Utah Open field includes PGA Tour players, 1998 champion, three brothers and a former NFL QB

The annual Siegfried & Jensen Utah Open golf tournament will celebrate its 100th playing in two years, but organizers will have a difficult time duplicating the intrigue of the 98th event, which begins Friday at Riverside Country Club in Provo and runs through Sunday.

The 2024 Utah Open features one of the most interesting and diverse fields in recent memory, starting with the return of a former champion from long ago, Jay Don Blake . The 1988 winner was granted a PGA Tour exemption to play at the tour’s Black Desert Championship in his hometown of St. George in October.

That event, Oct. 10-13, will be Blake’s 500th start on tour, and he presumably is using the 98th Utah Open as a tuneup. He’s obviously no slouch on the links, having won the 1980 NCAA championship while at Utah State, and the 1991 Shearson Lehman Brothers Open while on the PGA Tour.

Blake played in two PGA Tour Champions events last season; he starts Friday on the No. 10 tee at 8:10 a.m. with former champion Dusty Fielding and St. George’s Hayden Christensen.

The field includes at least two former BYU standouts who are playing on the PGA Tour this season, Zac Blair and Patrick Fishburn. Both are former Utah Open champions.

Blair earned the $22,000 first-place check last year, outlasting former University of Utah golfer Javier Barcos of Spain in four playoff holes, on his 33rd birthday. Blair and Barcos both shot 15-under-par 201 in the 54-hole tournament to reach the playoff.

Neither Blair nor Fishburn made the FedEx Cup Playoffs this year, so both were available to play in Utah this week before the last eight or so tournaments on tour resume in September. The Black Desert Championship in Ivins is the third event in the PGA Tour’s fall series and will be played the week before the Shriners Children’s Open at TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas.

Blair tees off at 1 p.m. Friday from the first tee with brothers and fellow former BYU standouts, Clay and Cole Ogden.

Fishburn starts at 1:10 p.m Friday from No. 1 with former BYU players Carson Lundell and Austen Christiansen.

Can a former Dallas Cowboy thrive in Utah?

As if having Blair, Fishburn (the 2017 Utah Open champion) and Blake in the tournament wasn’t enough, the field also includes former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo for the fourth-straight year. An analyst for the NFL on CBS, Romo became acquainted with the tournament because he is good friends with Park City’s B.J. Staten , the 2014 Utah Open champion.

Romo, who tied for 39th last year at -2, tees off at 1:20 p.m. with Staten and Ryan Kartchner.

The Utah Open has a history of featuring women in the field, and this year is no different. Former BYU and Utah Valley women’s golf coach Sue Nyhus, a professional, is entered, along with current BYU golfer Adeline Anderson Wach.

Wach won the Utah Women’s Open last week at Timpanogos Golf Course in Provo, then the Utah Women’s Stroke Play Championship at Mountain Dell on Wednesday, edging six-time Women’s State Am champion Kelsey Chugg by a shot.

The Utah Open field will include three brothers for the first time since 1966, when Lynn, Bruce and Gary Summerhays all teed it up at Ogden Country Club; coincidentally, Jack Ridd and his sons Kean and Craig also played in the tournament that year.

The 3 Shelley brothers

• BYU golfer Tyson Shelley, who missed the cut at the U.S. Amateur in Minnesota on Tuesday, enabling him to get into Utah Open. The 21-year-old won the prestigious Pacific Coast Amateur last summer and was medalist at the Men’s State Amateur last month at Ogden Country Club.

• Jackson Shelley, a rising senior at Skyline High who has committed to BYU, and who tied for fourth at the Salt Lake City Open last Sunday.

• Austin Shelley, who is transferring from Olympus to Skyline this year and recently won the Utah PGA’s Junior Major Championship at Hobble Creek Golf Course.

Keep an eye on these golfers

Other amateurs to watch include 2024 SLC Open champ Martin Leon of Chile (by way of the University of Utah and Rutgers), rising Lone Peak senior and BYU commit Kihei Akina , State Am champ Cole Ponich , BYU golfer Zac Jones and SLC Amateur champ Bowen Mauss, who has signed with Arizona State.

For two outstanding young amateurs, it will be the last competitive tournament for awhile; current BYU golfer Cooper Jones is going on a church mission to Peru, while Utah Junior Amateur champion Lincoln Markham (a BYU commit) is going to serve in Spokane, Washington.

Top local pros in the field include former BYU golfers Carson Lundell and Rhett Rasmussen, Sandy’s Todd Tanner, Delta’s Casey Fowles, Ogden’s Braydon Swapp, Bluffdale’s Dustin Pimm, Salt Lake City’s Pete Stone and Tommy Sharp, Farmington’s Zach Johnson and former University of Utah golfer Mitchell Schow.

Schow will head out to European Q School in Italy later this month, he said after tying for fourth at the SLC Open last Sunday.