TST #7 The Back Nine Decides
Summerland Golf Course | July 19th, 2026
Summerland has always been a course of contradictions. The front nine opens wide and forgiving, low fescue and room to miss. The back nine tightens, trees crowding the fairways, the margins for error shrinking with every hole. Play it once and you understand why the tour calls it a tale of two nines.
Last year the rain didn't let Summerland show its teeth. This year it did. Clear skies, comfortable heat, and greens rolling true from the first putt to the last.
Thirty-eight players made the trip, a smaller field than usual, most of the golf world's attention pulled elsewhere that morning between The Open's final round and the World Cup final kicking off. The ones who showed up got a course in its best form and a finish worth skipping the TV for.
Steve Buse and Cameron Bibby-Fox were tied after fifteen, playing in the day's last group with the tournament on the line between them. Steve bogeyed the par-five. Cameron birdied it. Two shots swung on one hole, and suddenly it was even again, both men aware the other wasn't going anywhere.
The separation came on 17, the long par four that asks the most of anyone still standing. Steve's approach found the green and held its line, tight enough to feel like pressure before Cameron had even hit his shot. Cameron's approach drifted left, caught a sprinkler head beside the green, and kicked hard into the trees. What should have been a recoverable miss became a shot he couldn't find a way back from.
Steve closed it out at 75, two clear of Bryson Marshall's plus-five finish. Bryson had his own version of a day that wouldn't cooperate. "Lipped out an eagle putt, then lipped out the birdie right after," he said of the same hole, two shots that should have fallen and simply didn't. He still found a way to edge Mark Johnson by a stroke on the back nine, winning the tiebreaker for second. For Steve, it's back-to-back wins, Talking Rock to Summerland. Momentum, it turns out, is a real thing on this tour.
Chad Kozak's Net win looked unlikely for most of the day and then looked inevitable, before turning into a survival. He came off the front nine two behind Evan Koppa, Vitaly Yaromich, and Alex Lopes, then caught fire from thirteen to sixteen, four net birdies in a row that rewrote the leaderboard before anyone saw it coming. Then the tighter back nine took its cut. A triple on seventeen. A double on eighteen. The cushion Chad built shrank with every step toward the clubhouse, until it was one stroke. One stroke was enough. Newcomer Matthew Cooper rounded out the podium in third, proof the front of the leaderboard isn't reserved for the veterans.
The standings shifted, if only at the top. Chris Myer's withdrawal opened the door for Mark Johnson to move ahead in the Gross Season race. In Net, nothing changed where it mattered. Evan Koppa's lead over the field remains as commanding as ever.
The back nine decided both divisions. Steve held his nerve where Cameron lost his. Chad survived where the day nearly got away from him. Summerland asked the hard questions late, and the leaderboard answered them one shot at a time.
