Rick Cloninger ended the day praising his friend Yancey Johnson.
“Yancey is a great young talent, and I think we’re going to get to know him a lot more over the next few years,” said Cloninger, team captain for South Carolina, which won the team division of the International Senior Invitational on Saturday.
Johnson is 57 years old and is actually relatively new to the senior amateur circuit. But his performance in the final round at Cartersville (Ga.) Country Club illustrates Cloninger’s point that this is a guy who can make some noise.
South Carolina started just one stroke off the team lead, but ended up winning the title by two strokes. The team finished 54 holes in a team format of 3 counts and 2 with a score of 6 under par, defeating Utah, the leader in the second round, by 2 strokes. Kentucky moved up five spots in the final round on the strength of Tony Wise’s 67 points, finishing alone in third place over fourth-place Iowa State.
As for his performance in South Carolina, Johnson deserves a lot of credit for his 33 on the back nine, including birdies on Nos. 12, 14 and 18.
“We started the day together there, and I don’t think we’ve ever been this far apart,” Cloninger said of the final round of horse racing between his team and Utah State. “I got some birdies on the backside, so that helped me, and same thing for Yancey on the way down.”
In the final round, Johnson shot a 70 and Cloninger shot a 71. What’s even more remarkable is that South Carolina’s throwout score on Saturday was Gino Berchiatti’s 73.
South Carolina’s players’ strong performance can be attributed, at least in part, to their strong athleticism. Cloninger played college football and baseball at Wofford, and Johnson played basketball at the College of Charleston.
“That’s how athletes were born,” Cloninger said, before joking, “We mutated into golfers.”
Cloninger is a veteran of nearly 20 United States Golf Association championships, despite coming into the match late. In 1995, he was a member of the Florida State team that competed in the inaugural State Team Championship, which the USGA discontinued in 2017. He then traveled throughout the Southeast, appearing in the championship twice more with the Georgia team and twice with the South Carolina team.
Cloninger, who recently retired from a career in the construction equipment industry, compared the International Senior Invitational to the U.S. state team.
“It’s not overly stressful,” he said of this week’s team events. “But things can change quickly in team contracts if someone finds a big hole.”
International Senior also has an individual component. Johnson did well on the leaderboard, finishing alone in fourth place with 5 under par after 54 holes. Cloninger also finished within the top 10 with a total of 1 under.
Irishman Joe Lyons went 7 under for the week at Cartersville, winning his second individual division title in three years. He finished one stroke behind the early week leaders Shane McMillan (Utah State) and Mike McCoy (Iowa State). McCoy is the current U.S. Senior Amateur Champion.
Lions, who also won this title in 2023, has a solid international resume. He has won the Spanish, Portuguese and Irish Senior Amateur Championships as well as the Irish Senior Men’s Amateur Championship multiple times.
As for Cloninger, he praised not only his teammates but also the venue after the win over the University of South Carolina.
“This is a great golf course,” he said of Cartersville Country Club. “The volunteers are second to none. The support that goes into Cartersville for this event is tremendous.”
So will he reunite the band for this event again next year? Potentially.
Cloninger had intended to compete in the Senior International a year ago, but suffered a flat tire midway through. He and Johnson were scheduled to play with another teammate, Eddie Hargett, but Hargett also had to pull out of the event at the last minute due to a hurricane off the coast of South Carolina near his home.
With Hargett unable to play this year, Berchiatti took his place as the third. Cloninger jokes that next year’s team formation may require some kind of qualifying between Hargett and Berchiatti.
“I’m going to have Eddie and Gino compete for that spot,” he joked. “We’re going to put (them) on the points list this year.”
