Cleveland On the Professional Golf Tournaments Headed to the Magnolia State

Tiger Woods is suddenly playing Tiger-esque golf again. Rory McIlroy is back in the winner’s circle. The Masters – the azaleas, dogwoods and drama – is just around the April dogleg. If it ever quits raining in Mississippi, some of us might get in a few rounds ourselves.
Meanwhile, hopefully Mother Nature will smile on a couple of big professional tournaments coming up in the Magnolia State.
The Sanderson Farms Championship, the state’s only stop on the PGA Tour, doesn’t happen until the fall, but we’ve got two spring PGA alternate tour events coming up: one on the gulf coast and the other in the northern part of the state at Oxford.
Both will offer some tour quality golf. To wit:

• The “Who’s Who” field of senior (age 50 and over) golf legends is set for this week’s Rapsican Systems Classic, a PGA Champions Tour stop, at lovely Fallen Oak, near Biloxi. Two-time defending champion Miguel Angel Jimenez will defend his title against some of the best players in the world, including former champions Fred Couples, Jeff Maggert, David Frost, Tom Lehman and Michael Allen.

Couples, a World Golf Hall of Famer, is joined by fellow Hall of Famers Bernhard Langer, Colin Montgomery, Larry Nelson, Mark O’Meara, Vijay Singh and Ian Woosnam.

• While the Coast tournament will feature some the sport’s most accomplished past champions and leading money winners, the first-ever North Mississippi Classic will welcome many pros who are expected to be future champions. 2017 Nicklaus Player of the Year Sam Burns, 2015 Haskins Award winner and former No. 1 ranked world amateur Maverick McNealy and 2016 Southeastern Conference Champion Lee McCoy are among the players who have committed to compete in the event at Oxford Country Club April 19-22. Although no announcement has been made, expect current Ole Miss All American Braden Thornberry, the most accomplished college golfer in Mississippi history, to join the field as an amateur.

Rapsican, a company that specializes in walk-through metal detectors and x-ray machines, comes on as a badly needed title sponsor for the coast event, which offers a $1.6 million purse and a $240,000 winner’s share. The three-day, 54-hole tournament will be broadcast internationally by The Golf Channel.
The tournament debuted in 2010. Past winners include David Eger, Tom Lehman, Fred Couples, Michael Allen, Jeff Maggert, and, for the past two years, Miguel Angel Jiminez, the popular, pony-tailed, cigar-smoking Spaniard.
Rapiscan Systems has headquarters in Torrance, Calif., but owns and operates a manufacturing plant in nearby Ocean Springs.
The North Mississippi Classic is the newest tournament on the PGA’s web.com Tour, which serves as golf’s version of Class AAA baseball for the PGA Tour. The field will be a mix of young guns, such as Burns and McNealy, but also several ex-PGA Tour players such as Stuart Appleby, Brendon deJonge, Mark Wilson, Jason Gore, Dicky Pride, Roberto Castro, Frank Lickliter, and 2003 PGA Championship winner Shaun Micheel.
Burns, the 21-year-old former LSU golfer, has recently competed with success on the PGA Tour, tying for fifth at the Honda Classic, tying for 12th at Valspar and was in contention for three rounds of last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill.
And that brings us to Thornberry, the Ole Miss standout and defending NCAA champion who surely will be the local favorite if he, as expected, secures a sponsor’s exemption. Thornberry, who turns 21 April 11, has won nine college tournaments and several other huge amateur events. He finished tied for fourth at last summer’s St. Jude Classic in Memphis and turned down more than $240,000 to retain his amateur status.
We will close with a trivia question: With the addition of the North Mississippi Classic, Mississippi becomes one of only five states to host an annual tournament on three PGA tours. The other four?
If you guessed California, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, you are right.

Rick Cleveland is a Jackson-based syndicated columnist. His email address is rcleveland@mississippitoday.org.