Jeff Knox (Kevin Price Photo)
Jeff Knox closed out a wire-to-wire victory Thursday afternoon in the annual Jones Cup Senior Invitational held at the Sea Island Golf Club on the Georgia coast.
The leader after the first two days, Knox finished with a 2-over-par 72 in the final round on the Seaside Course to shoot 5-under par for the tournament and record a one-shot victory in one of the premiere events in the senior amateur ranks.
Knox, an Augusta native and member of Augusta National Golf Club, said this victory was a special one because of his personal ties to the area.
“I’ve been here on Sea Island my whole life,” he said. “My parents honeymooned here, and we came here for vacations every summer. My children live here now, and this is like a second home to me. So, that’s what makes it kinda special.”
This was the second straight year the tournament was decided by a stroke.
Knox, a former club champion at Augusta who is famous for serving as a playing marker in the Masters tournament, finished just ahead of fellow Georgian
Danny Nelson from Savannah. Nelson made a charge on Thursday with a 4-under 66 to challenge for the lead after starting the day seven shots back of Knox at even-par after the first two rounds.
Knox settled for the tournament runner-up spot back in 2023 when he fell to Bob Royak in a playoff.
Knox never trailed in Thursday’s round, but his lead was down to two shots as he was playing the 16th hole. Nelson had just made a birdie to pull within a stroke at the par-3 17th hole.
He made a bogey at the par-4 hole that plays over a tidal creek and went to the 17th hole with only a one-shot cushion.
With Knox looking at a birdie putt on the next-to-last hole after what he said was one of his best iron shots of the day on the 124-yard hole that played into a tricky wind, Nelson settled for a bogey at the demanding finishing hole, which featured a tough pin placement in the back section of the green.
Knox didn’t get his putt for birdie to drop at 17, and as he walked off the green, he could be heard telling his wife, who was watching that “I guess I made all my putts the first two days.”
Still, Knox had a two-shot cushion again, coming to the last. Knox found the fairway with his tee shot on 18 and then hit his second shot from just inside 170 yards up the sloping green, and it came to rest on the back of the putting surface where the hole was located. He stopped his birdie try close to the cup but saw his par putt lip out and settled for a bogey finish.
That’s all he needed, however, to claim the winner’s trophy.
“I had a real feel for the greens the first couple of days,” Knox said. “I felt real comfortable with my putting stroke and made a few mid-range putts, which is really the difference in shooting a low round or a round of par or a couple over.”
He only had one birdie over the final 18 while making three bogeys and 14 pars. Knox opened the tournament with five birdies and a bogey in his first round before making five more birdies and two bogeys in his second round, which gave him a four-shot advantage over his nearest challenger, Royak, heading into closing 18.
Knox said he hadn’t played much individual competitive golf coming into the Jones Cup and admitted to battling some nerves during play on Thursday.
“I hadn’t been in this situation for a few years,” he said. “It was a little bit of pressure, a different feel, with some butterflies and all that.
“I fought through them and hit some quality shots. The shot on 17, I was real pleased with that one. And then, the 6-iron here on 18. I was about 167 out, but we were right dead into the wind.”
Knox was paired with two former tournament winners in the final group on Thursday, those being Royak, who won two years ago and also in 2020 just weeks prior to the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and four-time champion Doug Hanzel who last won the event in 2021.
Royak, another Georgia-based player from Alpharetta and the No. 2 ranked player in the AmateurGolf.com Senior Rankings coming into the week, shot even-par 70 over the last round and ended up tied for third at 3-under for the championship. He was fresh off a victory last week down in Florida at the Golfweek Pirates Classic when he prevailed in a five-hole playoff.
Hanzel, another golfer from Savannah, Ga., and the current No.3-ranked player, carded a 71 on Thursday and finished solo eighth at 1-under for the tournament.
Also tying for third was Montgomery, Ala., player Shaw Pritchett. He opened with a 70 in round one before back-to-back sub-par scores of 68 and 69 in the final two rounds.
Two more past champions finished tied for sixth this year at 2-under. Those were Gene Elliott, the 2018 winner, and Jack Larkin, who won the tournament last winter. Both players went into the Jones Cup ranked eighth in the senior game.
The round of the day belonged to Fujikura CEO David Schnider, who shot a 5-under 65 with six birdies and one bogey.
"I played well today," Schnider told AmateurGolf.com. "I struggled with my driver the first two rounds. I was playing swing instead of golf, and you can’t do this on the Seaside Course, or you will hit it out of play."
Schnider added, "Today, I was much more focused off the tee and drove it straight all day, which gave me confidence hitting into greens. I hit 17 of 18 greens. I hit 17 of 18 greens today and it was a very low stress day even when the wind picked up the last hour of the round, I was hitting solid shots the right distance which is very important on this course."
The newly turned 55-year-old sat down for a quick nine last year with AmateurGolf.com before he played in the U.S. Senior Open. He lives in Carlsbad, Calif., where the leading manufacturer of graphite golf shafts is located. He carded rounds of 76-73-65 to finish T18.
"I putted well also, but I did leave a couple out there," Schnider said. "Was great fun to have my wife walk and watch each day."
Only the top eight finishers in the 83-player field were under par at the end of the three days of play. John D Wright from Alabama finished ninth at even-par and actually posted three straight 70 scores for the tournament.
Two players tied for 10th at 1-over for the week. One of those was New Yorker Kevin Vandenberg, the current No. 1 in the senior ranks. Vandenberg came to the Georgia coast with wins already in 2025 at the Golfweek Senior POY Classic and the Plantation Senior.
He opened with a 67 at Sea Island to trail by only a shot after the first round. Vandenberg shot 73 and 71 over the last two rounds and wound up six off the lead pace.
The next big tournament on the senior circuit is the Florida Azalea Senior Amateur at Palatka Golf Club on March 7-9.
Tournament tidbits:At Augusta: Jeff Knox, this year’s Jones Cup Senior champion, has long been known as the guy who played for several years as a marker at the Masters tournament.
A marker in golf is someone who plays with a tournament competitor who doesn’t have a playing partner when there is an odd number of players and needs someone else to form a group to maintain pace of play.
Filling that role from 2002 through 2022, the Augusta member has played with some pretty big names including Rory McIlroy who he beat in the third round of the 2014 Masters when Knox shot 70 and Mcllroy posted a 71.
Mcllroy would later say Knox reads Augusta’s treacherous greens better than anyone he’d ever seen.
“ A guy named Rory Mcllroy made me famous,” Knox said Thursday after the trophy presentation when asked about his days as a marker at the Masters.
It also has been reported that Sergia Garcia shunned the post-round handshake with Knox when the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame member who has shot a course-record 61 from the members’ tees outscored him during a round in the 2014 Masters.
It also has been noted that several Masters champions including Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson have sought out Knox for advice about putting the Augusta greens.
Low local: St. Simons Island resident Trey Freeman accepted an invite to play in this week’s Jones Cup Senior and put together a top-20 showing as he finished 4-over for the championship with rounds of 70, 71 and 73 on the Seaside Course which hosts the PGA Tour’s RSM Classic every fall. He finished among a large group tied for 18th.
The top 16 are guaranteed a spot in the next Jones Cup Senior, but Amateur Golf has a feeling that Freeman, the only full-time local resident in the field, will receive an invitation to the 2026 tournament.
He was one of eight players to tie for 18th - all of them finishing a stroke back of the players who tied for 14th at 3-over for the week.
“The golf course was incredible, and the greens were tricky fast today,” Freeman said after completing play. “With the wind, it made it that much harder.
“I had a ‘first-time’ today, missed an 18-inch putt for par on 16. It was sidehill, downhill, breaking three inches. I knew that would probably knock me out, and it did.”
Freeman finished his final round with two pars.
“No easy task,” he noted. “The pin on 18 was brutal. I had to make a 10-footer for par after just touching it on a downhill putt.”
Freeman previously lived in Athens while working as a pharmacist before moving to coastal Georgia several years back.
The trio: The Jones Cup Senior is the middle tournament of the three events with the Jones Cup name hosted annually by Sea Island.
The premier event is the Jones Cup Invitational that attracts a star-studded field with most of the highly-ranked players in the world amateur rankings competing each January.
This year’s tournament at Ocean Forest Golf Club went to a playoff with Florida State golfer Gray Albright defeating his college teammate Jack Bigham in a sudden-death back in January.
The Jones Cup Junior is held each December just prior to Christmas.
The Jones Cup Invitational was first played in 2001 and is named after the A.W. Jones family which founded Sea Island originally.
Because of the tournament’s success and recognition as one of the world’s top amateur events, the Jones Cup Junior and Jones Cup Senior were started in 2009 and 2011, respectively.