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Norton rides U.S. Senior Open appearance to KGA honor
2009 KGA Senior Player of the Year

In his first summer among the senior set, Mission Hills’ Bryan Norton made a decision to

pursue a spot in the 2009 U.S. Senior Open at Crooked Stick Golf Club in suburban Indianapolis. That effort paid big dividends for the two-time Kansas Amateur champion and former PGA Tour player.
   Not only did Norton have a fine week at the Open, placing in the top 20 and renewing plenty of old golf relationships, but he earned 200 points in the Kansas Golf Association Senior Player of the Year standings. When you add that to the 100 he picked up just qualifying for the Senior Open, 25 he got as a member of the Kansas squad for the USGA State Team and the points he earned with a couple second-place finishes in KGA senior championships, Norton tallied 415 points and is the 2009 KGA Senior Player of the Year.
   “I’ve never been player of the year, senior or regular…I’m really happy with it,” said Norton, who finished just more than 46 points ahead of three-time Senior Player of the Year Don Kuehn of Kansas City at 368.73. Kansas City’s Andy Smith, 2007 Senior Player of the Year, was third at 289.5. “I suppose the other thing that I’m happy with is that I still feel like I can be competitive, whether we’re talking the senior level or the mid-am level or regular amateur events. What’s neat about being a senior is it gives me a lot more events that I’m eligible to play. My goal during the golfing season is to play one event per month, so this just gives me the chance to fulfill that goal.”

Crooked Stick and old friends
   One of those competitive events came on the first day of July at the U.S. Senior Open qualifier at Alvamar Golf Club in Lawrence. Mission Hills Country Club’s Norton drew the last tee time for his round on the Alvamar Country Club course and said he knew fairly early in his day Bryan Norton

what he’d have to shoot to claim the only Open spot from the qualifier.
   “Sometimes it’s bad luck to be at the very back end of the tee times, because scoring conditions are sometimes better in the earlier times,” Norton said. “As it turned out, I was playing along and not much was happening. I was right around par, which I thought was okay. I didn’t really know where I stood. But when you’re in the last pairing in the field, the officials come out and they can tell you what the scores were. It became apparent that if I could remain right around par I would be in good shape.”
   Norton did that, aided by a long birdie putt on No. 15, and his round of one-under 71 was two better than the field, punching his ticket to Crooked Stick.
   After a pair of one-over 73s to start the Senior Open, Norton was one of just three amateurs to make the cut. He came back with 13 birdies in rounds of 69 and 70 on the weekend to move up the leader board to a tie for 19th. Norton finished in a group at four-under 284 that included PGA Tour veterans Eduardo Romero and John Cook.
   “The Open (finish) was very unexpected,” Norton told KG Online days after the championship. “You know I compete from time to time, but to compete on that level you really have to be competing all the time like those guys are.”
   And though Norton didn’t quite reach his goal of being low amateur for the event – that went to Germantown, Tenn.’s Tim Jackson at six-under 282 and tied for 11^th place – there was little doubt it was a special week for the Kansas senior.
   “I was really proud at how well I played and how well I handled the situation…there were big crowds and I had not been in front of the people in a long time,” said Norton, who got to see many of his old rivals from college and his days on professional circuits. “I certainly knew more players than any amateur there and maybe knew more players than some of the pros because of all the different places I played when I was younger.
   “Some of the guys who just turned 50 and were playing the first Senior Open were guys I knew from college, like Tom Lehman, Bob Tway, Joey Sindelar. We were all in the same graduating class in college. Then guys like Hal Sutton who is one year older than me. I had a great relationship with those guys so I was just bouncing around talking to them before the tournament. Then from all that time I spent playing in Europe there were guys that are playing a lot on the (Champions Tour) now, guys like Eduardo Romero, the defending (Senior Open) champion, and Mark McNulte.”
   Another familiar PGA Tour face, Fred Funk, won the first major of his long career at the event. Funk finished a record 20 under par for four trips around Crooked Stick. That was six strokes ahead of second-place Sindelar.

Kansas atop USGA leader board
   While getting to and then performing so well at the Senior Open did provide the majority of Norton’s player of the year points, they weren’t the only ones he earned in connection with a USGA championship. Norton was one of the three players the Sunflower State sent to September’s USGA Men’s State Team Championship at the Country Club of St. Albans in St. Louis.
   And what a splash they made.
   Norton’s teammates Jon Troutman of Spring Hill and Wichita’s Dodge Kemmer combined on a 133 the first day – the lowest round in the event’s history – putting Kansas on top of the leader board.
   The Kansas squad suffered a tough second round under some difficult weather conditions, but bounced back the third day with a seven-under 135 to finish second in the event, just three strokes behind champion Pennsylvania. Overall, Troutman (64-79-68) and Kemmer (69-75-67) tied for third place individually for the event at two-under 211. Norton (76-77-70) tied for 78^th at 10-over 223.
   “I’ve been talking for years about (the Men’s Team) that Kansas had not been nearly as competitive as we should have been,” Norton said. “I feel like we play good golf in this state and it’s been disappointing to me that we haven’t proven it in that event. This year, when I knew I was on the team, I spent a lot of time communicating with my teammates. I’m really happy after all these years of wanting to go and have Kansas have an impact on the tournament…it’s very satisfying to see us have a chance. If not for some bad luck on the draw the second day of the event I know we would have won.”

A pair of seconds
   Norton kicked off his first KGA senior season with partner Jigger James at May’s Senior Four-Ball Championship at Spring Hill’s Sycamore Ridge. Playing with a marker and the first pairing Bryan Norton

out of the gate in the opening round, Overland Park’s James and Norton enjoyed a six-under 66. That would hold up as one of the top two scores for the day and got the tandem into the final pairing for the second round. Norton and James settled for a one-under 71 on day two and a tie for second at 137, three behind Smith and Raytown’s Steve Groom.
   “It was in May and everybody’s kind of shaking off the cobwebs that time of year,” Norton said. “All in all we played pretty well out there. We had some ups and downs on the back nine that cost a good chance to win. We narrowed the gap to one, but then we just didn’t execute on the last six or seven holes and it cost us a good chance to win.”
   In late August, Norton would again grab a second-place finish at a KGA senior championship, this time ending up as one of four golfers just a shot behind Kuehn at the Senior Amateur Championship at Leawood South Country Club. Norton shot a 75 in the second round and admitted he probably let his chance of winning the event get away in the opening round as he settled for a 73 on a day he felt he could have gone much lower.
   “I had a really upbeat year, (but) that was probably my biggest disappointment,” said Norton, who was recently named Kansas Golf Foundation president. “I was playing really well going into it and should have shot better scores than I did. The first day I ended up shooting 73 and that was just inexcusable. The second day Don got off to just such a smoking start (six under after seven holes), it seemed like we were all just playing for second.”

Following Norton athletes
   A Salina native, Norton took his considerable golf game to Oral Roberts University back in the late 1970s. While at the Tulsa, Okla. Christian school, he was a two-time, second-team All-American and placed fourth at the NCAA Championships in 1980. His Golden Eagles placed in the top 10 in the nation all four years, including registering second- and third-place finishes.
   “I was on a great team,” he recalls.
   Norton then went on to a 10-year professional career. He spent the first three years “bouncing along the mini-tours” before earning a European Tour card for five years. He then returned to the states, went through the PGA Tour’s qualifying school and earned his card.
   Norton spent one year on the PGA Tour, but didn’t finish in the top 125 on the money list and lost his playing privileges. His highest finish came at the 1991 Houston Open where he placed seventh. He played his final season of professional golf in 1992 on what is now the Nationwide Tour.
   Norton later re-gained his amateur status, in large part to boost his career in the insurance business.
   “I quit playing (pro) golf at the end of 1992 and I had to get established in a career so I just didn’t play any golf for a number of years,” says Norton, who won the 1980 Kansas Amateur Championship at Topeka Country Club and the 2002 event at Wichita’s Tallgrass Country Club. “Then I got my amateur status back in ’98. I felt like it would be really beneficial to my business career.”
   As his non-golf professional career has flourished so has family life for Norton and wife, Julie. The Nortons have three children: Alexandria is now a freshman at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.; Danielle is a sophomore at Shawnee Mission East; and Johnnie is an eighth-grader at Indian Hills Middle School.
   The Nortons spend much of their time at their children’s various school and athletic events.
   “As you talk to people of my generation that have kids there are so many sporting events that you are running to…I spend a lot time at kids’ sporting events,” Bryan Norton says. “I particularly like high school basketball and (Danielle) is a high school basketball player. I really like doing that.
   “We’ve always loved to travel and its fun having a daughter at Vanderbilt now and running over to Nashville to see her. I’m very proud of my children, how hard they’ve worked to be students and trying to be little athletes. I get a lot of satisfaction out of going and seeing them perform.”