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By Craig Dolch

Special to the PGA of America

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (Dec. 8, 2023) –  Jon Mayer stands out on a golf course for more than his name.

With his hip clothing, man-bun and his insistence on putting everything with the flag in for math reasons, Mayer strides to his own beat.

Friday, he stood out by beating the rest of the field. The Hyannis, Mass., native eagled the par-5 16th hole on the Wanamaker Course to win Event No. 3 in the PGA Tournament Series at PGA Golf Club.

Mayer responded with a pair of fist pumps after the eagle, then waited 40 minutes to see if his 9-under 135 would hold up. It did. Barely.

Mayer faced a tricky two-putt on the 18th hole when playing partner Scott Berliner holed a 60-foot birdie putt to move to 8-under. Mayer celebrated with Berliner, but not for long.

“He drained it and I was so happy for him because it was a bomb,” Mayer said. “Then I thought, ‘OK, now I’m only one ahead.’”

Mayer’s birdie putt rolled six feet past the hole, but he made the putt – with the pin in, of course – to win after Zac Oakley and Dylan Newman missed birdie putts at the 18th hole. Mayer earned $5,000 for his first PGA Tournament Series title. Berliner (66), Oakley (68) and Newman (70) each finished a shot back at 8-under.

“It was at least 6 feet, but I hadn’t made a bogey all day,” Mayer, who works at Grandfather Golf and Country Club in Linville, N.C., said of his par putt at No. 18. “My putter was really good. I was struggling because I was taking a big backswing and slowing through impact. One of my roommates, Larkin Gross, told me to slow my putter down and make it more fluid. I was much more confident on the greens.”

Some might say it takes confidence to wear Mayer’s style of clothing. He usually wears Lululemon jogger pants that stop about 4 inches above his ankles. Add in his hair always pulled into a bun, and he’s not the typical-looking golfer.

“I’m all about comfort and style,” said Mayer, who said he received permission from the PGA Tour and the PGA of America to wear this style of pants. “I want to bring more people into golf. If I can show a group of people you can have a different style, maybe that will bring more people into the game.”

As for his putting style, Mayer traced that to his mathematician roots. He said he uses the pin to serve as one of his axes while the putting line serves as the hypotenuse.

“I’ve been putting that way for years,” he said. “I’m a math guy.”

Berliner’s hopes for winning seemed to end when he bogeyed the par-3 17th hole to drop two behind Mayer. But then his prayer at the closing hole was answered.

“I just told myself to give it a chance, to get it to the hole,” Berliner said. “The odds of making that were less than 8 percent. I didn’t know where I stood. I just wanted to birdie 18 to finish as high as I could.”

Oakley eagled the 16th to move within one, but couldn’t make a birdie on the last two holes. That left Newman, the first-round leader after a bogey-free 66, with the final chance. When his birdie putt at 18 slipped by the hole, Mayer backed up his title in this year’s PGA Stroke Play Championship.

“I feel like I played well, but I didn’t get anything going for a long time,” Newman said. “I was still in it, but all of a sudden I saw 9-under (when Mayer eagled the 16th) and felt like I couldn’t get there.”

The PGA Tournament Series is presented by GolfPass. Event No. 4 starts Monday on the Ryder Course.

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Media Contacts
Greg Dillard, PGA of America, 561-308-8013, gdillard@pgahq.com

Alan Cox, PGA of America, 972-214-8274, acox@pgahq.com