And after successfully negotiating the second stage of qualifying earlier this month, the Parker resident will take another crack at the 108-hole finale this week and early next. The tournament runs Wednesday through Monday (Nov. 28-Dec. 3) at PGA West in La Quinta, Calif.

Meanwhile, the third and final stage of LPGA Tour qualifying also is on tap this week, with the five-round tournament set for Wednesday through Sunday in Daytona Beach, Fla. There, the competitors with Colorado ties include Kelly Jacques of Longmont, former University of Denver golfers Stephanie Sherlock and Sue Kim, and former University of Colorado standout Emily Talley. More on that event later.

And, to complete the trifecta, the final stage of European Tour qualifying is wrapping up this week. After Monday’s third round of the six-round tournament, Colorado resident and former CU golfer Matt Zions is tied for 118th place out of a 156-man field after rounds of 74-73-74 for a 211 total in Girona, Spain, where the top 25 finishers will be fully exempt next year. A cut to the low 70 and ties will be made after round 4. Zions, winner of a 2011 event on the European Tour, is trying to improve his 2013 status after finishing 146th on the money list this year.

As for Bertsch (pictured above in a USGA photo), he’ll join onetime Golden resident Andrew Svoboda in the finals of PGA Tour Q-school. Svoboda already has a 2013 Tour card secured by virtue of finishing 21st on the 2012 Web.com Tour money list, but he’s hoping to improve his status with a strong showing in La Quinta.

Bertsch, a PGA Tour veteran, knows how it feels to finish just inside or outside the cut line in the finals of Q-school. (The top 25 finishers and ties earn PGA Tour exemptions, while the rest of those in the field have to settle for Web.com Tour status.)

Bertsch, the 1998 Colorado Open champion, has snuck in by three shots or less twice in his career at the finals of Q-school (1996 and 2009). Conversely, last year’s qualifying finals were a heartbreaker for the now-42-year-old Evergreen High School graduate.

Going into the final hole of Q-school last December, Bertsch put himself in position to be fully exempt by playing his previous 35 holes in 8 under par. All he needed was a par on his 108th hole to regain his full status on Tour. But a shot into the water and a closing double bogey left Bertsch with conditional standing on Tour in 2012, and though he still got into 17 Tour events, that was probably 10 fewer than he would have if he finished strong in Q-school.

And this year, there’s even more on the line in the qualifying finals for Bertsch. After he finished 215th on the Tour money list this year, he’d be relegated to playing Web.com events for most of next season if he failed to finish in the top 25 in La Quinta.

Bertsch has won more than $2.3 million in his PGA Tour career, but even though he’s played professionally for more than 15 years, he’s had only five seasons (1996, ’97, 2006, ’08 and ’11) where he’s competed in at least 20 Tour events. His best finish out of 172 starts on the big circuit is a fourth-place at Frys.com Open in the fall of 2011. He’s won twice on the Web.com Tour.

 As for the situation in this week’s LPGA Tour qualifying finals, the top 45 finishers and ties after 90 holes will earn 2013 Tour cards (with the top 20 getting preferred status), while the rest of the field will receive Symetra Tour exemptions. Sherlock has earned LPGA Tour status each of the last two years, but lost her card each time, including by finishing 139th on this year’s money list. A seven-time winner individually at DU, Sherlock recently notched her first professional victory in a SunCoast Ladies Series Tournament in Daytona Beach. The win was worth $3,000.

While Sherlock was exempt into the final stage of qualifying this year, Jacques, Kim and Talley made it there after strong showings in stage II of Q-school. Jacques, a U.S. Women’s Open qualifier this year, finished third out of 157 players there, while Kim was 20th and Talley 28th.

At this week finals, the field will be cut from 122 to the low 70 players and ties after four rounds.
 

You’ve heard of win-win situations. Well, June 12 was Wiebe’s variation on that theme.

The Aurora resident and longtime tour player had the honor of being inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame on that day. But because he was competing in the final round of a Champions Tour event in Conover, N.C., that Sunday, he couldn’t attend the induction ceremonies, sending son Gunner to accept the honor on his behalf.

Not going to his Hall of Fame enshrinement at Denver Country Club turned out to be very fortuitous for Wiebe as, on the day of his induction, he won the Greater Hickory Classic, marking his first Champions Tour victory since April 2008.

Wiebe (pictured) out-dueled James Mason in a three-hole playoff to earn his third Champions win overall. It was the highlight of a year in which Wiebe finished a career-best 16th on the Champions money list.

“It’s crazy how things work,” Gunner Wiebe noted. “Being inducted and winning on the same day is pretty special.”

Mark Wiebe’s “win-win” leads our list of 2011 highlights for tour players with major Colorado ties.

Here’s the rest of the rundown:

2. Martin Laird had won a PGA Tour event before, but claiming the title in the Arnold Palmer Invitational in late March put the former Colorado State University golfer in a different league.

Since his first Tour win, in October 2009, Laird had had trouble adding to his title total, finishing second twice — both in playoffs — as well as third, fourth and fifth. But in the Palmer Invite, Laird closed the deal, making birdie on two of the last four holes and earning $1.08 million for the victory.

“That was a hell of a day,” Laird said afterward. “That was a tough fight out there, a battle out there, but you know, it makes it even sweeter at the end when I got this trophy.”

Laird finished 2011 a career-best 23rd on the PGA Tour money list.

3. Former University of Colorado athlete Hale Irwin didn’t add to his record 45 Champions Tour victories in 2011, but rarely in golf history has a player over 65 years old performed so well on one of the top tours.

Irwin, who turned 66 in early June, finished in the top 10 seven times on the Champions Tour in 2011, a record for a player his age. And his best finishes of the year — two fourth-place showings — came in Champions majors, the U.S. Senior Open and the Senior PGA Championship.

The three-time U.S. Open champion shot his age twice and placed 27th on the 2011 money list, marking his best season-long performance since 2007.

4. Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Brandt Jobe lost his PGA Tour card early in 2009 and didn’t regain it until he finished sixth in Tour qualifying at the end of last year.

That time off the big Tour apparently made the Kent Denver High School graduate extra determined once he regained his card. The result was Jobe, who turned 46 this year, earned more than $1.6 million — the second-best season of his career.

Jobe’s best performance of the year came at the prestigious Memorial, where he posted the fourth runner-up finish of his Tour career, which has yet to include any wins.

5. Former CU golfer Matt Zions only recorded one top-10 finish on the European Tour this year, but he made the best of that one.

In mid-June at the Saint-Omer Open in France, the Denver resident won the tournament by seven strokes. The victory was worth 100,000 euros for the native of Australia.

“I feel like I’m dreaming,” Zions said afterward. “The last four holes I was wondering when I could start thinking about winning, and when would be too soon that it tempted fate. I had a lump in my throat a couple of times. This is a huge day. It’s hard to believe.”

6. Steve Jones didn’t win on the Champions Tour this year — in fact, he didn’t even come very close — but the fact that the former CU golfer finally returned to competitive golf was a big feat in and of itself.

The oft-sidelined 1996 U.S. Open champion hadn’t competed in a Tour-sanctioned event since August 2007, in large part because a severe case of tennis elbow. But at age 52 he rejoined the PGA Tour at the Bob Hope Classic in January. The Colorado Golf Hall of Famer missed the cut there, but made his Champions Tour debut in the spring and eventually competed in 10 official-money Champions events in 2011.

Jones’ best finish came in one of the major championships as he placed 16th in the Senior British Open.

7. Longtime Coloradan Kelly Jacques made her first cut ever on the LPGA Futures Tour in 2011 — she made three, in fact — but that wasn’t the main reason the year was memorable in a professional sense.

The two-time Colorado state high school champion will remember 2011 as the year she was chosen to compete on Golf Channel’s “Big Break Ireland”, where $50,000 in cash and a couple of significant tournament exemptions were on the line for the winner among the 12 contestants.

Alas, Jacques was eliminated in episode 4 of the show, in an “elimination challenge” against Mallory Blackwelder, daughter of former LPGA Rookie of the Year Myra Blackwelder.

“I had a great run here,” Jacques said of the popular Golf Channel program. “I had an absolute blast.”

8. Colorado Springs native R.W. Eaks has won four Champions Tour events over the years, but managed to get in just one Champions tournament in 2011.

That wasn’t the highlight of his year, but his victory in the HealthOne Colorado Senior Open probably was. Though he lived in the state for decades and is an outstanding player, the Senior Open marked Eaks’ first professional victory in Colorado.

And for good measure, Eaks set the Colorado Senior Open scoring record in the process with a 15-under-par 201 total. It marked his first tournament victory of any sort since 2008.

9. Former University of Denver golfer Stephanie Sherlock posted one top-20 finish and ended up 101st on the money list in her rookie season on the LPGA Tour.

But just as important, Sherlock didn’t end up being a one-and-done player on the LPGA Tour. Though she didn’t finish high enough on the money list to keep her card, she regained her playing privileges by finishing 20th in the finals of LPGA qualifying earlier this month.

“Locals” have won events on the PGA, Champions and European Tours, and even several of those players who haven’t claimed a championship trophy have accomplished some notable feats.

So as we head into fall, it’s worth taking a look at what’s happened so far in 2011, and at some of the reasons the coming months are pivotal to several local players.

Victories (So Far) — Former Colorado State University golfer Martin Laird (pictured), whose first notable professional win came at the 2004 Denver Open, posted the most impressive victory of 2011 by a player with strong Colorado ties. Laird’s second PGA Tour title came in the Arnold Palmer Invitational in late March. The $1.08 million payday is one of the key reasons Laird sits 21st on the 2011 PGA Tour money list and has won $4.8 million on Tour since the beginning of 2010. Alas, he missed qualifying for this week’s Tour Championship by finishing one spot out of the top 30 in the FedEx Cup playoff standings.

Mark Wiebe of Aurora won the Champions Tour’s Greater Hickory Classic in a playoff the same June day that he was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame. It was the third Champions Tour victory of Wiebe’s career, and it’s helped him currently stand 13th on the 2011 Champions Tour money list.

Matt Zions of Denver, a former University of Colorado golfer, won a tournament in his second full season on the European Tour, capturing the Saint Omer Open in France in June and winning 100,000 Euros in the process.

Defying Their Age — Former CU golfer Hale Irwin and fellow Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Brandt Jobe haven’t been acting their ages this year.

Irwin, now 66, owns a record 45 Champions Tour victories and he’s threatened on several occasions to add to that total. Considering no one older than 63 has ever won a Champions event, it’s been a sight to behold. In arguably the two biggest tournaments on the circuit — the U.S. Senior Open and the Senior PGA Championship — Irwin placed fourth, his best showings on the tour since September 2007. The U.S. Senior Open performance came at the same site (Inverness in Ohio) where Irwin won the 1979 U.S. Open. Overall, Irwin owns seven top-10 performances in 2011 — which gives him a record 205 for his Champions career — and he sits 20th on the 2011 money list, which isn’t bad for a senior citizen.

Jobe, 46, has enjoyed a remarkable resurgence on the PGA Tour. After losing his Tour card, he played primarily on the Nationwide circuit in 2010, but with a sixth-place showing in the final stage of Q-school he regained a spot on the top tour in the world. And Jobe hasn’t wasted the opportunity, posting his second-best money total ever ($1.58 million so far, good for 48th on the 2011 list). That total is more than his previous five years combined. Early in June, he matched his career best by finishing second in the Memorial. It’s hard to believe that going into the year, Jobe had to be concerned about earning “veteran membership” on Tour by surpassing 150 made cuts for his career. He came into 2011 three shy of the mark, but has long since blasted through that barrier.

600 And Counting — Dale Douglass of Castle Rock hasn’t been a full-time Champions Tour player for about five years, but he still regularly plays the U.S. Senior Open, a tournament he won 25 years ago. The 2011 Senior Open marked Douglass’ 600th Champions Tour event. Only Miller Barber (603) has competed in more.

One of the Futures Tour’s Best — Coloradan Dawn Shockley had a very good season on the LPGA Futures Tour in 2011, posting three top-five finishes, including second place in the Santorini Riviera Nayarit Classic in April. The former University of Denver player was in position much of the year to finish in the top 10 on the year-long money list, which would have earned her a 2012 LPGA Tour card, but she dropped to 13th place in the final standings. That means she’ll need a good showing in the final stage of LPGA Tour qualifying this fall to punch her ticket to the big leagues.

Looking Ahead — The last months of the tour schedules will be pivotal for several local players, including former DU golfer Stephanie Sherlock, David Duval of Cherry Hills Village, Parker resident Shane Bertsch, Kent Denver High School graduate Kevin Stadler and former CU golfer Steve Jones.

Sherlock stands 101st on this year’s LPGA Tour money list, but at least needs to finish in the top 125 to keep some status on the Tour, and needs to move into the top 80 to have priority status.

Duval would have no problem getting sponsor exemptions on the PGA Tour, but in order to remain fully exempt, he’ll need to finish in the top 125 on the money list. Placing 126-150 would give him lesser status. The former No. 1 player in the world will go into the fall 152nd on the 2011 money list.

Stadler faces the same parameters, but he’s in much better shape entering the fall, sitting 106th in the 2011 money standings.

Bertsch faces a much tougher road to keep his full Tour card. His medical extension (after suffering a broken hand in 2010) calls for him to earn $729,869 in 21 tournaments to remain fully exempt, which means he’s now down to five events in which he must earn $471,338 to retain his full status.

As for Jones, the 1996 U.S. Open champion is trying to move into the top 30 on the Champions Tour money list — or win an event — to be exempt in 2012. Jones turned 50 in late 2008, but didn’t make his Champions Tour debut until this year due to a severe case of tennis elbow. He currently stands 80th on the 2011 Champions money list.