Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that Charlie Flynn this past weekend became the first golfer from Alexandria to play in a PGA Tour event in almost 50 years.
He was a phenom as a 7-year-old first-grader. In his first competitive event that year, a 9-hole tournament at Copper Mill in Baton Rouge, he shot a 2-over-par score of 38 for a first-place tie. He went on to excel in junior golf, high school and college. Two years ago, he was runner-up in the Louisiana State Amateur tournament.
As a senior at Louisiana-Lafayette, he helped ULL win the Sun Belt Conference golf championship in the spring of 2023, and he turned professional soon after, playing on the All Pro Tour (APT), a minor-league level tour that makes Alexandria one of its annual stops at the OakWing Golf Course. He has had three top-25 APT finishes.
On Thursday, Sept. 26, he went to Deerfield Country Club in Canton, Miss., to try to qualify for the Monday qualifying tournament for this past weekend’s PGA Tour’s Sanderson Farms event in Jackson, Miss. He shot 2-under-par and tied for 14th – the top 15 qualified — to barely make it to Monday’s big qualifier on the same Deerfield course.
That’s where things got dramatic for Charlie, whose parents, John and Kristy Flynn, were on hand to cheer him on. In this tournament, the top four qualify for the PGA Tour event. Sitting at 3-under-par after the turn, he began the back nine by rolling in a 40-foot putt for an eagle. He finished 6-under-par, tying him for fourth, which forced a sudden death playoff to determine the last qualifier.
Charlie, 24, and Dawson Armstrong, a 29-year-old Georgia native who has had three top-5 finishes on golf’s Triple-A level Korn Ferry Tour, dueled for the PGA Tour invitation.
“Before teeing off, I was nervous,” said Charlie. “I knew the gravity of the situation. But I kept breathing, taking big breaths to calm down.”
Flynn had a precarious start at the par-5 10th, driving into the left rough, then landed his second shot about 20 yards shy of the green in the rough. Armstrong, meanwhile, hit a perfect drive and then sailed a 235-yard approach shot to within 5 feet for a chance at an eagle.
“I thought, ‘This could be over quick,’” said Charlie, who chipped out of the rough to within 7 feet and knocked in the birdie putt. Armstrong’s eagle putt slid by the right edge for a tap-in birdie, and the two went to a second playoff hole, No. 9, a par-4.
On that hole, it came down to a 3-foot putt that Charlie needed to make to advance to his first PGA Tour event. “I felt my knees wobbling and my adrenaline surging,” he said. “I got over the putter and stroked it, and it went in. I dropped my putter and put my hands over my face.
“There was just so much gratitude,” he went on, “so much raw emotion. I thought back on the whole journey and the sacrifices, not only that I made but that others made for me.”
He first went over to Armstrong and gave him a hug, and he “let out a few tears of joy and sympathy for Dawson.” And Dawson congratulated Charlie.
What Charlie Flynn, the one-time kid prodigy, did with that 3-foot putt is become the first man from Alexandria since Earl Humphries to earn the right to play in a PGA Tour tournament. Humphries, probably the top amateur golfer in Cenla in the ’90s, qualified for five PGA Tour events in 1976 but never made a weekend cut. Back problems – two slipped discs – cut short his professional golf career.
To go to the Country Club of Jackson’s Sanderson Farms event as a player, and practice on the range a few yards away from his childhood idol Rickie Fowler and get to meet some of the pros like Aaron Baddeley, Keith Mitchell and Justin Hadley, was “super cool,” Charlie said.
He didn’t make the cut for the weekend, shooting 5-over for the first two rounds, but the two guys he played with – Frenchman Paul Barjon and 2021 Pepperdine graduate Joe Highsmith – both did.
He did get to reunite, too, at the event with 10-year PGA Tour veteran and two-time tour winner Brice Garnett, whom he first met as a youth when Garnett played a few years on the Adams Pro Tour at OakWing. Garnett stayed with the Flynns at their house each of the three years he played in Alexandria.
“We became good friends, and he has been a cool mentor,” said Charlie. “After I qualified, he was one of the first to reach out and congratulate me. He showed me the ropes out there. He let me play with him in a practice round, and I talked with him and picked his brain. And he kept it relaxed.”
He was given a bag of the finest golf balls, and someone set him up with a caddie for the first time. Even though it’s back to the mini-tour grind, when you are your own caddie, Charlie, having tasted what it’s like to play at the top level, wants more of the high life.
Next up: Q-school, short for qualifying school. The first of a three-stage qualifying series is next week at the Rockwall Golf and Athletic Club near Dallas. The goal is to advance through all three stages to earn full PGA Tour membership for a year. The consolation prize could be a ticket to play on the Class AAA Korn Ferry Tour for the upcoming year.
Charlie made it to the second stage last year.
“I know it’s something I can do,” he said. “I know can play. It makes me want to work harder and yet take it one day at a time.”