players on the short list of those who have won both a PGA Professional Championship and a Senior PGA Professional Championship that Uresti joined with his victory Sunday.

   Rounding out the Philadelphia Section contingent that played all four rounds at the PGA Golf Club this weekend was Radnor Valley Country Club head pro George Forster, who struggled a little in the final round with a 77 that left him in the group tied for 72^nd place at 9-over 296.

   Pretty good playing by the 64-year-old Forster to survive two cuts against a field of talented senior club professionals from all over  the country. And frequent readers of this blog are well aware just how much talent is out there among the over-50 set, most of whom, like Forster, place serving their membership and relentlessly promoting the game higher on their list of priorities than actually playing the game.