SE: K-State Alum Curtis Yonke Earns Career-Changing Win on PGA Tour Latinoamérica
Jun 14, 2017 | Men's Golf, Sports Extra
Curtis Yonke was in unfamiliar territory, in more ways than one, but he featured enough comfort and confidence to bypass any fear or nervousness. He had prepared for this moment. He was ready to seize it.
On June 4, the former K-State golfer was playing in the final group of the final round of a PGA Tour Latinoamérica event in Quito, Ecuador, tallying up a number of firsts for Yonke — even if it he didn't show it.
Yonke, who started the final day two strokes behind the leader, fired off a final round 6-under 65 to capture a come-from-behind victory at the Quito Open. His strong finish was preceded by a 3-under 68 in the third round, a shot of reassurance for the 25-year-old pro.
"It felt like I belonged there," Yonke said of the confidence he gained from his third round, which he bested the next day in his final 18 holes that included rattling off six-straight birdies to finish the front nine. "I was in a position that I had never been in before. To play the way that I did really proved to myself, more so than anything, that I could do it."
In only his fourth start on the PGA Tour Latinoamérica, Yonke was the only player in the field to shoot four rounds in the 60s en route to winning the Quito Open by a two-stroke margin at 14-under 270. It was, simply put, a career-changing performance.
The victory gave Yonke exempt status on the PGA Tour Latinoamérica — meaning he's eligible to play in all of its events for the rest of this season. Before, he was playing on conditional status and was not always guaranteed a spot in the tour's tournaments. In one instance, Yonke found out he had a spot in a tournament in Buenos Aires, Argentina, less than 36 hours before his tee time — a stressful experience he won't have to worry about repeating this year.
Second, it moved him from 76th to sixth on the Order of Merit standings, where the top-five money winners at the end of the season receive starts on the Web.com Tour. The victory also bumped Yonke into first in the Bupa Challenge, a four-event competition that awards $10,000 to the top player between the four tournaments.
"It's a big feeling of accomplishment for me and not only for me but my fiancé has been with me since my sophomore year of college and has watched me go through ups and downs, and my family has supported me the entire time," he said. "This win wasn't just for me, it was for all of us."
Yonke's win, or at least the path to it, began long before he ever flew to Quito, Ecuador. About 18 months before it, Yonke watched a video of himself swinging. It wasn't pretty. Changes needed to be made.
"'If I ever do make it on TV, that's not what I want my swing to look like,'" Yonke, a self-described perfectionist, recalled thinking. "I was always one of those guys where I wanted it to be technically sound, so I started studying and studying and trying to make some changes. And it took a while, but I'm starting to see some of those changes pay off now."
Through video of current PGA players like Rory McIlroy, Charl Schwartzel and Adam Scott — all with either a similar build to Yonke or with swing traits he admires — the former Wildcat pieced together positions and movements within his swing he wanted to adjust.
"It helped a ton," Yonke said. "Video work has been a huge aspect of the changes that I've made and some of the success that I've seen in the last year."
As Yonke became more comfortable with his swing, he added shots to his repertoire. He put his days of swinging hard at everything behind him, and started approaching the game like a true professional.
"When you turn pro, they start tucking some of the pins and you have to start getting creative with some of your shots," he said. "When you have a bigger library to choose from, as far as shot making, it really gives you the confidence to try it out on the golf course. That's where it all started for me because the confidence came from the results.
"I started seeing my scoring average go down. I started seeing the ball do what I wanted it to a little bit more. That just gives you the mindset to go out and do it."
Yonke also refers back to a message his grandfather Jim Colbert, a K-State legend and eight-time winner on the PGA Tour, repeated to him over the years.
"When I was at K-State and early on as a professional, he used to tell me I had all of the potential in the world," Yonke said, "but that I didn't know how to play the game."
The message never fully resonated until last September, when Yonke won the Nebraska Open. In the tournament, he grinded through the first two days without playing his best before posting a 5-under 66 in the final round to overcome a four-stroke deficit for the victory.
"That's what he always meant when he was trying to explain to me that it didn't take your best every day to win, or to compete, or to reach your goals. I never understood that," Yonke said. "I was always a perfectionist on the golf course and I still am, to a certain extent. I think that you need to be to play at the level that I'm trying to play at, but you also have to know that on days when you're not at your best, if you can play the game the right way and pick and choose the right shots to hit, you can still compete.
"Then, when you do have your best, that's when you attack and go try to get a trophy."
Yonke only claimed one trophy at K-State, winning the Mizzou Intercollegiate as a freshman, but he was a steady force for K-State's golf team from 2009-13. He said his time at K-State, which included leading the team in scoring average as a junior and senior, prepared him for the life of a professional golfer in at least two major ways: traveling and by simply playing at Colbert Hills every day.
"That facility in general, I believe, can get you ready for any golf course in the world," said Yonke, who still tries to make it back to K-State football games when his schedule allows, which he said will include the Vanderbilt game this season in Nashville, Tennessee. "My time at K-State was fantastic. It truly is a family down there. I still consider it a family."
After graduating and turning pro, Yonke played in a few Web.com Tour events but "never really got anywhere," he said. He also played a couple events on PGA Tour Canada but said the style of golf up north didn't suit his game.
Last November, Yonke missed qualifying to the Web.com Tour by one stroke through a series of Q-School events. His game was still improving, however, and he was intrigued by what a few players told him about the PGA Tour Latinoamérica. He decided it might be a good fit for his game, and he gained conditional status for the tour through another Q-School event in January.
"I look back at where my game was versus now and I had no business trying to play professional golf," said Yonke, a native of Overland Park. "Then again, the steps and the failures that I had early on were also the motivation for making some of changes in my golf swing that I did."
Yonke missed the cut in his first PGA Tour Latinoamérica event but has made the last three, which includes a tie for 18th in Honduras, a tie for 39th in Costa Rica and his victory. Through the tour, he's also traveled to places he never imagined and learned a little bit of Spanish at each stop.
"You see some places that you would never expect to see in your lifetime," he said. "Quito, Ecuador, was a beautiful place, beautiful scenery. We got to go to the middle of the Earth, and I could stand in both hemispheres at the same time. Stuff like that that you don't normally get to do. And the golf courses down there are phenomenal as well. It's a great test of golf."
Yonke will continue to test his game on the PGA Tour Latinoamérica, which was formed in 2012. The yearlong schedule includes 18 official events in 15 countries.
Before gaining exempt status, Yonke committed to play in the Tom Watson Challenge in Overland Park, so he missed last weekend's tour event in the Dominican Republic and dropped to ninth on the Order of Merit. He will return to tour play this weekend in Jamaica. Following that event, the tour takes a two-month break before resuming on August 17, in Paraguay, the first of nine official events to close the season.
Each event is an opportunity for Yonke to increase his chances of earning his Web.com Tour card, another step toward his ultimate goal of reaching the PGA Tour that his grandfather once played on.
"A lot of people think it's impossible to be one of those 150 out of however many thousands are trying," Yonke said. "He's done that, won out there and made a career out of it. For me to look up to that and know that it is possible, to know somebody that has done it, is very influential to me and very motivating for me to try to follow in his footsteps."
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