Several golfers with Davis County and Utah ties enjoyed success at this year’s Utah Championship. The Korn Ferry Tour event at the Ogden Golf and Country Club, presented by Zions Bank and Intermountain Health, hosted large crowds to cheer on their favorites.

Among them were longtime PGA player Daniel Summerhays of Kaysville, Davis High and BYU graduate Cole Ponich of Farmington, and part-time resident Preston Summerhays who spent much of his early years living in the county. His coach and father Boyd Summerhays, along with Preston’s sister Grace (who caddied for him), are former county residents now living in the Phoenix area.

Ponich, playing in just his third professional tournament since leaving BYU, finished tied for 22nd place (along with Daniel Summerhays, closing at 12 under, six shots behind winner Julian Suri of California). It was his highest finish on the Korn Ferry Tour and qualified him to play in the Omaha event Aug. 7-10.

“I’m happy to know that I can come out here and compete with these guys,” Ponich said. “I definitely didn’t feel like I had my best game all around for four days, but it’s always a good sign when you’re right there in the top 25, even if you don’t feel you played your best. I’m happy to know that even with my B-minus game I can still compete with these guys. That’s the way it is on this Tour. If you get hot, even with a B-minus game, you can still make the cut.”

Following his round, Ponich was surrounded by lots of young fans anxious to get any kind of signed souvenir they could. He asked his caddie, Davis High grad Max Landon who was the Region 1 medalist in state last year for the Darts, to “just hand me all the golf balls” (left in his bag), which he signed along with his gloves and lots of fans’ hats.

Ponich is a social media star, with 60,000 followers in TikTok and 10,000 on Instagram. He is working with a longtime friend to “document the process of becoming a professional golfer and the grind of hopefully eventually getting to the PGA Tour.”

Preston Summerhays (who is Daniel’s nephew) enjoyed his best professional finish in seventh place at 15 under closing with a final round of 65. He had a 12-foot putt for birdie on the finishing hole that would have tied for the lead before Suri’s fast finish that moved the winning score to 18 under. Preston took home a little over $26,000 for his finish.

“I drove it extremely well on the most scoreable holes,” he said post tourney. “When the course does kind of give you the opportunity to make birdie, I took advantage of those holes and hit great drives. I felt like I could have made a lot more putts today but I still made a decent amount. Overall I felt really good.”

He told Grace, a collegiate star golfer at Arizona State herself, that “if we just don’t make any bogeys, I know I’m going to make four to six birdies a round. On any course that will be a solid round. Taking advantage of the easy holes and not getting too greedy and not making big numbers on the other holes. It was a lot of fun having Grace on the bag–she knows that if I’m a little funk she knows how to snap me right out of it.”

Daniel Summerhays also finished at 12-under, but started hot on Sunday with birdies on three of the first six holes before fading a bit and finishing even par for the day. He’s coming off back surgery from February but says he feels better than he has in years. Summerhays was a fixture on the PGA tour for several years and is working his way back towards a return in the future.

Ogden Golf and Country Club hosted the Utah Championships for the first time, and has a three-year agreement to host the tour. That follows Oakridge Country Club of Farmington which was the site of the tournament for many years. This year’s purse was $1 million with Suri taking the top prize of $180,000.