Kaysville’s Cole Ponich overcomes BYU teammate Cooper Jones’ momentum-turning albatross, wins 126th Utah State Amateur

OGDEN — Now, it is really on.

In so many words, that was BYU golfer Cole Ponich’s reaction when his Cougar teammate Cooper Jones made a potentially momentum-turning albatross on the 24th hole of their scheduled 36-hole championship match of the 126th Utah State Amateur golf tournament Saturday at Ogden Golf & Country Club.

An albatross is also known as a double eagle, which in this case was a two on a par-5, OG&CC’s 584-yard 6th hole.

Ponich, 24, had never trailed, but the 20-year-old Jones’ win of the hole cut Ponich’s lead to four holes and the rising senior at BYU turned to his caddie and said, ‘now we are going to have to play some golf. … Now it is really going to be a match.’”

And that’s exactly what Ponich did, recovering well enough to eventually take a 2 and 1 win and forever etch his name in Utah amateur golf lore.

The Kaysville and Davis High product becomes the third-straight BYU golfer to win the State Am, joining Zac Jones — Cooper’s older brother — from 2022 at Soldier Hollow and Simon Kwon from last year at the Salt Lake Country Club . A Cal transfer, Kwon wasn’t technically a Cougar when he beat David Liechty in the final last year, but he had already given coach Bruce Brockbank a silent commitment.

“It hasn’t set in yet. It will probably take a day or two, but it feels great,” Ponich said. “I mean, my hands were shaking pretty good, even though I only had to two-putt from 15 feet (on the 17th hole, the match’s 35th) to win. It is going to take a little bit to process, but it feels really great right now.”

After shaking hands with Jones and Jones’ caddie, his father, Russ, Ponich sought out his mother and gave Becky Ponich a big hug.

Once one of the top junior golfers in the state, if not the country, Ponich had struggled the past few years with a back injury and other setbacks that forced him to redshirt last spring at BYU.

“I mean, she knows what I have gone through the last year or two. Like I’ve said, I was out of the competitive golf scene for a while. It is tough going from one of the better juniors in the country growing up to having a couple of years of struggling and going through some hard times, some injuries,” he said. “We both know how far I’ve come in the last couple of months, and she is just proud of me.”

Ponich played well in stroke-play qualifying, grabbing the No. 2 seed after Tuesday’s round, then needed 22 holes to knock off Caleb Norton. So Saturday’s marathon wasn’t necessarily his hardest match, but he said it tested his nerves like nothing he’s ever done before.

He took a four-hole lead after 18 holes and a break for lunch, then pushed it to five before Jones’ hole out from the fairway on No. 6, a hole out that really wasn’t necessary because Ponich was in trouble and had been assessed a two-shot penalty for checking to see if a ball was his before marking it.

“If you are not nervous down the stretch with a little bit of a lead to win the State Am, I just don’t think you care enough,” Ponich said. “I was feeling it.”

Amazingly, Ponich almost didn’t play in the State Am this year. He signed up a week before the qualifiers began, and was denied entrance by six different qualifiers because he signed up late. He got into the qualifier in Hurricane, some four hours from his home in Kaysville, and made it into the 156-player field for Ogden while there.

“I definitely wasn’t driving down there thinking, ‘I am going to win this whole tournament,’” he said. “But the goal at the start of the summer was to just play as many tournaments as I can and get back into competitive shape for the next (college) season.”

After Jones made the double-eagle, Ponich ran over and gave him a celebratory hug, saying he was “pumped for him” and that he had never witnessed a double-eagle before.

“I mean, we were cheering each other on all day,” Ponich said. “You are never rooting against anybody, especially a friend.”

Jones, who has had a spectacular summer already with two appearances in Korn Ferry Tour events, making the cut in one, leaves Sunday to play in the Southern Amateur in Lexington, Kentucky. He was rueful in defeat of a putter that suddenly turned balky after carrying him on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

“I talked about my putter (being on fire) yesterday,” he said. “I don’t feel like it was there today. A lot of burned edges. … Putts didn’t fall today.”

As for the albatross, Jones said it was the first of his golfing career. He hit a 4-iron from 241 yards out, “barely” carried a bunker that was 221 yards out, and saw the ball slam into the flag stick before setting at the bottom of the cup.

“Pretty cool,” he said. “First double eagle. If nothing else today, that was pretty cool, to come out with that.”

Jones won’t be playing for the Cougars this fall, like Ponich, Zac Jones, Tyson and Jackson Shelley, Peter Kim and others. He will go on a church mission to Peru for two years, beginning in September.

“I am happy for Cole,” Jones said. “Like I said yesterday, it is always good for a Coug to win the State Am. I wish it would have been me, but Cole is well-deserving.”

Indeed, Ponich had to beat some of the top amateurs in the state to get to the championship match, including past champion Dan Horner (1 up), Oklahoma State signee Parker Bunn of Bonneville High (2 and 1), former BYU star Elijah Turner (3 and 1) and Davis Johnson of the University of Utah (4 and 3).

“It has always been on the bucket list, even though I haven’t played many of them, because most of my career I have been busy with junior golf tournaments outside the (state),” Ponich said. But it has definitely always been a goal of mine. To win it in my last ever State Am means a lot.”