Seth Reeves’ swing sings as he preps for Winco Foods Portland Open
Kerry Eggers and Seth Reeves
When tournament director Jeff Sanders and Ryan Fowler, his director of marketing/communications, invited me to play in Tuesday’s pro-am for the Winco Foods Portland Open at Pumpkin Ridge, I was excited.
When I learned the name of the pro who would play with our amateur team, I got amped up even more.
Our pro was Seth Reeves, a lithe, lanky left-hander from Atlanta, who came to Portland with a figurative crown on his head after winning the last stop on the Korn Ferry Tour.
The 6-3, 175-pound Reeves won the Pinnacle Bank Championship at Omaha, Neb., at 11-under 273, including a sizzling 7-under 64 Sunday as he stormed from eight shots back beginning the final round to win. Reeves didn’t need an airplane to fly into town.
“I’m still shocked a little bit,” Reeves told me after our Tuesday pro-am round. “It was a very humbling win because it was done in such an unexpected way, especially after not playing well for so long.”
Reeves is a former Georgia Tech star who turned pro in 2014 and had enough success to earn his PGA tour card after the 2018 season. He made 11 cuts in 25 starts and earned nearly $310,000 — including $119,000 for finishing tied for seventh in the Sanderson Farms Championship at Jackson, Miss., in October 2018 — but ranked only 188th on the points list and failed to retain his card after last season.
This year on Korn Ferry Tour — the secondary circuit comprised primarily of young up-and-comers — Reeves had only about $14,000 in earnings in 11 starts. Heading to Omaha, he had missed the cut in his last six tournaments. Two weeks ago in the TPC San Antonio Championship, Reeves shot 80-84 and was dead last.
“It was a struggle for quite awhile,” he says. “I played well in the fall (2018) events, but I went down a wrong road with my swing mechanics. It has taken me over a year to figure it out and solve the problem. I really haven’t played well this year. It’s all swing stuff.”
In April, Reeves began work with Montreal-based swing coach Shauheen Nakhjavani.
“He diagnosed some stuff that made sense,” Reeves says. “Some of that means changing a motor pattern. Some of it was a grip change.”
At San Antonio, Reeves bottomed out.
“We were still working through the grip change and I overdid it,” he says. “I had no idea where the club face was.
“It didn’t click until this past week. It wasn’t until the third round that it really clicked, and then I was able to climb the leader board.”
Reeves began last Sunday at 4-under-par, eight strokes back of 54-hole leader Ryan Ruffels. At that point, what kind of a chance did Reeves give himself to win?
“None,” he says. “Even when I made my putt on 18, I didn’t think it would be to win. I was just excited to finish out a good round and to potentially secure a top five or 10 finish. For it to happen the way it did … crazy.”
Reeves finished with a rush, Including an eagle at the par-five 15th and a birdie at No. 18. As the leaders came in behind him, he was the one surviving at the end. Reeves won $108,000 to jump from No. 135 to No. 18 on the Korn Ferry points list.
Seth Reeves and Patricia Reeves
Afterward, Seth and wife Patricia celebrated with a little choreographed dance number (check it out on Tik Tok) that would have made Napoleon Dynamite proud.
One of the bigger hitters on the Korn Ferry circuit, Reeves is a natural right-hander who plays golf southpaw style.
“I was kind of ambidextrous growing up,” he says. “When I played baseball, I threw right and batted left. When I picked up a golf club, it felt more natural to play left-handed.”
This is the third time Reeves has played at Pumpkin Ridge in the Winco Foods Portland Open.
“It’s one of the best courses we play all year,” he says. “It’s gorgeous. It’s one of those that’s really fun to play. It has so much character. There are so many different shots you have to play. You sometimes have to shape it both ways. It’s a good challenge.”
Sanders and his Sportfive crew run the Winco Foods in a first-class manner, Reeves says.
“This is one of the best tournaments anywhere,” he says. “We’re treated really well here. It feels like a PGA Tour event. It stinks that we don’t have fans this year, but there have been a lot of them come out here in the past. It’s really fun for the players to play.”
How did it go with our group Tuesday? Just fine. Reeves shot a 3-under 69 in a practice round that included an eagle on the par-five third at Witch Hollow. I had one spit of glory — I put a 5-wood to about 30 feet and made the putt for a natural birdie on the par-3 10th — but didn’t help out much. We had three lefty golfers in the group — Reeves and amateurs Bryan Shelton and Brian Antonen — something I’d never experienced before. We didn’t make a lot of birdies, but we had fun.
At one point, Reeves’ caddie, Tacoma native Nick Jorgensen, asked, “Do you guys all work together?” Told that, no, none of us had ever met before, Reeves didn’t skip a beat: “And you already have that chemistry going.”
Reeves will go into this week’s Winco Foods Portland Open, which begins Thursday, with confidence and a bit of swagger.
“I feel like I’ve hit the turn where I’ve gotten through that tough stretch of changing stuff to my game,” he says. “Now I can actually focus on the same things and improve those. I can only get better. Hopefully in the future, I can be in that last group starting Sunday’s round and be in contention through the whole event.”
Normally, Sanders presents the top 25 players on the Korn Ferry points list after Sunday’s final round with their PGA Tour cards. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, that won’t happen now until 2021. But the top five on the points list after Sunday gain entry into next month’s U.S. Open, and the top 10 after the Korn Ferry playoffs qualify for the “opposite field” events on the PGA Tour next year.
“There’s so much to play for out here,” Reeves says. “Every week is a new week.
“The thing with golf is, I won last week, but it’s already Tuesday and everybody’s preparing for Thursday. There’s a quick turnaround. You can’t live in the past. You have to keep plugging away.”
