Coloradan Connor Jones wins season-long Elite Amateur Series, which will give him a spot in a PGA Tour event to be determined; former CSU golfer plans to turn pro after this month’s U.S. Amateur
By Gary Baines – 8/7/2024
Ahead of arguably the most prestigious amateur golf championship in the world, a Coloradan won the 2024 Men’s Elite Amateur Cup by finishing atop the season-long Elite Amateur Series standings.
Connor Jones of Westminster, who wrapped up his college career at Colorado State University in the spring, earned the No. 1 spot in the final standings, based on results from seven championships culminating with the recent Western Amateur.
Jones, the 2022 CGA Player and the Year and a round-of-32 qualifier in last year’s U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills Country Club, recorded three top-5 finishes in the seven Elite Amateur Series events. He placed fourth in both the Pacific Coast Amateur and the Southern Amateur, and was fifth in the Sunnehanna Amateur. Other top-40 showings were 27th in the Trans-Miss Amateur and 36th in the Northeast Amateur. In 2022, Connor finished runner-up — in a playoff — at the Trans-Miss at Denver Country Club.
By winning the Elite Amateur Cup, Jones earns a spot in a 2024 or ’25 PGA Tour event. He said Wednesday that he doesn’t know yet for which tournament he’ll be exempt.
Jones confirmed on Wednesday that he’ll be turning pro after the U.S. Amateur, which runs Aug. 12-18 at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minn. He’s currently No. 88 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings. Jones, who turns 23 years old on Aug. 16, claimed five individual titles during his college career, between CSU and the University of Denver, where he started after being signed out of Mountain Range High School.
The Elite Amateur Series just concluded its third season of existence after debuting in 2022. Davis Bryant of Aurora, a former CSU teammate of Jones, finished fifth in last year’s EAS standings. Bryant, now a pro, recently won the Inspirato Colorado Open.
For the final 2024 Elite Amateur Series standings, CLICK HERE.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com