The leaderboard at the Senior PGA Championship is filled with vintage PGA Tour star power, with names like Retief Goosen, Lee Westwood, Padraig Harrington and Vijay Singh all in the mix.
But quietly tied for the lead at five under par with one round remaining is a less familiar name: Jason Caron. Caron will play in the final group on Sunday alongside Goosen and Angel Cabrera, and regardless of how the round transpires, on Monday, he’ll return to his “real” job, as the head golf professional at Mill River Club on Long Island’s North Shore, in Oyster Bay, where Caron works alongside his wife, Liz, a former LPGA pro.
Caron’s remarkable year in senior golf is worth a quick refresher.
In the early 2000s, Caron competed on both the PGA Tour and Korn Ferry Tour before starting a career as a club pro in New York’s Metropolitan section. Then last year, Caron qualified for the 2024 Senior PGA Championship and finished T4 — the best result by a club pro since 2002.
In June, Caron got into the field for the American Family Insurance Championship as an alternate, finishing T31.
Next up was the U.S. Senior Open, which Caron had gotten into via a local qualifier. He missed the cut but had the chance to tee it up again just over a month later at August’s Rogers Charity Classic, where he again got into the field as an alternate. That week, Caron was T3 — a finish that got him straight into the following week’s Ally Challenge field, where he was T47.
In October, Caron received a sponsor’s exemption to play the Constellation Furyk & Friends, where he again capitalized, finishing T4, and earning another entry into the following week’s tournament, the SAS Championship, where he finished T47.
Caron’s performance in those seven events alone was enough to qualify him for the Charles Schwab Cup Championship playoff series, which, in similar fashion to the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup, whittles down to the top 36 players at the end of the regular season. That group of 36 earns an invite to the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Phoenix Country Club, as fully-exempt status for the following year’s tournaments.
This club pro nearly pulled off an epic victory on the Champions Tour
Caron finished T3 at the final playoff series event, launching him to No. 35 on the Charles Schwab Cup points list after playing in just nine events — an incredible achievement. And even more impressively, Caron said that despite clinching the full season of exemptions, he intended to keep his job at Mill River and play as much as he could.
The strategy appears to be paying off. With the busy season just getting started in the Northeast, Caron is making his ninth start on the PGA Tour Champions since February this week. He came close to notching his first senior tour victory at the Cologuard Classic in Tucson, where he lost to Steven Alker in a playoff.
