Ken Duke ushers men's golf back to Arkansas with inaugural Simmons Bank Championship

Younger fans might not realize it, but Arkansas has played a crucial role in shaping professional golf’s future. The Korn Ferry Tour featured heavily in the state in the 1990s and 2010s, including four years (2001-04) with multiple stops in the “Natural State.”

This slice of golf history includes Zach Johnson in 2003, who finished third at the Korn Ferry Tour’s First Tee Arkansas Classic as a Monday qualifier, then won the following week’s Fort Smith Classic to secure full status. He proceeded to finish atop that year’s Korn Ferry Tour season-long standings, earning his first PGA TOUR card and kick-starting an illustrious career. Had it not been for those two weeks in Arkansas, Johnson’s name might be a blip on the radar of professional golf; he was a five-year pro at the time and held conditional Korn Ferry Tour status. Instead, he’s a two-time major champion.

More golf history will now be etched in the nation’s 25th state. For the first time since 2010, PGA TOUR-sanctioned golf returns to Arkansas for this week’s Simmons Bank Championship, the second leg of the three-event Charles Schwab Cup Playoffs. The top 54 players on the season-long Charles Schwab Cup standings have qualified for the Simmons Bank Championship, with the top 36 after this week advancing to the season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship and earning fully exempt 2025 Champions Tour membership.

“It means a lot of excitement,” said Arkansas native Ken Duke. “All the fans there … they’re hungry for golf, and everyone on this Tour will absolutely love it. Everyone is just golf nuts all around; there are so many golf courses around Little Rock and just Arkansas in general. Just being back there and doing my job, playing in front of the hometown fans, it’s a special place.”

This week’s stakes are high at Pleasant Valley Country Club in Little Rock, a Joe Finger design that dates to the late 1960s. Among the field is Duke, who held the lead into Sunday at last week’s Dominion Energy Charity Classic, the Charles Schwab Cup Playoffs’ first leg, en route to a T5 finish. Duke entered the Charles Schwab Cup Playoffs at No. 29 on the season-long standings, on the edge of the top-36 bubble, but he moved to No. 23 with his performance at The Country Club of Virginia, earning a cushion that should allow him to enjoy this week’s homecoming even more so.

Duke, whose career includes victories on the PGA TOUR, PGA TOUR Champions and Korn Ferry Tour, looks back fondly on those Korn Ferry Tour stops at the First Tee Arkansas Classic (in Hot Springs Village) and Fort Smith Classic. Duke, now 55, was born in Hope, Arkansas, and raised in Arkadelphia, a smallish town (population roughly 10,000) situated less than 70 miles from Little Rock, this week’s host city. Both the state and Little Rock are near and dear to Duke, who was diagnosed with scoliosis as a seventh grader. He sought an opinion at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock, which determined he had a 26% curvature of the spine and advised him to wear a back brace 23 hours a day. Two years later, with the curvature reaching 51%, he underwent surgery; a 16-inch metal rod was attached to his spine to facilitate straightening.

Without the procedure, the pressure on Duke’s lungs and heart might have become life-threatening. Yet just months after surgery, Duke returned to his high school golf team. Playing in a back brace, he won medalist honors at a district tournament, and his golf arc spiraled upward from there. Duke has made 607 career starts across the PGA TOUR, PGA TOUR Champions and Korn Ferry Tour, and this week, his 608th, will be among the most memorable.

Not only does Duke cherish his upbringing in Arkansas, but also his story has left a mark on his home state. In 2009, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences established The Ken Duke Endowed Chair in Scoliosis. Funds from the chair treat spinal deformities, tumors and fractures. In October 2013, Duke was inducted into the Arkansas Golf Hall of Fame, with the induction ceremony hosted by Pleasant Valley Country Club, of all places. That ceremony came four months after he earned his maiden TOUR title at the Travelers Championship, carding weekend rounds of 65-66 at TPC River Highlands and defeating Chris Stroud in a playoff. The next year, Duke was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame as well.

Arkansas loves Ken Duke, and the feeling is mutual.

“It’s called the Natural State … I’m a big fisherman, and there are a lot of nice lakes out there and recreation on those lakes,” said Duke, a Simmons Bank ambassador. “Skiing and fishing and just having a good time in the summer … it’s a wonderful spot.”

“What a great guy. Loved by everyone,” added Simmons Bank Executive Chairman George Makris Jr. “He will give you the shirt off his back. Just exactly the kind of personality that we want to partner with, and he’ll do anything we ask of him.

“If we were to put somebody in front of a customer and said, ‘We have the same values as this guy,’ Ken Duke is the poster child for that.”

Also in the Simmons Bank Championship field is David Toms, No. 39 on the Charles Schwab Cup standings, who hails from Louisiana but has spent ample time in Arkansas in his adult life. Toms quipped last week that while Louisiana is known as a sportsman’s paradise, Arkansas is a “prettier version of sportsman’s paradise.” Toms, an outdoorsman, raved about the state’s trout fishing, bass fishing, duck hunting, deer hunting and turkey hunting. He maintains a hunting camp in Arkansas and intended to bring his supplies with him to the Simmons Bank Championship, planning a quick visit to his hunting camp after tournament week.

“I would like to spend about half my year there, honestly,” Toms said of Arkansas. “You have such a diverse state, you have the Delta over by the Mississippi, you have all the beautiful lakes … The people are great, too. It’s a lot like Louisiana north, a lot of culture and just very good people.”

For the past 14 years, all that’s been missing is TOUR-sanctioned competition. That will change this week at Pleasant Valley, as a golf-crazed fan base will turn out to watch the Champions Tour’s top pros vie for spots in the Charles Schwab Cup Playoffs finale. The state has previously welcomed PGA TOUR golf (in 1960-63 and 1971-72) and the Korn Ferry Tour (23 total events across three sites from 1990-2010), and the LPGA’s Walmart NW Arkansas Championship has been contested since 2007, but this week marks the Champions Tour’s debut in the “Natural State.”

It's a natural fit.

“This means more to me than anything else,” said longtime PGA TOUR and Champions Tour pro Glen Day, who was born in Mississippi but has spent his adult life in Arkansas, the home state of his wife Jennifer. “I can’t wait to show all my friends, all of Jennifer’s friends, our little slice of heaven … Arkansans are good, wholehearted people; all you’ve got to do is knock on somebody’s door and introduce yourself and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a little problem, can I get some help?’ and you’ll get it.

“To bring the sport that has given me so much joy and allowed me to bring up a family to our state, to all of my friends at home, and actually show them what I’ve been doing for the past 35 years, it’s really special.”

The Simmons Bank Championship was seeded in a conversation between Day and Makris at the Ascension Charity Classic, St. Louis’ Champions Tour stop, a few years back. Day floated the possibility of a PGA TOUR Champions event in Little Rock, which snowballed into a conversation between Day and Champions Tour President Miller Brady, and then one between Brady and Makris.

“The (Champions Tour) convinced me that in areas like Sioux Falls (South Dakota) and others, they’re able to make it work in a very successful way, because it’s what the town can rally around – really, the state of Arkansas,” Makris said. “And sure enough, that’s what happened. It took us less than 45 days to sign up over 900 volunteers, and we have a waiting list … they’re having a blast.

“We’re going to have kids’ zones, family fun zones, a tailgate on Saturday morning so you can watch the (Arkansas) Razorbacks (football) game out on the golf course … the reaction once people experience that, I think, is going to be the most gratifying part of the whole golf tournament, and we hope to raise significant dollars for local charities and be a contributor to their success for many years.”

Day finished outside the top 54 in the Charles Schwab Cup, failing to qualify for the Simmons Bank Championship, but he’ll be on-site all week, reveling in the moment. He wouldn’t miss it.