December 21, 2008
The Wigwam – Gold, Litchfield Park (AZ)


After beginning today's final round with a 7-shot cushion over his nearest competitors - Braxton Marquez (70/75/70-215, 2nd) & Austin Uhl (72/73/74-219, 3rd), University of Florida Junior and Arizona native, Tim McKenney (67/71/68-206), gained three more shots on the field before it was all said and done to take the AZ Holiday Classic title with a decisive 9-stroke win at 10-under par.

The Wigwam - Gold Course, host golf course to this week's event, was certainly no easy task for the field seeing them average 77.20 on the week, but McKenney utterly tore up the nearly 7400 yard layout, notching 17 birdies in 54-holes - 6 more than anyone else in the field.

"I'm happy because this just shows that the hard work I've been putting into my game pays off," said McKenney, who tied for 2nd in last year's event.

"It was pretty much cruise control for most of the day today. No pressure...just going through the routine and I was fortunate to play well again," he said.

The runner-up, Marquez, a junior at Arizona State University, closed with a fine 2-under par round of 70 to separate himself from Uhl, respectively, but as he conceded - with McKenney playing so well, it would have been hard to catch the leader any way you look at it.

"I changed some of my strategies today to try and catch up," said Marquez. "I went for some shots and pins out there that I normally wouldn't have, but Tim just played real solid the whole day today and all week. It would have been almost impossible to catch him."

The AZ Holiday Classic completes the first of The Gateway Tour's two holiday events, seeing The Gateway Collegiate Tour's focus now move to the upcoming FL New Year's Open, January 5-7 @ Santa Lucia River Club, in Port St. Lucie, FL.

The two Gateway Collegiate Tour holiday events are the Tour's second go at providing collegiate golfers an opportunity to work on their games during their holiday semester breaks. As The Tour's Executive Director, Charley Yandell notes, it's a process The Gateway Tour looks forward to continue to build and expand upon in the future.

"Even though our field was smaller than we had hoped for, I'm very pleased with our week at The Wigwam and confident as word continues to spread, these events will become very influential with collegiate golfers during this time of year," said Yandell. "There's no doubt these guys can play, and because many of them share similar aspirations to our professionals, we know they'll benefit from the same formula that's worked so well to assist our professionals' games."

Following The Gateway Collegiate Tour's FL New Year's Open this summer is the Mountaintop/Gateway Collegiate Players Invitational, August 8-12, at Mountaintop Golf & Lake Club in Cashiers, NC - the golf course GOLFWEEK MAGAZINE billed as the top new golf course in the country in 2008.

The event has also recently made the "Master USA Calander" on the GOLFWEEK SCRATCH PLAYERS WORLD AMATEUR RANKING tournament list, which is sure to help garner a diverse and talented field in the event's second year.

Click here for a link to their full 2009 calendar on www.scratchplayers.org...

Congratulations to all of the AZ Holiday Classic participants for a great week at The Wigwam and stay tuned for further results from The Gateway Collegiate Tour as some of the country's top collegiate golfers tee it up again in Florida after the new year...


Click here for full field results…