TST #2 Rust to Reckoning
Black Mountain | May 3, 2026
Black Mountain opens kindly. The first hole is a short par 4, the kind of opener that lets a golfer ease into the round before the course shows its real face.
With fairways narrowing and trouble widening, Black Mountain asks for accuracy. Amateur golf rarely provides it.
And yet the rating expects more from the field here than at most stops. The handicap arithmetic says scores should be lower. The scorecards rarely cooperate.
The low handicaps feel it sharpest. The math wants a score the course doesn't give up easily.
So every time the tour visits, the same question hangs in the air: when the handicap arithmetic and the course disagree, who actually wins?
On May 3, the answer came in fast.
Top ten in Net. Highest playing handicap? A 6.
Fifty-four players gathered under a clear sky for the tour's fourth visit to Black Mountain. 2nd of the 2026 schedule. Conditions were calm. Scores still weren't.
Black Mountain also carried a different kind of pressure.
Pace.
The slow-play language had been on the books for three years. Ryan Andrews had never wanted to use it. Penalty strokes blow up a round, sour an experience, and ask a player to wear a number that wasn't really about their golf. Easier, most days, to nudge a group along and let it slide.
Tower Ranch changed the math. The opener had run long enough to put the tour's standing in jeopardy, and a tour without courses isn't a tour. The gloves came off.
Black Mountain was the first event with the new posture. Warnings. Penalty strokes if it came to that. Ryan was prepared to do what was necessary to make the tour understand.
Two groups were put on the clock on the front nine. Both responded.
One foursome skipped the turn entirely, rolling straight to the tenth tee with no interest in losing position. Thankfully, they had Two Rivers Jerky in their bags to provide the fuel needed for the back nine. Whether the jerky improved their golf is debatable. It improved pace.
The threat did the work the penalty never had to.
Dan Turnbull hadn't teed it up on tour in two years. His last appearance came at Summerland in 2024, where he beat Liam Samaddar in a one-hole playoff and then disappeared from the schedule.
He came back rusty. The first hole confirmed it. Double bogey before his shoes were warm.
Through nine he was four over.
The 11th, a par 3. Birdie.
The 12th, a par 5. Birdie.
The 13th, another par 3. Birdie.
The 14th, a par 4. Birdie.
Four straight.
His playing partners said later it should have been lower. Putts lipped out. Others horseshoed back. Dan closed with a 31 on the back, signing for an even-par 71 and a Net score of -1.
He led both divisions.
Nobody got close.
Vitaly Yaromich, his brother David, and Andy Abreo all finished at +2, 2 shots back, watching a returning player pick up right where he left off.
The Net division delivered its own tension late in the round.
Evan Koppa stepped onto the 17th tee needing something. The par 3 gave him a look, and he took it, flushing an iron to six feet. The putt tracked the whole way and dropped.
Suddenly he was one back, with a stroke coming on the par-5 18th. Par to tie. Birdie to win.
The tee shot was clean. Position perfect. The hole was there.
Then the putter that rewarded him on 17 betrayed him on 18.
Three putts. Bogey.
Even par Net. Second place.
Mark Johnson's 1-over back nine was one of the stronger rounds in the field considering the math attached to a 2 handicap. Black Mountain rarely gives elite players much room.
At the top of the season standings, the Tower Ranch storylines held. Tyler Johnson finished T5 while Dustin Hughes added a T6, enough to keep both players holding the Gross and Net season leads through two events.
Some guys take time away from the game and come back searching.
Dan came back and found something.
Next stop: Nk’Mip — May 24.
