Big names have got their start in Victoria

Life unfolds in phases.

There is a certain natural, almost organic, feel to the fact that respective 1987, 1990 and 1993 Victoria Open champions Craig Parry, Steve Stricker and Brandt Jobe are now eligible to return to the Island as seniors with PGA Tour Champions for the Pacific Links Bear Mountain Championship in September.

Where did the time go? It is a wheel that keeps churning. It is quietly relentless, making you wonder how it slipped away almost without you noticing. Stricker is now 50 and Jobe and Parry both 51.

Stricker was 23 when he won his first pro tournament in Victoria, Parry was 21 and Jobe 27, all three turning the trick as younger men and all at Gorge Vale in the eventful 35-year history of the tournament now known as the Bayview Place Cardtronics Open presented by the Times Colonist.

Stricker went on to win $42 million US on the PGA Tour and Jobe more than $10 million. The affable Parry is an Aussie with 23 pro victories, including two on the PGA Tour, and with three Presidents Cup appearances.

Stricker has mentioned in interviews he will never forget his first victory as a pro in Victoria. The dream starts here, in the lower depths of the pro game, where every week is a grind of scrapping by and finding a way to transport yourself to the next tournament where you do it all over again.

This is as good as it gets for most. But look where it led for a select few.

Canadian Tour (now Mackenzie Tour-PGA Tour Canada) alumni to play on the PGA includes the likes of Stricker, Parry, Jobe, Ken Duke, Stuart Appleby, Mike Weir, Kirk Triplett, Chris DiMarco, Scott McCarron, Tim Clark and Tim Herron.

That’s the dream also for defending 2016 Bayview Place Open champion Adam Cornelson of Langley, a lefty who gave the home province back-to-back victories in Victoria following up Albin Choi’s championship from 2015.

“It gives me confidence knowing that I can do it. I always believed I could do it, but now I know I can do it,” Cornelson told Times Colonist reporter Mario Annicchiarico, following his victory last year at Uplands.

“The way I went about my business this week, I think I should write a bit of that down and keep going.”

And “keep going” is what the former NCAA University of New Orleans Privateer did in jumping up to the Web.com Tour — the AHL of golf — to begin this season. But after failing to make a cut in the early season on the Web.com, Cornelson is in the Mackenzie Tour’s Freedom 55 Financial Open this weekend in Point Grey and there is every chance he will be back at Uplands next week.

It shows the ladder doesn’t just only move up. Sometimes you have to step back down a few rungs to regroup and hopefully rally.

But nobody said this was going to be an easy process. Yet, if a young player is swinging a club this coming week at Uplands, it means he is certainly good enough to dream about bigger things.

Just ask those senior citizens Stricker, Jobe and Parry.