Follow the 115th Trans-Miss Amateur
To help commemorate the 60th anniversary of Jack Nicklaus’s first Trans-Mississippi Amateur victory, this year’s 115th playing of the championship travels to the Golden Bear’s hometown. From July 10-13, the 72-hole, stroke play event takes place at Brookside Golf & Country Club, a classic parkland course that promises to challenge the top amateurs in the country. Several players with Iowa ties are in the field.
Nicklaus, golf’s all-time major championship winner with 18 Grand Slam titles, won the 1958 Trans-Miss Amateur at Prairie Dunes Golf Club, which happened to be the site of last summer’s championship won by Cameron Champ. Nicklaus won the Trans-Miss Amateur in ’59, too, when he outlasted Deane Beman at Woodhill Country Club. Beman went on to win four times on the PGA Tour before he became the tour’s second commissioner in 1974.
Nicklaus, of course, proceeded to pile up 73 PGA Tour wins and 117 professional victories worldwide, including a record six Masters wins.
Brookside, an old-school parkland course built in 1927 by Charles Lorms, will welcome an elite field that includes 27 players in the top 300 of the World Amateur Golf Rankings (WAGR). Just a short iron away from Jack’s celebrated Muirfield Village Golf Club, Brookside has a rich history as a testing ground and entry point for our nation’s oldest championship.
For 13 of the past 15 years, Brookside has hosted some of the strongest fields for U.S. Open sectional qualifying. On more than one occasion, the eventual U.S. Open Champion played his sectional qualifier at Brookside. Most recently, Lucas Glover won the 2009 U.S. Open at Bethpage Black after earning his way into the tournament through Brookside. Steve Jones did the same thing in 1996 when he punched his ticket into the U.S. Open at Brookside, and then won the national championship two weeks later at Oakland Hills.
Brookside also played host to the 2000 and 2012 Ohio Amateur Championship. Future British Open champion Ben Curtis won the 2000 version, just three years prior to hoisting the Claret Jug at Royal St George’s.