After 25-year ‘hiatus,’ Jansa sets sights on golfing with game’s best

By Mick Garry, for Pigeon605

In a mythical match between 25-year-old Ryan Jansa and the 50-year-old version of the same guy, there is one local golfer who knows where he would put his money.

The younger Jansa could hit the ball out of sight – perhaps sometimes literally – and while the older version remains a bomber off the tee, he also goes to bed earlier, exercises more and manages the mental challenges of this vexing game better than the kid did.

It’s all fun to think about it now for Jansa, a Sioux Falls native who is one of the state’s best-ever amateur golfers and is preparing to make a run at competing on the PGA Tour Champions.

He turns 50 on April 15 and will begin trying to qualify for Champions tournaments in May.

“I’m in better shape at 50 than I was at 25 – a fact that is either a better reflection of where I am at 50 or a not very good reflection of where I was at 25,” Jansa said. “I have paid a lot more attention to how I take care of myself the last few years in order to be in position to try to do what I’m going to do.”

Jansa’s attempt to play on the Champions Tour got a boost before it began when Sanford International tournament director Davis Trosin announced that the event had awarded him its first sponsor’s exemption for the 2023 International, which takes place the week of Sept. 11-17 at Minnehaha Country Club.

“From the time I was 3 years old, golf has been my life. My game is at a point where I feel good about how I’m playing, and I’m excited to take on this challenge,” Jansa said. “I’m grateful to Davis, the Sanford International and Sanford Health for this opportunity to compete in my hometown and live out a childhood dream.”

For the time being, Jansa’s inclusion in the Sanford tournament represents a career highlight and is well-earned recognition for how well he has played over the years in the region. It is just a small portion of the effort involved in becoming a touring 50-and-over golfer, however. There is a ton more to it than just hitting a landmark birthday.

“If I can look back and I can put on my resume that I played in a PGA-sanctioned event, there aren’t a lot of people who can say that,” Jansa said. “So I’m thrilled about that and excited for that opportunity. At the same time, I’m not naive to the amount of work it’s going to take.”

As he said this, he acknowledged that the people he’ll be competing against have been playing in tournaments in Hawaii, Florida, Arizona and California the past few months while the courses in Sioux Falls were still littered with slowly melting snow drifts the first week of April.

“I’m definitely behind the eight ball when you think about it that way,” he said. “But I’m working out four times a week, I’m hitting balls in the simulator four or five times a week, and I’m trying to get my yardage dialed in. So I’m not real worried about that part of my game. The putting, chipping and pitching is where it’s going to take some time to get the feel back. That’s where it’s going to be a trial by fire.”

PGA touring pros with South Dakota roots have been uncommon on both the regular PGA Tour and the 50-and-over version, though there are notable exceptions.

Most prominently, Tom and Curt Byrum of Onida won tournaments on the regular Tour in the 1980s. Tom Byrum, now 62, has maintained a competitive presence on the Champions Tour over much of the past decade, netting more than $4.5 million in winnings.

Jim Ahern, a Yankton native, competed on the regular Tour in the early 1970s without much success but went on to earn more than $4 million on the Champions Tour, highlighted by wins at the AT&T Canada Senior Open Championship in 1999 and the Music City Championship in 2003.

Ahern would be an example of someone who was much more competitive with his professional contemporaries on a national scale after age 50 than he was before that. The parallels are not exact — Ahern was involved in golf-related ventures much of his time away from PGA competition, and Jansa is a loan officer for First Dakota National Bank – but Jansa will be targeting a similar career arc.

“I always wanted to be a professional golfer, but I always wanted to be a really good husband and dad too,” Jansa said. “So I just took a 25-year hiatus to do that.”

By “hiatus,” he is not saying he has a dusty set of TaylorMade bubble shafts sitting idle in the corner of his garage waiting to strike a golf ball for the first time since 1998. In truth, he has played excellent golf on the state level throughout adulthood with seven South Dakota Golf Association Male Golfer of the Year awards. That reign includes 33 SDGA tournament titles, including eight SDGA Amateur Championships and nine SDGA Husband/Wife Championships with his wife, Julie.

Julie Jansa is a former teaching pro herself. They have been married for 27 years. As a frequent golfing partner, she can offer a professionally qualified assessment of her husband’s game.

“I’ve watched people on the Tour intently over the years, and I wouldn’t support something like this if I didn’t think Ryan stood a chance,” said his wife, the executive director of First Tee – South Dakota. “I do believe wholeheartedly with every ounce of my being that he has a very good chance of being out there and competing with the best of the best of the 50-and-olders.”

The family element is an integral part of Jansa’s attempt to play on the Champions Tour. The Jansas have played a lot of golf together with son Izaak, now 23, and daughter Reese, a freshman golfer at SDSU who won two Class AA state titles at Harrisburg High School and was the national high school golfer of the year in 2022.

In 2021, Reese was playing in a Pure Insurance national tournament at Pebble Beach that paired her with Jerry Kelly, a top player on the Champions Tour who is an annual competitor at the Sanford International.

The family developed a friendship with Kelly, one of the Tour’s most well-liked players, and Kelly’s caddy, Eric Meller. Jansa asked questions about what playing on the Tour was like and what it would take to be competitive. Julie Jansa did her part by pointing out Kelly’s calm demeanor on a day at Pebble Beach when the 11-time Champions Tour winner was not playing his best.

“I think the whole time I was elbowing Ryan,” she said, laughing. “I’m like, ‘See, that’s what you need to get to?’ I like to call myself his kid counselor. I hold him accountable. But you look at his stats for how he hits the ball, and he’ll be one of the longest hitters out there on the Tour. That can really benefit him.”

Jansa had a +1.5 handicap when he was trying to qualify for various tours after graduating from New Mexico State, where he and Julie met and he won a Big West Conference individual title in 1995. Decades later, his handicap is +4.5.

Without getting into the complexities of golf handicap indexes, it means he spent a lot of time under par as a younger man and that he spends more time under par now. Old Jansa would have to give young Jansa three strokes over 18 holes if there was actual wagering going on, though it’s unlikely either party would have wanted anything other than an even-up showdown.

The process that will be greeting him this summer is not something a father and husband who has a normal job would take on without 100 percent support from the family. At present, he is set to compete in 11 pre-qualifier tournaments leading up to the Sanford International, beginning with the Mitsubishi Electric Classic in May in Duluth, Georgia.

A pre-qualifier tournament takes place late in the week preceding the PGA Champions Tour event and includes a large group of players. A small number of players will move on to another qualifying round the following Monday or Tuesday. Surviving that gauntlet would give Jansa a berth in the actual Tour event.

It is a daunting challenge by the numbers, but Jansa takes the positives where he can get them. For one thing, he doesn’t have to quit his job – much of what he does as a loan officer he can achieve remotely. Also, he does not need to start winning tournaments to feed his family.

“Ryan is not playing for the money, he’s playing for the opportunity to compete against the best,” his wife said. “With 100 percent transparency, that’s what he wants. If he makes it, there is obviously a financial reward at the end of it, but for him it’s really about showing himself he can compete with the best of the best.”

As he’s about to turn 50, he doesn’t want to turn 60 wondering if he might have been able to pull it off a decade earlier. So joined by family and friends – and some sponsors who will lessen the financial load — this is about him and his dream. He has done a good job of paring down the potential for additional complications.

“I’ve always said if something is not impossible that means there’s at least a sliver of possible,” he said. “I’m looking for that sliver of possible. Everybody is going to measure my success differently. For me, if I can qualify for three of those 11 tournaments, I’d be ecstatic.”