The Golfweek Senior POY Classic field is loaded

Barely two weeks into the new year, there is already work to do. In senior golf, the tournament season starts with the turn of the calendar.

The field is loaded for Golfweek’s first tournament of 2025, the Player of the Year Classic. The 54-hole event will be played Jan. 16-18 at the Omni Orlando (Florida) Resort at ChampionsGate.

The Senior division of the tournament includes several winners from the 2024 season, including defending POY Classic champion Matt Avril.

The marathon man of senior amateur golf, Kevin VandenBerg, will also tee it up at ChampionsGate, and will be honored with Golfweek’s Senior Player of the Year award mid-week as well. Already in 2025, VandenBerg, who competed nearly 50 times last season, has finished T-6 at the Verandah Senior and won the Plantation Senior.

In rehashing his 2024 season with Golfweek, VandenBerg noted that he would continue to focus on the little details this year, and let the big goals fall into place. He said a goal is to work on the “bookends” of his game: driving and putting. He also hopes to get more comfortable playing with a lead.

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“When I focus on the small things, the bigger things come,” VandenBerg said. “One of my goals wasn’t hey let’s be player of the year again, it’s hey let’s get the game better and let everything take care of itself.”

Other notable names in the field include Jon Lindstrom, the Denver resident who recently went into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame and who won the Golfweek Senior Division National Championship in April.

Trent Gregory, winner of the Golfweek Senior National in June, and Greg Seelinger, winner of the Golfweek Tournament of Champions last month, will also tee it up.

After going down to extra holes in Golfweek’s final 2024 event, the Tournament of Champions, both Marcus Beck and Todd Brown return to Super Senior competition at the Player of the Year Classic. Beck, Super Senior Player of the Year in 2023, defeated Brown in that event on the second playoff hole.

The 2024 Super Senior Player of the Year, Jim Starnes, will also tee it up at ChampionsGate.

The men who finished Nos. 1 and 2 in Golfweek’s National Senior Amateur Rankings for the Legends division will both play the POY Classic: Bev Hargraves, the division POY, and runner-up Don Donatoni. Jeffrey Knox, who finished third, will play, too.

Pete Allen, who won the Legends division of this event in 2022, is also in the field.

Yancey Ford, for whom the annual Yancey Ford Award is named, highlights the Super Legends field along with fellow Virginian Bob Rotella, the award-winning mental coach who will receive the Ford Award this week.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Golfweek Senior POY Classic field is loaded