May 13, 2021

Alex Cejka had no plans to play Regions Tradition

6 Min Read

Alex Cejka had no plans to play Regions Tradition
Written by Bob McClellan @ChampionsTour

Alex Cejka was so sure he wouldn’t make the field for the first major of the season on PGA TOUR Champions, the Regions Tradition, that he didn’t pick up a club the weekend before it began.

He was home in Las Vegas, his feet up, pondering his next appearance on PGA TOUR Champions, which was scheduled to be this week’s Mitsubishi Electric Classic outside Atlanta. Cejka, a native of the Czech Republic who grew up in Germany, would be in the field for the MEC only because of his high finish at the Chubb Classic, a tie for second.

Cejka had been pointing toward joining the Champions Tour for two years, playing whatever PGA TOUR, Korn Ferry Tour and mini-tour events he could get into. He had some status for PGA TOUR Champions as a past winner on the PGA TOUR (the 2015 Puerto Rico Open), but it wasn’t going to get him much. He won the Monday qualifier to get into the Chubb, but with the Regions being a major he said when he looked at the field on Saturday night he was 10 or 11 spots from getting in.

But by Monday morning he had moved up to first alternate and had begun looking at flights to Birmingham. Sure enough he got the call that he was in, and he took a red-eye to get to Alabama in the wee hours of Tuesday.

The rest played out like a fairytale for him. He shot four rounds in the 60s, stared down six-time PGA TOUR Champions winner Steve Stricker in a playoff, and won not only for the first time on the Champions Tour but secured his status for the foreseeable future.

“It took a couple of days to sink in but it’s really great,” Cejka said from his hotel room in the Atlanta area. “I played really well all week, and for it to come down to that putt on the playoff hole and make it to win was something.

“Steve is a great player and a great champion. He has won so many times on the PGA TOUR and the Champions Tour. So to beat him in that situation is a real accomplishment.”

Cejka won’t have to hustle his way into any tournaments for a while. By virtue of winning a major, he’s exempt into every Champions Tour event through the end of 2022. He also gets five-year exemptions into the Regions Tradition and the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai, a fact of which Cejka wasn’t even aware.

“Really? I get five years in Hawaii?” he repeated. “Wow. That’s really great. Even if it’s two, I don’t care. We just really want to be there.”

Cejka said he’d been inundated with congratulatory texts, and that it was nice to be on the receiving end of those for the first time since his win in 2015.

“My fingers had gotten sore from texting congratulations to Bernhard Langer every second week, so it was nice to hear it from him,” Cejka said about his longtime friend and mentor.

Cejka noted he now had victories on the PGA TOUR, PGA TOUR Champions, Korn Ferry Tour and the European PGA TOUR. It is quite an accomplishment. In just three Champions Tour appearances he has surpassed $500,000 in earnings and ranks 31st in the Charles Schwab Cup standings. Given his play, he’s headed toward a very successful career post turning 50.

It’s a far cry from escaping communist Czechoslovakia as a boy with his father. His parents had divorced a year earlier when his father decided it was time to leave the country with his son and hopefully find a better life for him somewhere.

“Everybody has some kind of a story. I am very grateful for my dad, what he did for me,” Cejka said. “He took a little boy -- I was 9 years old. He took a little boy by his hand and escaped communism. It could have gone the other way. We ended up in Germany. He tried to give me a new, good, better life. Obviously 40 years ago. And it worked well. I am very grateful for what he did. And that started a different life for me. And look where I am right now. So I'm very happy.”

Obviously Cejka was very young when the journey occurred. He has vague recollections, including his father helping him swim across a nameless river to get to Germany. For him it seemed more like an adventure. He didn’t realize it literally could have been the difference between life and death.

“From me as a 9-year-old kid, it was like a camp,” Cejka said. “I didn't know what the danger was. I didn't know what the problems were. My dad was aware obviously. We can get caught, we can get shot, or we can go back to prison, you know, if you're caught by the guards. But he didn't tell me anything. For me, it was like -- when he told me, lay down and hide for a little bit, it was a fun game for me. For him it was probably his heart was pounding like this. But it all went well. I think we're lucky. …

“He took a big gamble, and especially with a kid. And he was young himself. And nobody knew what the situation is when you get – how rough the trip is, nobody has any ideas. And that whole trip was like two weeks long, I think. We had to go a different, weird route. And my dad had it all planned out. And luckily we didn't get caught and nobody shot at us. And so, again, he planned it well, and he executed it well.”

Both of Cejka’s parents are still alive. His mother is in the Stuttgart area of Germany and his father actually lives back in the Czech Republic. He said he had spoken to each since his victory on Sunday. He said everyone was very excited.

Cejka not only will carry positive vibes into the MEC this week, but he’s riding a streak of seven consecutive rounds in the 60s. With only 10 rounds, he doesn’t have enough to qualify to appear in the season stats. But if he did he’d ranked inside the top 10 in driving distance and second in driving accuracy, which is a lethal combination. He also would rank third in putting average, just behind Langer. Put it all together and he could be in contention any given week.

When he got to the grounds at Greystone Golf and Country Club for the Wednesday pro-am before the Regions Tradition, Cejka couldn’t find a parking spot. None had been reserved in his name. That’s when he found out who the last player was to pull out of the event, and Cejka parked in Jay Haas’ spot the rest of the week.

“I had played a practice round with his son Bill at the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship (a PGA TOUR event in March),” said Cejka, who made the cut there and finished in a tie for 43rd. “And Jay was on his bag. So I’m going to have to thank Jay the next time I see him. I might buy his parking spot.”

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