TJ Baker will play final Rockford-area golf tournament at City Amateur

Say goodbye to TJ Baker.

The 2019 Class 2A state golf champion from Boylan may never play another competitive round in Rockford after this weekend's Greater Rockford Men’s Classic.

At least that’s the plan.

Baker, who won the Men’s City by 11 strokes three years ago and won his second title by shooting 10-under par over only three rounds in 2022, plans to turn pro immediately after this year's Men’s City.

But his exit plan for amateur golf centers on leaving in style, by playing the Aldeen Cup and Men’s City in back-to-back weeks as his final amateur tournaments. He won his fourth Aldeen Cup in five years with a birdie on the final hole last week and is the man to beat starting Friday at Ingersoll, Saturday at Sandy Hollow and Sunday at Aldeen.

“It’s awesome,” Baker said ahead of his pro debut Aug. 5-7 in the Illinois Open at Flossmoor Golf Club. “That’s the main reason I signed up for the Aldeen Cup and the Men’s City. Both of those tournaments have been great to me.”

The 97th annual Men’s City has drawn 77 players, including record nine-time champ Jamie Hogan, former high school state champ Danny Gorman and the winners of the four local tournaments so far this year: Baker, Drew Grygiel (County Am), Cody Rhymer (Crosstown Classic) and defending City champion Robert Dofflemyer III (Mauh-Nah-Tee-See Match Play).

The 99th Women’s City has 23 entries. Kayla Sayyalinh, who has won two of the last three titles, and 2022 champ Ella Greenberg are the only former champs in the field. Greenberg is a three-time NIC-10 champ and a three-time state medalist. Those two, and Winnebago' senior's Kyra Simon, who plays for NCAA Division II Missouri Southern State, just finished their freshman year of college golf.

Sayyalinh won by 13 strokes last year and Greenberg has been among the best girls golfer in Rockford for five years, but there could be a new champ.

Boylan grad Eva Greenberg, who will join her older sister at the University of South Dakota in the fall, finished second last year and has been on a roll this year. She shot a final-round 66 last week to pass her sister and win the Aldeen Cup by three strokes. She shot 70-71-74–215 two weeks ago to finish 31st out of 208 girls at the National High School Golf Invitational in Frisco, Texas. She also won her first NIC-10 title last fall and won her second sectional title with a 67.

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TJ Baker's rise in Rockford golf is complete

Baker followed former Boylan stars Kyle Slattery and Danny Gorman to Southern Illinois-Edwardsville, also earning all-conference honors at SIUE and setting program records (Slattery and Gorman shot 64s in separate tournaments, tied for the low round in school history). And now he will follow them by trying to make it as a pro.

That once seemed automatic. Baker’s 134 in the 2019 IHSA state tournament is tied for second-lowest in the 109 years of that event. As a sophomore at SIUE, he not only made all-conference, he was named the school's Male Athlete of the Year. Valparaiso tennis player Brandon Ancona in 2019 is the only other Rockford athlete to be named his college’s top male athlete in recent memory.

“It was very unexpected,” Baker said. “My coach and teammates did a very good job of hiding it. We have a big ceremony at the end of every school year and we talk about the success of our athletics program and they announced there were three candidates for Male Athlete of the Year. I was shocked to even be one of them. I ended up winning. It was surreal.”

Then, as a junior, he suddenly was only the fifth-best player on his own team, with a scoring average of 74.8.

“I hit a low with my golf game,” Baker said. “I was struggling. I didn’t piece together one good tournament. That summer, I worked really hard, not only on my golf game but on my mental side.

“I was able to bring it back my senior year. I came in with a completely different mental approach. I wanted to enjoy my senior year and have as much fun as I could. That’s when I play my best golf, is when I am having fun. I wasn’t doing that my junior year. I put a lot of pressure on myself after being Male Athlete of the Year. I expected myself to have a good junior year. It was just a bunch of added pressure. My senior year I just tried to go out and have fun. My team had a great year. I had a great year. It was great. I had a lot of fun this season.”

He averaged 70.9 strokes, the best in SIUE history and over two strokes lower than when he was the school’s Athlete of the Year. He became the first SIUE golfer to ever be named Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year. He shot a career-low 66 in his final college round, helping SIUE finish sixth in the National Golf Invitational. And he made the OVC All-Academic team, finishing with a 3.703 GPA in marketing.

Now, it is almost time to try to make it as a touring pro. Slattery, Gorman, Brad Benjamin, Kevin Flack and Jeff Kellen – who played in this year’s PGA Championship after qualifying as a club pro – have all tried and failed to make it to the PGA Tour and its top minor league tour, the Korn Ferry Tour. It’s a difficult task, but Baker and former Winnebago state champ Marcus Smith, a senior at Howard University who just finished second in the Illinois State Amateur, will be the latest to give it a shot.

Baker will pay his own way to play in the Illinois Open and a tournament in August in Oklahoma, then move to Arizona. He will then try to put together a syndicate of investors, play on the minor-league Asher Tour out west, try to get into some bigger minor league events through Monday qualifying and then try out the Korn Ferry qualifying school in the fall of 2025.

“I am still building a list of people and companies to reach out to for an investment deal,” Baker said. “I still have to figure out all the details. I will be funding the first couple of tournaments myself, just to see what’s going on before I ask other people for money. I am new to this. There are a lot of different avenues to it and I am still trying to figure it out as I go.

“You need to do well in Q school and be prepared to shoot a bunch of good scores. I decided it would be the best for me to play and practice for a year.”

He also decided the best way to leave Rockford would be to exit by playing in the Aldeen Cup and Men’s City one last time.

“Rockford golf has been great to me,” Baker said. “I not only owed it to them, but I owed it to myself to play in those last two. I wouldn’t rather do it anywhere else. They are two very special tournaments for me.”

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: TJ Baker will play final Rockford-area golf tournament at City Amateur