Van Sickle hoping victory is big boost of confidence
Mike Van Sickle has been spending a lot of time traversing Canada in the hope of eventually earning his PGA Tour card.
What he’s hoping, though, is that an exhausting trip to Pittsburgh might have been just what he needed to kick-start his dream into reality.
Van Sickle, 28, a Pine-Richland alumnus who lives in McKees Rocks, blew into town for the threeday West Penn Open Championship at Westmoreland Country Club and rolled to a four-shot win over Robert McClellan of Butler Country Club to win the event for
the second time.
“There wasn’t a whole lot of time to overthink this thing because I flew into Toronto, drove down and two or three hours of sleep and teed it up,” Van Sickle said. “You kind of just go out there and just play golf and I didn’t worry about any of the preparation for it because I didn’t have any and I just went out there and played golf and that’s sometimes a good thing.”
Hours before he played in the West Penn Open, he competed for four days in the Staal Foundation Open where he finished tied for 14th with an 11-under-par 277 at Whitewater Golf Club in Thunder Bay, Ont.
It was a disappointing finish considering that he was 17 under at one point during the third round, but shot 4 over on the back nine and fell one off the lead heading into the final day and was 2-over 70 on Sunday.
That rough patch is also what made the win in Export so much more important.
“After 45 holes I was leading by two or three and I let that slip away the last 27 holes and, I’ve been playing a lot of good golf, but I just hadn’t seen the results up to that point,” Van Sickle said.
“To come back to a course where I notoriously hadn’t played well and to dominate it from tee to green, I played it the best I’ve ever played it and it gave me a big confidence boost going forward the rest of the year.”
Throughout the summer Van Sickle has been playing on the PGA’s Mackenzie Tour Canada, and is currently 35th on the money list with $7,038 in five tournaments.
“Each of the cities I go to is a big city and I’m trying to culture myself a little bit as I go to all of these provinces,” Van Sickle said. “It’s been a fun experience and I’ve seen some things and it’s been interesting to be in another country and playing golf. As long as you learn the phrase, ‘no worries, eh,’ you’re pretty much all set.”
Like most golfers playing in PGA Tour Canada, Van Sickle has hopes of moving up and onto the next rung on the ladder, the Web.com Tour, which is a tier below the PGA Tour.
He has meandered back to the United States for Monday qualifying in several Web.com Tour events, but has yet to be able to crack the top four and make the cut as one of the event’s final entries.
He’ll try again Aug. 10 when he goes to Springfield, Mo., for the Price Cutter Charity Championship.
“It’s really demoralizing and I say that kind of lighthearted, but it’s difficult because you can go out there and play some really good golf, but because it’s an 18hole qualifier, there’s between 80 and 100 guys going for four spots,” Van Sickle said.
“You can play great and four guys just beat you by a shot and play just a little bit better.”
Despite the rough road, he still has high hopes of playing on the PGA Tour in the next couple of years.
“Hopefully next year I’ll look at the PGA Tour because you have to play your way through the Web.com Tour and you play your way up,” Van Sickle said. “Then, maybe, you can try to get into the top 25 overall and get onto the PGA Tour, but at this point, this year has been hard.”