Kevin VandenBerg repeated as Golfweek's Senior Player of the Year in 2024

The most impressive part of Kevin VandenBerg’s Senior Player of the Year run in 2024 was easily the pace. The sheer number of starts that VandenBerg made over the past 12 months is exhausting to read, and harder to replicate. No surprise the 58-year-old had built an all-but-insurmountable lead in the Golfweek National Senior Amateur Rankings with weeks to go in the season.

“It’s nice to be able to play in as many things as I do, both my body letting me do that and then my job allows me to work in the afternoon and play in the morning or vice versa, so it’s a good combination,” said VandenBerg, a money manager who owns his own company, Apogee Investment Management.

VandenBerg, of Pulaski, New York, made 49 starts in 2024, which is five more events than he played the previous year when he won Golfweek’s Senior POY award for the first time. According to AmateurGolf.com research, he had 26 top-25 finishes, 18 top-10 finishes and 16 top-5 finishes in the 27 ranked events in which he played.

Mixed in with his steady year was a selection to the East West Matches, where he played among the best mid-amateur and senior players in a cross-country at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas. VandenBerg also went into the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame in 2024.

Even before last year’s marathon tournament effort, VandenBerg had recognized that his ability to compete so frequently would come down to his physical health, so he made an effort to get in better shape. Where his game is concerned, VandenBerg thinks his strength has always been in his short game and putting.

“A lot of people think I hit it a long way and I still kind of do but I’m really trying to work on my driver, my tee ball,” he said. “That has always been my Achilles heel is I’ve been wayward off the tee. If I can keep the ball in play, which I have been doing, it's a key to my game.”

VandenBerg put a Callaway Mini Driver in play and despite sacrificing some yardage off the tee, he is keeping the ball in play.

“I love that thing,” he said.

Still, looking ahead to 2025, VandenBerg said the theme of his golf life is “bookends.”

“I’m trying to get better at my putting and my driving so that both ends of the game are improving,” he said.

VandenBerg also is focused on getting more comfortable playing with a lead. He thinks he focuses better when he’s chasing. Already this year, he’s seen a breakthrough. VandenBerg already has a win under his belt this season, having defended his title at the Plantation Senior Invitational on Jan. 5. Asked for the highlight of the past year, VandenBerg actually picked an example from that tournament.

“I was up by two at Plantation and that lead went away on the first hole and I made bogey, my opponent made birdie so I was tied,” he said. “But then I made an 8 on No. 8, a quadruple bogey, and then I bogeyed the ninth hole. So 5 over on two holes and I think I was two or three behind going to the back nine.

“And then just continued to dig deep and I ended up winning by four shots.”

Among Golfweek’s four players of the year, VandenBerg was the only runaway winner. In the Super Senior division, Jim Starnes’ finish atop the rankings came down to the wire.

Starnes, of Ft. Myers, Florida, and Greg Goode, of Salina, Kansas, had been trading the lead spot in the rankings for much of the fall. Starnes gave himself a good bump when he finished third in the Ralph Bogart Tournament in early December. Despite the fact that Goode edged Starnes by one spot at Golfweek’s Tournament of Championship on Dec. 15, Starnes managed to edge Goode for the year-long title.

This marks the second time Starnes has won a Golfweek POY title, but now he has done it in two different divisions. In 2016, he was the Senior Player of the Year.

“The fact that I laid it out as a goal and achieved that was very fulfilling,” he told New England Golf,” and rising to the occasion when I got the yips in the latter half of the year, that made it much sweeter.”

In the Legends Division, Bev Hargraves’ determined run at Player of the Year honors was well-documented. The 73-year-old from Little Rock, Arkansas, loaded his competition calendar, displayed the kind of steady performance he’s known for and perhaps most notably, briefly suspended treatment for prostate cancer at the end of the year to compete in Golfweek’s Tournament of Champions and secure his win.

“I just wanted to come down and try to do my best,” he told Golfweek during the TOC.

For the third consecutive year, John Blank of Frostburg, Maryland, won the Super Legends division Player of the Year title.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Kevin VandenBerg Golfweek's Senior Player of the Year 2024