Former Teammate Trasamar Inspires Van Rooyen to Spectacular WWT Victory

National

LOS CABOS, Mexico -- Sunday was a combination of mixed emotions and spectacular golf for Erik Van Rooyen. He couldn't help thinking about his former roommate and best friend, Jon Trasamar, who is dying of malignant melanoma, yet he managed to focus so effectively on his shots during the final round of the World Wide Technology Championship that he was able to play a virtually perfect final nine. The 33-year-old former University of Minnesota star from South Africa hit six greens on the back nine at  El Cardonal at Diamante in regulation, and the other three greens -- two par 5s and a drivable par 4 -- in one less than regulation. And after birdying six of the first eight holes, he drained a 15-foot putt for eagle on the par-5 18th hole.

That gave him a back-nine 28, a final-round 9-under-par 63, a 72-hole total of 261 (27 under) -- and a two-shot victory.

Matt Kuchar, a nine-time winner on the PGA Tour, and Camilo Villegas tied for second, two behind at 263. They both shot 66. Justin Suh shot 65, and that put him at 264, and that was good for sole possession of fourth.

It looked like a two-horse race  between Kuchar and Villegas as they made the turn on Sunday, playing in the final group along with Van Rooyen, who started his round with a bogey at the par-5 first hole and was only 1 under for the day going to the 10th tee. At that point, Kuchar was four ahead of him and one ahead of Villegas. But Van Rooyen, who won the Minnesota State Amateur in 2012, his last summer as an amateur, hit his tee shot at the drivable (297-yard) par-4 10th hole within a couple of feet of the green and two-putted  from the fringe for a birdie.

That was the start of his sensational back-nine charge. Van Rooyen followed the birdie at the 10th by nearly holing his 8-iron tee shot at the 189-yard, par-3 11th. His ball stopped just a few inches short of the cup -- dead on line -- and he tapped in for another birdie. He then made the first of three clutch putts in the 20-to-30-foot range at the par-4 12th for his third birdie iin a row. After making one of his two back-nine pars at the 13th, he two-putted from the front fringe for another birdie at the par-5 14th (554 yards).

He hit a wedge to 25 feet at the par-3 16th and made it, and made another putt of a similar distance at the 462-yard, par-4 17th. Suddenly, Van Rooyen was tied with Kuchar for the lead at 25 under. Villegas was one behind at minus 24, and Suh, playing right in front of them, was in the process of finishing off his 65, which put him at 24 under. 

The 18th hole at El Cardonal is 585 yards. In the early 1990s, at about the time that Van Rooyen was first starting to swiing a golf club in Bellville, South Africa, par 5s of 585 yards and longer would have been considered pretty much unreachable in two, except maybe for someone like John Daly. it is a perfect example of how much golf has changed in recent decades that on Sunday Van Rooyen hit an iron off the 18th tee -- so that he wouldn't risk ending up in the fairway bunker that Suh had just been in -- and he was still able to hit the green in two! 

Not only did he hit it in two, but Van Rooyen hit the combination hybrid/fairway wood that he uses for shots in the neighborhood of 275 yards to 15 feet on the final hole Sunday. 

Villegas, from a few yards closer, got his second shot just inside of Van Rooyen's. Kuchar hit the longest of the three tee shots in the group, but his second shot wasn't nearly as good as the two that preceded it. His ball ended up left of the green, leaving him with a delicate pitch from a tight lie over a bunker, and he had rougly the same length putt for birdie that Van Rooyen and Villegas had for eagle.  

Van Rooyen went first -- and made his eagle putt. Basically, that ended the tournament, because it put him a 27 under, and both Kuchar and Villegas needed to make their putts for minus 26. They both missed, which meant they tied for second.

  

The victory was Van Rooyen's second on the PGA Tour. The first came in 2021 at the Barracuda Championship.

This one was worth $1,476,000 -- and a lot more than that. Going into the WWT Championship, he was outside the top 125 on the PGA Tour money list, at No. 132, and now he's No. 74 with $2,457,390 for the 2022-23 season. More important, Van Rooyen moved up to No. 63 on the Fall Points List. He was on the bubble at No. 125, because players need to be in the top 125 to be fully exempt for the PGA Tour in 2024. With only two tournaments remaining on the fall schedule, he is assured of being in the top 125 and having full status next year. Actually, he's got full status for two years, as a result of winning a tour event. 

And now that he's taken care of that, he can clear his schedule for the rest of the year. He doesn't have to play in either of those last two fall tournaments; so he and his caddy, Alex Gaugert, another former teammate of his and Trasamar's, can fly back up to Minnesota on Monday, and on Tuesday they will visit Trasamar, who is hospitalized in Rochester and being treated by the Mayo Clinic.

It was Trasamar, a former Minnesota state high school tournament runner-up from Blue Earth, who picked Van Rooyen up at the airport when he arrived in Minnesota in 2009. They were roommates and became best friends. Van Rooyen completed his eligibility with the Gophers in 2013 and turned pro that summer. Trasamar, who was red-shirted as a freshman, played for an extra year, and in the spring of 2014 he tied for third in the Big Ten tournament, which helped the Gophers win the team championship. Gaugert was also on that team. Trasamar turned pro right after the college season ended, and won the first tournament he entered as a professional, the Bakker Crossing, an event on the Dakotas Tour. For that, he received $15,000. 

Although he had begun playing for money a year earlier than Trasamar, Van Rooyen didn't win for the first time as a professional until June of 2016, when he won the Tapemark Pro-Am at Southview Country Club. (Never mind that Wikipedia doesn't mention that victory.) He was 3 over after the first nine holes, then decided that the key to playing Southview was to keep his approach shots short of the hole. He didn't want any more of the treacherous downhill putts on Southview's greens. That strategy worked. He played the last 45 holes in 15 under, won the tournament and collected $6,000. He spent most of 2016 and '17 on the Sunshine (South African) Tour and won the Eye of America Championship in February of 2017. 

Van Rooyen went North to play on the European Challenge Tour later that year and won again in October, at the Hainan Open. He had two other top-3 finishes on the Challenge Tour that autumn, and in December he finished second in the Joburg Open, which was jointly sponsored by the Sunshine and European tours. That result got him into the British Open in July of 2018, and by then he was a full-fledged member of the European Tour (now the DP World Tour). He won for the first time on one of the major tours in 2019, when he beat the future U.S. Open champion Matthew Fitzpatrick by one shot to claim the title at the European Tour's Scandanavian Invitational.

That was also the first year he made more than $1 million in prize money. As a matter of fact, he earned 2,000,284 Euros in 2019. In 2020, his European Tour earnings dropped to a little more than 1.1 million Euros, but he gained status on the PGA Tour and won nearly $185,000 out there. By 2021, he was playing full-time on the PGA Tour, and won the Barracuda Championship. He ended the 2020-21 PGA Tour season with more than $2.4 million.

While Van Rooyen was moving up the professional golf ladder, Trasamar was working the mini-tour circuit -- the Canadian Tour, the LatinoAmerica Tour, the Outlaw Tour in Arizona, and the Dakotas Tour. He didn't do all that badly. He won five times on the Dakotas Tour, which is one of the strongest mini-tours in the U.S., or anywhere else, for that matter. His biggest problem was that he always struggled when he got to the PGA Tour/Korn Ferry Q-School, which meant that he was relegated to playing in mini-tour events, and most of them have limited budgets -- and limited prize money.

Then, in the spring of 2022, he was diagnosed with melanoma, and he had surgery on his knee and shoulder to remove the cancer. The initial scans showed no cancer remaining; so he hoped the problem was behind him.

Trasamar was back on the Dakotas Tour that summer. He entered only four tournaments but played respectably and made $8,771. That put him at No. 25 on the money list for a tour that had roughly 150 pros competiing from June unitl Labor Day. 

As he did every year, he signed up for Q-School, but once again failed to make it beyond the early stages. He was still planning on another year of mini-tour golf until the end of January 2023, when he had more scans -- and they showed that the cancer was back, with a vengeance. It soon became so bad that Trasamar had to have titanium rods inserted in both legs to stabalize his femurs, which were deteriorating as a result of the melanoma, and he's been in the hospital ever since.


Van Rooyen and Gaugert were both in tears after he won Sunday. There was undoubtedly some joy in those tears, but mostly they were for Trasamar.

"I was calm out there today because there's bigger stuff in life than golf," said Van Rooyen, who had difficulty talking during an interview for the Golf Channel a few minutes later. "This was for Jon, my best friend. He's got melanoma, and he's not going to make it."

When asked how he was able to concentrate on golf, he conceded the thought of what his friend is going through "dragged me down." But he added, "When I step onto the golf course, I've got a frickin job to do. That's what it comes down to. Do your job. And until that last putt drops, it's focus, and let's do it for Trassy. We'll see him on Tuesday, and I'll give him a high five then."   



World Wide Technology Championship

At El Cardonal at Diamante

Par 72, 7,452 yards

Los Cabos, Mexico

Final results 

1. Erik Van Rooyen          $1,476,000     68-64-66-63--261 (-27)

T2. Matt Kuchar                  $729,800.      65-65-67-66--263

T2. Camilo Villegas              $729,800      64-64-69-66--263

4. Justin Suh                        $401,800      66-65-68-65--264

T5. Ryan Palmer                  $316,725     71--66-65-64--266

T5. Andrew Putnam             $316,725      68-69-67-62--266

T7. Mackenzie Hughes         $266,500     71-65-63--68--267

T7. Chesson Hadley             $266,500      66-66-72-63--267

9. Carson Young                   $239,850      69-64-68-67--268

T10. Ludvig Aberg                $190,650       68-65-72-64--269

T10. Akshay Bhatia               $190,650      69-66-70-64--269

T10. Austin Cook                  $190,650       72-67-68-62--269

T10. Nate Lashley                 $190,650       64-70-69-66--269

T10. Sam Ryder                    $190,650       69-69-64-67--269

T65. Troy Merritt                    $17,548       71-68-73-65--277