Submitted photo
Chris Carfangia, the PGA head golf professional at Pine Lakes Golf Club, hits a tee shot in August during the Northern Ohio PGA Senior Professional Championship at Chagrin Valley Country Club in Chagrin Falls.
HUBBARD — When Chris Carfangia received the phone call from the PGA of America, it was hard to contain his excitement.
Carfangia had competed in the Northern Ohio PGA Senior Professional Championship at Chagrin Valley Country Club in August, but came up just short of qualifying for this week’s 2025 Senior PGA Professional Championship at the Wanamaker and Dye Courses in Port St. Lucie, Fla. He finished sixth at Chagrin Valley, which earned him one of the alternate spots.
Since one of the Ohio original qualifiers is unable to participate, Carfangia, the PGA Head Golf Professional at Pine Lakes Golf Club in Hubbard, will have the opportunity to make the trip to Port St. Lucie and represent northern Ohio after all, as he tests his mettle against the best senior club professionals from across the country Thursday through Sunday.
“It’s a great opportunity,” the 53-year-old Carfangia said. “We work so hard all year long in our respective jobs that when you get invited to something like this, it really is the crown (jewel) for the season, playing in events and trying to at least get out on the golf course. As a PGA Professional, we wear many hats at our facilities. Playing is still the root of why we all got into the game. We all got into the game of golf because we love it and then we made that our careers.”
When he was 8-years old, Carfangia, a Hubbard native, met golf professional Dave Coller at Pine Lakes, then known as Hubbard Golf Course.
Coller gave him his first golf lessons, and Carfangia immediately took to the game and to the idea of being a club pro.
“I saw how he interacted with people at Hubbard Golf Course, and I just knew at a very early age that that’s something that I wanted to do,” Carfangia said. “That’s one of the things that I wanted — be around the game, teach the game and help people. That’s the most fun of being a PGA professional, helping others.”
Carfangia attained the PGA of America membership in 1996 and has been teaching the game of golf since 1994.
He got his start working at Oak Tree Country Club in West Middlesex (Pa.) out of high school. From there, he went to The Country Club in Meadville, Pa. Carfangia then took over as head pro at Pine Lakes in 2002, where he’s been for the last 23 years.
“When I finally got the opportunity to come back and work in Hubbard from being out of town for years, I jumped at the chance because I’ve only been the fourth golf professional in the 100-year existence of it,” Carfangia said. “So that’s an honor in itself being a hometown boy that’s been at home for a majority of his career.”
Carfangia will take a career’s worth of experience with him to the PGA Village this week for his first time competing on the national level.
He’s never played the Wanamaker and Dye Courses, so Carfangia has spent time doing his homework before making the trip down to practice ahead of the competition. He said he’ll play practice rounds on Tuesday and today, before the tournament starts on Thursday.
“With the internet now, it makes preparing for tournaments a lot different than it used to be when I was young, where we would just show up and kind of hope for the best,” Carfangia said. “I’ve been preparing with yardage books and Google Maps and their website, just trying to get familiar with the property from afar. Just going through some of the holes in the yardage book, I can see and make some sort of game plan of how I want to attack.”
After the first two rounds on Thursday and Friday, the 200-plus player field will be cut to the top-90 for the third round on Saturday. Then there will be one last cut down to 70 players for the final round on Sunday.
“I want to go down and do my best to win it,” Carfangia said. “I don’t want to go down and just hopefully make a good showing. I want to compete, as we all do as golf professionals. We want to compete and do the best we can. Making the cut would be the first step of that winning process. … This is a two-cut event, but I’m trying my best to go down and win the thing.”
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