Jerry Kelly’s Senior Career is on Fire!

By
Bruce Berlet
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Jerry Kelly, age 50, is having his best year ever playing professional golf wining the Pacific Links Bear Mountain Championship on Sunday September 16 for his second PGA Tour Champions victory in four weeks.

HARTFORD, Conn. – University of Hartford grad Jerry Kelly’s career season on the PGA Tour Champions continued Sunday with a third-place finish in the SAS Championship at Prestonwood Country Club in Cary, N.C.

Kelly shot a closing, 4-under-par 68 for a 54-hole total of 15-under 210, his 11th top-10 finish of the year. He narrowly missed a 25-foot birdie putt from the fringe on the 18th hole that would have tied Scott Parel (65) for second. Rhode Island native Billy Andrade closed with 72 for 208 and a tie for 11th.

But no one could keep pace with World Golf Hall of Famer Bernhard Langer, who had a bogey-free 65 for 194, six better than Parel. Langer’s 38th Champions title extended his multiple-win season streak to seven years, second all-time to Hale Irwin’s 11. It also was the ninth tournament that he has won multiple times, and he’s now 5-0 when he shoots a 62.

Langer, who received the Payne Stewart Award last month, is the prohibitive favorite in the three-event Charles Schwab Cup playoffs that begin Friday with the Dominion Energy Charity Classic at the Country Club Virginia in Richmond, Va. He’ll also defend in the second stop, the Invesco QQQ Championship at Sherwood CC in Thousand Oaks, Calif. The season ends with the Charles Schwab Cup Championship on Nov. 8-11 at Phoenix CC in Phoenix, Ariz.

Kelly is third on the Champions money list and the Schwab points list. He won the season-opening Mitsubishi Election Championship at Hualalai and also has a second in the American Family Insurance Championship, a tie for second in the Cologuard Classic and a tie for third in the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship and a tie for fourth in Constellation Senior Players Championship.

On the PGA Tour, 2012 Travelers Championship winner Marc Leishman shot a 7-under 65 for a five-stroke victory in the CIMB Classic in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Leishman’s tournament record-tying 72-hole total of 26-under 262 easily outdistanced Emiliano Grillo (66), Chesson Hadley (66) and Bronson Burgoon (68). Leishman’s fourth career victory was worth $1,260,000.

Two-time CIMB winner and 2017 FedEx Cup champion Justin Thomas shot a closing 64 to tie for fifth with Abraham Ancer (65), Charles Howell III (67), Louis Oosthuizen (69) and Gary Woodland (71). The Tour now heads to the CJ CUP @ NINE BRIDGES at Jeju Island, Korea, where Thomas beat Leishman in a last year.

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Bruce Berlet
Worked as sports writer for The Hartford Courant for 38 years before retiring in 2008. His major beats at the paper were golf, the Hartford Whalers, University of Connecticut men’s and women’s basketball, Yale football, United States and World Figure Skating Championships and ski columnist. He has covered every PGA Tour stop in Connecticut since 1971, along with 30 Masters, 25 U.S. Opens, four PGA Championships, 12 Deutsche Bank Championships, 15 Westchester (N.Y.) Classics and four Ryder Cups. He has won several Golf Writers Association of America writing awards, including a first place for a feature on John Daly, and was elected to the Connecticut Golf Hall of Fame in 2009. He also worked for the Connecticut Whale hockey team for two years when they were renamed by former Hartford Whalers managing general partner Howard Baldwin, who had become the marketing director of the Hartford Wolf Pack, the top affiliate of the New York Rangers.

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