Winding road turns triumphant for Tim O'Neal, who earns first PGA TOUR Champions title at Dominion Energy

All Tim O’Neal ever has wanted was to prove he could compete against the game’s very best players, and to have some job security in his quest, a journey that has consumed countless hours of sweat and decades of his adult life. He came so close through the years in getting his hands on a PGA TOUR card, but he came up painfully short at Q-School on more than one occasion. Sunday, the 52-year-old O’Neal collected the biggest victory of his career, capturing his first PGA TOUR Champions title at the Dominion Energy Charity Classic, defeating rookie Ricardo Gonzalez of Argentina by two shots.

Not only did O’Neal, making his 50th start on PGA TOUR Champions, advance through to the second round of the circuit’s three-tiered Charles Schwab Cup Playoffs, but he did so in grand style, shooting the low round of the week (7-under 65) at The Country Club of Virginia to advance from 55th to 13th in the season-long Charles Schwab Cup standings.

The top 54 players in the Charles Schwab Cup standings after the Dominion move on to Little Rock, Arkansas, for the Simmons Bank Championship, a first-year event that begins on Friday. O’Neal will be there, his 2025 PGA TOUR Champions card already secured, and in good shape to finish in the top 36 to make it to the Charles Schwab Cup Championship at Phoenix Country Club in Arizona. The stakes are bigger this time of year, for sure – O'Neal earned $350,000 for the victory, and the Playoffs offer double points, which helped him make a huge leap on Sunday – but finally, the pressure that accompanies playing for his job will be alleviated.

O’Neal earned his way onto PGA TOUR Champions through its Q-School in Arizona in 2022, earning one of five cards available. His previous trips to PGA TOUR Q-Schools were hard tussles, often ending in heartache. There was the year he needed bogey on his final hole to earn a card and made triple bogey, or the very next year when he missed earning his card by a single shot. O'Neal's journey has been tumultuous at times, and he was emotional when asked about breaking through to win Sunday, the biggest moment of his career.

“I don’t know what to think. It’s been a long season,” said O’Neal, whose lone top 10 in 23 previous starts in 2024 was his tie for seventh at last month’s Sanford International in South Dakota. He started Sunday three shots out of the lead, tied for fifth. “For me to get it done when I had to, that means a lot.”

O’Neal’s 67-65 weekend left him at 13-under 275. Gonzalez, of Argentina, a tested veteran of the DP World Tour who won in Morocco early this season to gain full status on PGA TOUR Champions, missed good birdie looks at 16 and 17 and came to the par-5 18th needing to make eagle to force a playoff. Though there were two eagles on the hole on Sunday, Gonzalez’s plans for late heroics were dashed when he needed to hit a power draw off No. 18 tee but overcooked it, his ball sailing into the trees lining the left side of the hole. He was able to run a sweeping low hook into a bunker near the green and did well to make par to shoot 69 and lock down solo second. Australia’s David Bransdon (67), another rookie, finished third, his best showing of the year, closing with 67, with Tim Petrovic (70) fourth.

O’Neal’s professional golf odyssey has taken him to outposts around the globe. He has played on the Asian Tour, Korn Ferry Tour, PGA TOUR Latinoamerica, Alps Tour, EPD Tour, Golden Bear Tour, and APGA Tour, among other stops along the way. He earned his PGA TOUR Champions card at the over-50 circuit’s Q-School in December of 2022, which allowed him to set a schedule. O’Neal, a winner of 16 events while in college (Jackson State) and 1997 champion of the Georgia Amateur, won three times as a pro in Latin America, but he had a difficult time pinpointing why this particular week in Richmond would turn out to the one when all the pieces of his game came together to produce victory. He shot 67 in the second round despite a late double bogey at the par-3 17th hole, where he went over the green with his tee shot, and made eight birdies in his closing 65 on Sunday.

“I don’t know. It was just how it was supposed to happen, I guess,” the soft-spoken O’Neal said. “I’ve been playing well in the past few weeks, just giving too many shots back, and the last two days have been really solid. It only takes one week, right? And this was my week.”

Indeed it was. Keys to his finish were two superb short-iron approaches into 16 and 18, the last two par-5 holes at The Country Club of Virginia. At 16, O’Neal laid well back after his tee shot found a fairway bunker, but he stuffed his third shot to 7 feet and converted the birdie putt. At 18, where an errant drive into a bunker forced another layup, O’Neal aggressively ripped a sand wedge from 104 yards out that pitched past the flagstick and barely missed the hole when it spun back, leaving him only 3 feet up the hill for one last birdie. O’Neal’s victory was a popular one on Tour; as he waited for Gonzalez to finish behind him, several players and Tour officials approached him to hug him, shake his hand and congratulate him on the victory. They know his road has not always been an easy one. Golf is a hard game, and he has the battle scars to prove it.

“You know, I like all these guys out here and I've learned so much the past two years playing out here on PGA TOUR Champions,” said O’Neal, from Savannah, Georgia, whose last TOUR-sanctioned title came nearly a decade ago, in the 2016 Casa de Campo Dominican Republic Open on PGA TOUR Latinoamerica. “For them (peers) to feel that way for me, it means a lot, because I feel like now that I've won, I feel like I belong.”

O’Neal was one of three players to start the week outside of the top 54 in the Charles Schwab Cup to play his way into this week's second Playoffs event, the Simmons Bank Championship. Also advancing were Bransdon, whose play vaulted him to 35th, and Paul Goydos, who birdied three of his last four holes, shot 70, and moved from 59th to 36th. Chris DiMarco, who held the 54th spot for a spell on Sunday, Kirk Triplett and Angel Cabrera all slipped out of the top 54.

Sixty-nine competitors teed it up in Richmond (72 were eligible). Next week’s event in Little Rock will be followed by a week off, and then the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, Nov. 7-10, where the top 36 in points are eligible. Top-36 finishers will be fully exempt for 2025. South Africa’s Ernie Els, a three-time winner in 2024 trying to win his first Charles Schwab Cup, maintained his lead over Steven Alker, the 2022 champion (by 132,032 points), and Stephen Ames (220,520 points). The winner will earn $1 million from a bonus pool.