2025 CGA championship season set to begin as Parker Edens and Jimmy Makloski scheduled to try for unprecedented 3-peat in CGA Four-Ball
By Gary Baines – 4/28/2025
It’s the middle of spring, which means, among many other things, that high-level competitive golf gears up in a big way in Colorado.
A major part of that involves CGA championships, as well as Colorado-based qualifying for USGA championships. Typically starting around May 1 and running well into October, there’s plenty of action on both fronts, and this year is no exception.
This weekend marks the first of 28 CGA championships/tournaments — including men’s, women’s and the CGA State Junior Championships — that are on the 2025 schedule. As far as USGA qualifiers — including men and women, and both local and final stages — there are 19 scheduled for Colorado this year.
This combination of events conducted by the CGA — both championships and national qualifiers — starts this weekend with the CGA Four-Ball, a very popular team event. How popular? The first 52 teams for what turned out to be a 208-player, 104-team event were signed up within about four minutes of when registration began.
The 54-hole tournament runs Friday through Sunday (May 2-4), with competitors playing one round each at Legacy Ridge Golf Course in Westminster and Thorncreek Golf Course in Thornton on Friday and Saturday before the field is cut to the low 40 teams and ties and the better-ball championship concludes at Legacy Ridge on Sunday.
Two college golf coaches, and former golf professionals, who grew up in Colorado — Parker Edens (head coach at South Dakota State) and Jimmy Makloski (assistant at the Air Force Academy) — will be aiming for an unprecedented three consecutive CGA Four-Ball titles, barring a late withdrawal. (South Dakota State is competing in the Summit League tournament, which ends on Tuesday.)
Last year, Edens and Makloski joined Rick DeWitt and Mike Glaesel, and Jon Lindstrom and Richard Bradsby, as winners of two straight Four-Balls. DeWitt is a longtime Colorado Golf Hall of Famer and Lindstrom will be inducted this year.
Last year, Edens and Makloski cruised to a six-stroke victory after posting the best 54-hole score in the history of the CGA Four-Ball — 28 under par.
But the 2023 and ’24 champs will face plenty of competition this weekend. Three-time CGA Player of the Year Colin Prater, who competed in last year’s U.S. Open, will team up with Cole Anderson. Matthew Wilkinson, the 2024 CGA Match Play champ, will pair up with Colorado State teammate Jay Pabin, who just finished fourth in the Mountain West Conference Championship.
Also scheduled to tee it up are former champions Nick Nosewicz and Cole Nygren (2022 winners; Nosewicz also claimed the title in 2019) and Chris Thayer and Bryan Rusin (2021). Four-time champ Lindstrom will team with Brooks Ferring, while 2013 winner Jordan Burgess will pair with Nick Umholtz, 2008 winner Pat Grady with Alex Wasinger, and 2005 champ Jim Doidge with Andy Brooks. Hunter Swanson and former University of Colorado teammate Wes Erling will tee it up again after placing third last year. The 2024 runners-up — Charlie Tucker of CSU and Nick Fallin — are also back.
For the full list of competitors and teams for the CGA Four-Ball, CLICK HERE.
The first women’s CGA tournament/championship on the 2025 schedule is the Team Stableford, set for May 28 at Plum Creek Golf Club in Castle Rock.
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