Flint Hills welcomes back Trans-Mississippi Championship

At its best, the Trans-Mississippi Championship has played home to some of the world’s best amateur golfers in its 112-year history, with former champions like Ben Crenshaw and Jack Nicklaus.

At its worst, the Trans-Mississippi forgot what made it great in the first place. From 1987 to 2009, it became a mix of stroke play and match play tournament that didn’t let anyone under 25 years old into the field.

So when the Trans-Mississippi comes back to Kansas for the 20th time in its 112-year history on Tuesday at Flint Hills National Golf Club in Andover, there is little doubt about its direction and its future.

“It’s now back to the point when Nicklaus and those guys won,” Flint Hills director of golf Dave Henson said. “It is now, again, basically a college tournament with the best amateur players in the world and some talented older guys playing, too.

“For awhile, it became kind of a good old boy tournament and lost some of its luster. It switched back to the old format because it wanted that national prestige. We’re excited because it’s a much different tournament than when we hosted it last time.”

This is the third time for Flint Hills to serve as the site of the Trans-Mississippi after hosting in 2003 and 2009, with the 2017 U.S. Junior Amateur on the horizon. Golfers will play a 72-hole stroke play tournament, with one round on Tuesday and Wednesday and two rounds on Thursday.

Flint Hills, which opened in 1997, also hosted the 2001 U.S. Women’s Amateur and the 2007 U.S. Senior Amateur.

“Flint Hills has a short history relative to some of the other golf courses that host (the Trans-Mississippi),” tournament director Cam Crawford said. “We’re going there because we know it will produce a good champion. We know their goal is always to find the best player in the field.

“More so than that, inside and outside the ropes (Flint Hills) does so much. That it’s the third Trans-Mississippi they’ve hosted speaks for itself.”

This year’s version has its own star power, led by defending champion and Wake Forest sophomore Will Zalatoris, who won last year at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa.

Zalatoris, a Plano, Texas, native, took last year’s big summer – he also won the Texas Amateur and U.S. Junior Amateur – and turned it into a standout freshman year for the Demon Deacons, earning ACC Freshman of the Year and third-team All-America honors.

He’s also almost 100 percent recovered from an appendectomoy after his freshman season.

Byron Meth, the 2014 U.S. Amateur Public Links champion, is also in the field.

“Last year at the Trans-Miss was the first tournament in a long time where all of the pieces of the puzzle came together for me,” Zalatoris said. “My ball-striking was fantastic, and I only had a couple of bogeys in the whole tournament. You read the names on the championship trophy and you realize it’s a huge honor to be a part of its history.

“Everyone raves about Flint Hills, about the amazing design and the amazing community surrounding it.”

Flint Hills is ready to challenge some of the world’s best amateurs in the 144-player field. If there’s another Nicklaus in the field — he won his title in 1958 at Hutchinson’s Prairie Dunes — he will need to be up for a battle. Next year, the tournament heads to The Olympic Club in San Francisco.

“The Trans-Miss is one of those pearls to have in your city, in your state, at your club,” Flint Hills general manager Bobby Conner said. “We’ve tweaked the course a little bit, added a little length. These college players today can hit the ball a long ways and they’re smart, intelligent players who have grown up with clubs in their hands so we need to make it a big challenge.

“The big challenge at Flint Hills is to keep it in the fairways, and I think the players will find they’re generous, but also firm, and if they get into the rough it’s extremely penal. And if you get out of the rough and onto the green, they’re not the easiest to read and putt on. The challenges we’ve set up, I think, our good, but remember these are the best amateur players in the world. No matter what we do, they’re going to score well.”

This story was originally published July 4, 2015 at 6:12 PM with the headline "Flint Hills welcomes back Trans-Mississippi Championship."