05/16/2026
CONGRATULATIONS TO BEN KERN! 🤩 What a great day at the 2026 PGA Championship! Ben Shot the lowest round by a Club Professional in this event since the year 2000! 🔥 He is also the only Club Professional to make the cut this year earning him a spot at the Closing Ceremony for Low Club Professional. 💯 Jeff Kern, our Assistant / Teaching Professional is there with Ben and his Family taking in all the awesome sights and sounds of Aronimink. I'm sure he's so happy and proud of his son Ben! All of us at Forty Niner CC, and I'm sure all of Tucson are rooting for you Ben! Have fun and keep it going!
Ben Kern plays golf once a week. He just beat five of the world's top 10 players for 36 holes at the PGA Championship, and the club pro has secured a weekend tee time at Aronimink.
Kern, the general manager at Ohio's Hickory Hills GC, qualified for the PGA Championship as a top-20 finisher at this year's PGA Professional Championship. The Arizona native was recruited to play golf at Kansas State and played mini-tours for a few years before realizing it didn't fit his long-term career aspirations. "I am not one to want to practice all the time, so the week-in, week-out grind doesn't really appeal to me anymore," Kern said Friday.
Kern sets a goal of playing one round of golf per week with the members, and he said Hickory Hills has a great range that "I don't spend enough time on." But his natural talent was on full display Friday at Aronimink, where he carded six birdies en route to a 3-under 67 in cold, windy conditions that tied the second-lowest score of the morning wave.
Kern's 1-over total through 36 holes was better than five of the world's top 10-ranked players who competed in the same wave: Matt Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose, J.J. Spaun and Russell Henley.
"It proves to myself that I can hang with these guys when I'm playing solid, and it was really nice," Kern said Friday. "I hung my head high yesterday, and I had a goal today and I surpassed it."
That he did. The only potential caveat: Kern is a plus-6 handicap back home, and he knows this round means he might need to give his members more strokes in future weekly games. It's a price he will heavily pay, though, for a weekend tee time at a major championship.
"I have no idea what the course rating is around this place, but I probably assume it's kind of high. So it's going to absolutely destroy my handicap," Kern quipped. "But that's okay. That's what it's for."
