Trace Crowe came to Myrtle Beach at the age of 10 or 11 as a baseball player.
He left as a golfer.
Crowe recalled this week the visit to Myrtle Beach in his youth when he came to play in a baseball tournament and his father took him to PGA Tour Superstore.
“My dad said, ‘Do you want to try it out?’ And he got me a little set of clubs, and I’ve been hooked ever since,” said the Greenville native.
The PGA Tour rookie, now 27, has returned to the birthplace of his golf game, and is making a push for his breakthrough performance on tour in the inaugural $4 million Myrtle Beach Classic.
Crowe shot a tournament-low bogey-free 8-under-par 63 in Friday’s second round to surge up the leaderboard into a tie for eighth at 8-under 134. He’s four shots off the lead at the midway point of the tournament.
A scintillating 6-under 29 on the front nine – which has been the tougher nine through two rounds – included birdies on holes 1, 2, 4, 6, 7 and 9, and he added a pair of birdies on the back nine to move up 59 spots on the leaderboard.
He putted poorly Thursday in a round of 71, and got a tip from a buddy who was following him that the ball was too far forward in his stance, so he worked on it Thursday night and Friday morning.
“I’ve been hitting it great the last few weeks, so I just knew if I just had one good hot putting day, this could happen,” Crowe said. “I’m really happy with my round, but I also missed some putts coming in the last five or six holes. But I made so many long putts.”
Crowe has only played the weekend in now four of his 11 starts this season, and his lone top 20 is a tie for 11th in the opposite field Corales PuntaCana Championship three weeks ago.
He was in one of the final three groups Sunday in both the Dominican Republic and the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, where he tied for 25th. He shot his highest score of the week in both final rounds.
“I was right there. I was 1-under through 6 [at Torrey Pines] and started pressing a little bit, feeling the nerves trying to win on the PGA Tour for the first time,” Crowe said. “That was everything you dreamed about doing. . . . I think between those two, I’ve struggled on both of those, and I think the next time I think I’ll be ready for it.”
Crowe barely missed earning a promotion to the PGA Tour from the Korn Ferry Tour last year. He was in position to be inside in the top 30 on the season-ending points list and earn PGA Tour status, but he tied for 38th in the Korn Ferry Championship to barely miss out when he played the final five holes 4-over par with a double-bogey on 17 and bogey on 18.
But in the last-chance PGA Tour Q-School, which featured 166 players for five 2025 PGA Tour exemptions, he finished second.
Crowe said he has about 15 family and friends in town this week, including his father, sister, brother-in-law, fiancee and her family, as well as his dog.
“You don’t really think about it, but I think it does [relax you], just hanging around people instead of traveling week in and week out, if you’re on your own in different spots,” said Crowe, who played at Auburn. “. . . I’m going to be very comfortable this week.”
Youth is served
Blades Brown, a 16-year-old high school sophomore from Nashville, received some serious motivation from his mother this week.
She told him he could make the cut Friday to the weekend, or go back home and do homework.
So when he made the turn Friday at even par for the tournament with a bogey on the 18th hole – his ninth hole of the round – he knew what he had to do.
Brown made four birdies on his final nine to shoot a 4-under 67 Friday and make the cut with a shot to spare at 3-under 139. The recipient of a sponsor exemption tees off at 7:50 a.m. Saturday in the third round of his first PGA Tour event.
“I tried so hard not to look at the leaderboard because I know if I play my game and do what I need to do hopefully that will take care of the rest,” Brown said. “It was a little bit of a dagger on 18 to make bogey there to set me back at even par, but then I was like, ‘OK, I’ve got nine holes left.’ I said a little prayer, I said, ‘God, thank you for putting me in this position.’ After that I was like, ‘Let’s do it.’ ”
Brown said the key to his final nine holes was a par on the par-5 fourth hole. After making birdies at holes 1 and 3, he hit his approach into the water, then hit his next shot over the green. He then chipped in to save par. “I thought this is a make or break moment here and I chipped in for par,” Brown said. “I think that was the game-changer right there.”
Brown is already building an impressive golf resume.
Last year, he was the youngest stroke play medalist or co-medalist in U.S. Amateur history, breaking a century-old mark held by Bobby Jones, and he also won back-to-back American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) titles.
Brown said he gained confidence from recent performances by other teenagers in PGA Tour-sanctioned events.
England’s Kris Kim, 16, shot a 3-under 68 in the first round of last week’s CJ Cup Byron Nelson, while Miles Russell, 15, tied for 20th at the Korn Ferry Tour’s LECOM Suncoast Classic three weeks ago.
“Whenever I see that they can do it, I immediately think I can do it,” Brown said. “So they just kind of gave me inspiration for what the weekend is. Without knowing what they did, I don’t think I’d be in the position I am right now.”
Name recognition
It was fitting that Jay Haas was present for the inaugural Myrtle Beach Classic as a caddie for his son, Bill.
Fifteen natives or residents of South Carolina teed off in the event, and the longtime Greenville resident has his name attached to five of them.
The South Carolina Junior Golf Association has annually awarded the Jay Haas Player of the Year Award to the top male junior in the state based on the Heritage Classic Foundation Rankings, and Haas makes a point of being in attendance to personally give it out.
Crowe, Carson Young, George Bryan IV, Kevin Kisner and Bill Haas are the recipients who were in the starting field.
“Each year when that award is done, I’m very proud mostly of the gentlemen that they are,” Jay Haas said. “You can tell golf has a way of weeding out the bad eggs, so to speak, and no truer than those kids who have won the award. It just doesn’t seem like we’ve been doing it as long as we have, but that’s a cool stat to have that many players in this field. The South Carolina Golf Association does an amazing job for juniors, and it’s paying off as we go forward.”
Jay Haas, 70, has nine PGA Tour wins and is one of the most consistent players in tour history, having made 592 cuts in 799 events. He still plays occasionally on the Champions Tour but has recently been sidelined by a back ailment.
He told Bill that if he got in the field he wanted to caddie for him, and the duo missed the cut by a stroke with a 1-under 141.
Returning to the beach
One of the cool things about Myrtle Beach gaining a PGA Tour event is so many PGA Tour players have stories about trips to Myrtle Beach, particularly in their youth.
Brothers George Bryan IV and Wesley Bryan have been playing golf in Myrtle Beach since they can remember. They spent many Thanksgivings in Myrtle Beach playing in the George Holliday Memorial Junior Tournament at Myrtle Beach National Golf Club.
“It was my first ever big junior win. . . . It was a tournament that any age division can win the overall championship. So I was a 12-year-old that won the overall title against like 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds.
“It’s a cool thing because that was 24 years ago. I mean, to come full circle, to play in a PGA Tour event in my home state, which I just now thought about. It was my first-ever win. It’s really special.”
The Bryans, known as the Bryan Bros trick shot duo on their social media platforms, this year became ambassadors for the Myrtle Beach golf market through an agreement with Golf Tourism Solutions, the marketing and technology agency that promotes the market.
“Myrtle Beach golf is basically part of our DNA,” George Bryan said. “. . . They just want to come along and come be a part of what we’re going, what we’ve got going on on YouTube, on social, and just use us to help tell their story and tell people about Myrtle Beach.
“It’s been one of the coolest partnerships we’ve had because they truly believe and want the best for us. They don’t just want, ‘Hey, we want to use you guys to use your platform.’ They want to join together. We want to help Play Golf Myrtle Beach win and they want to help us win. It’s just exciting times.”
The Bryans both missed the cut – Wesley by a shot at 1-under 141 and George at 1 over.
Dunes Club vibes
Two players in the field this week are already champions at The Dunes Club.
Jimmy Stanger and Matthew NeSmith shared medalist honors in the 2016 General Hackler Championship college tournament hosted by Coastal Carolina with 9-under 207 totals. Stanger was playing at Virginia and NeSmith at South Carolina.
A few months later, Stanger won the Southern Amateur at The Dunes Club.
While the week didn’t go as Stanger would have liked, with a missed cut at 6-over 148, he can’t help but to still have good vibes from the course.
“I don’t know if I’d be a pro golfer if it wasn’t for this golf course,” said Stanger, 29, a PGA Tour rookie who tied for third in the Puerto Rico Open in March opposite the Arnold Palmer Invitational. “That was my first college win in my junior year of college. It had been a couple of years since a junior golf win. That gave me a lot of confidence to know that I could continue coming forward.
“Then the Southern Am was my first big amateur win, which kind of started getting the wheels turning in my head that I could compete at the highest level of amateur golf and kind of led to a great year after that where I was able to turn pro.”
NeSmith, a North Augusta native and Aiken resident, shot a 3-under 68 Friday to make the cut on the number at 2-under 140.
“I have some good vibes down here for sure,” NeSmith said. “Anything in the state of South Carolina I’m going to be very excited about, being able to drive and not get on a flight for the first time in a few weeks so it’s really nice. The golf course is a lot like how I remember it, very right in front of you for the most part and the greens are fantastic. It’s in unbelievable shape.”
The 30-year-old hasn’t won on the PGA Tour yet, though he has been in contention with a runner-up and a third. He had been struggling of late, as the made cut is just his second in his past seven tournaments.
Coming up clutch
Bluffton resident William McGirt has developed a flair for the dramatic.
McGirt needed to make an eagle on the final hole of the Monday qualifier at TPC Myrtle Beach to get into a playoff for the final spot in the Myrtle Beach Classic. He hit a 280-yard 3-wood to 15 feet for the eagle and made a birdie on the first playoff hole to earn a Thursday tee time.
On Friday, McGirt birdied his final two holes (Nos. 8 and 9) to make the cut on the number at 2-under 140, improbably holing putts of 45 feet on the eighth and 22 feet on the ninth.
In his last PGA Tour event, the Corales Puntacana Championship three weeks ago, he also made the cut on the number by making three birdies in his final four holes in the second round, making a 25-footer on the final hole.
