For good reason, PGA Tour Champions golfer Tim O’Neal would be remiss to admit he was “living in the moment” while hitting the biggest shot of his life in last year’s Dominion Energy Charity Classic in Richmond, Virginia.
O’Neal admits he didn’t have a full grasp of “the moment” he was in.
“I never looked at the leaderboard, and the leaders going into the [final] day were playing behind me,” O’Neal said. “I really didn’t know where I stood.”
O’Neal’s wedge approach that day on the 18th hole rolled to within 2 feet of the pin, and the ensuing birdie putt helped seal a two-shot victory — the first PGA Tour Champions win for the Jackson State graduate.
That victory in October 2024 provided a lifeline for O’Neal, who at the time was at risk of losing his PGA Tour Champions card. One of the benefits of the 52-year-old’s clutch performance in the Dominion Energy Charity Classic: the ability to map out his 2025 season, including his first appearance in the U.S. Senior Open, which begins Thursday in Colorado Springs.
“I’m inside the ropes with guys I have watched all my life,” said O’Neal, who is in his third season playing on the PGA Tour Champions tour, which was established in 1980 for golfers over 50. “It’s awesome that everything has paid off for me. I’ve put in a lot of hard work, and I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs.”
Some golfers may not have recovered from the ups and downs O’Neal has endured.
Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
Just weeks after Tiger Woods crashed the PGA Tour scene with his improbable annihilation of the field at The Masters in 1997 — Woods, at 21, won his first major by a Masters’ record 12 strokes— the New York Daily News sent a reporter on the road to find the next Black golf prodigy.
The writer’s travels took him to Mississippi, where he found O’Neal, a Jackson State student who was consistently bombing 300-yard drives while holding his own against the nation’s top collegiate golfers.
“He could play in a foursome with Tiger Woods right now and not embarrass himself,” Jim Headrick, at the time the head golf pro at a New Orleans golf course, told the Daily News. “It’s very seldom you see talent like this come along.”
Later that year, the Savannah, Georgia native, fresh off winning the 1997 Georgia Amateur Championship (at the time the only African American golfer to win the title), turned pro and spent several years honing his game on the nation’s mini-tour circuit while also trying to secure a PGA Tour card via Q-school, a series of qualifying tournaments described on the PGA website as a place “where dreams — and nightmares — are realized.”
O’Neal’s career appeared stamped. Actor Will Smith, fresh off “The Legend of Baggar Vance” movie, sponsored him. Butch Harmon, in the midst of coaching Tiger Woods through the best individual golf year ever in 2000, somehow made time to provide O’Neal lessons.
“That was a game-changer because Tiger (Woods) was at the height of his career and I had the chance to work with the best teacher at the time,” O’Neal said. “What I learned from Harmon helped me get better.”
The only remaining hurdle for O’Neal: Q-school, the qualifying tournament where the top golfers earn a spot on the PGA Tour.
O’Neal reached the Q-school finals in 2000 and stepped to the last tee thinking he needed a birdie to secure a tour card.
He actually only needed a bogey.
That miscalculation led him to play the hole more aggressively than he needed to, and it resulted in him hitting his tee shot into a hazard, a bunker shot over the green, and a triple-bogey turned his dream into a nightmare.
He missed getting his PGA Tour card by one shot.
“You go to Q-school with the goal to get one of those PGA Tour cards, and there were 150 guys trying for 25 spots,” O’Neal said. “The pressure you face in that situation, it’s hard to explain.”
Four years later, O’Neal again found himself in contention. Again, he fell short by a shot.
On that disappointing day 21 years ago, on his second close call, O’Neal had no clue that would be as close as he would get to reaching the PGA Tour.
“I watched both of those tournaments on TV and it hurt me, so I can’t even imagine how much it hurt him,” said Keion Witherspoon, O’Neal’s teammate at Jackson State. “A lot of guys may have quit. But he kept going.”
O’Neal continued on a roller-coaster journey. He had two decent seasons on the developmental Nationwide Tour (now the Korn Ferry Tour) in 2005 and 2006, earning a combined $270,000, but he struggled the next two seasons.
O’Neal said 2008 was his rock bottom when he earned $10,000, missed nine cuts in 13 events and lost his tour status.
“I had trouble paying my mortgage and didn’t really know what to do and how I was going to do it,” O’Neal said. “My ex-wife was working and that helped because we had kids to take care of. It was really a tough spot to be in.”
O’Neal began giving golf lessons, and he took a job at a golf store. He also played mini-tour events that barely kept him afloat.
“Some of those tournaments cost anywhere from $800 to $1,000 to play, and paying for hotels and food there was no guarantee you’d win your money back,” O’Neal said. “If you don’t have financial backing, golf is hard. Eventually, I ran out of money.”
It got so bad that O’Neal, in 2011, decided to abandon the sport. He shared those plans with this mother, Eva.
She wasn’t having it.
“She told me, ‘You’re too good to quit,’ ” O’Neal said of his mother, who died in 2020. “She was the motivating factor for me continuing to play.”
In 2012, O’Neal played for the first time in the EPD Tour (a European third-level tour) in Morocco and won, followed by another EPD tour victory just over a month later. Winning in Morocco boosted his confidence as he returned to the United States and won three events on the Advocates Professional Golf Association tour, which was established to help diversify the sport.
O’Neal, in the ensuing years, continued grinding his way through numerous tours that included the APGA, the Korn Ferry Tour, the Web.com tour and the PGA Tour Latinoamérica.
In 2015, he advanced from local qualifying to the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay in University Place, Washington. It was, for O’Neal, a brief taste of what it was like playing in a major golf tournament.
“To compete against the top players on the PGA Tour was awesome,” O’Neal said. “It’s a week I’ll never forget.”
O’Neal played in eight career PGA Tour events, including the 2019 Genesis Open hosted by Woods. He played in that tournament under the Charlie Sifford exemption (named for the first Black golfer to play on the PGA Tour). Through his mini-tours and the PGA Tour experiences, there were always friends in the gallery offering encouragement.
“Whenever he was close to me on the West Coast, I’d be there,” said Witherspoon, the college teammate who lives in the Los Angeles area. “When he’s out there, he’s representing Jackson State, HBCUs and me. I’m just very proud of him.”
As O’Neal advanced deep into his 40s, playing the PGA Tour Champions, a tour established in 1980 for golfers over 50, wasn’t something that consumed him.
“But when I turned 49, my friends would tell me, ‘You’re gonna tear that tour up,’ ” O’Neal said. “So, I knew I was going to go to Q-school when I turned 50.”
For O’Neal, 50 turned out to be the new 20. In a Q-school final setting, where 78 players competed for five spots, O’Neal finished in a three-way third-place tie that secured him full-time status with the PGA Tour Champions.
“All I can say is better late than never,” O’Neal said. “I would have loved to play on the PGA Tour, but it didn’t happen. I never gave up and when I finally broke through, it was well worth the wait.”
Back to that victory in last year’s Dominion Energy Charity Classic — the outcome of that tournament for O’Neal was crucial.
With the PGA Tour Champions, the top 36 players at the end of the season are guaranteed cards the following year. O’Neal entered the tournament ranked 55th in the standings, with just the top 54 golfers advancing to the second round of the season-ending three tournament playoffs.
His tour card was in jeopardy.
Not only did that victory move him to 13th in the standings (advancing him to the next round of the Charles Schwab Cup playoffs), it also gave O’Neal — as a tour winner — full exemption for the entire 2025 season.
“I went from almost losing my card to having the comfort of making my schedule for the entire year, and that takes away a lot of pressure,” ONeal said. “More importantly, now I know I can win. And I want to win again.”
Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
A moderate-sized crowd half fills the viewing stands just above the 17th green at the 2025 Senior PGA Championship last month. Most have come to Congressional Golf Club to see the legends — Vijay Singh, Colin Montgomerie and José María Olazábal are among the World Golf Hall of Famers in the field — and it’s not a surprise to see the crowd perk up as Ernie Els steps to his ball in the fairway.
The shot from Els, winner of four majors, rolls just off the back of the green and he eventually makes par. But the highlight from the hole is the approach O’Neal hits to within 7 feet of the pin. He makes the tricky, slightly downhill putt for birdie.
There’s a roar from the stands.
“Way to go, Tim,” is the yell from one of the patrons, who may or may not have known who O’Neal was before the shot.
O’Neal finishes the round at even par-72 while Els cards a 76. O’Neal, following the round, was approached by fans requesting his autograph.
Jerry Bembry/Andscape
While O’Neal admits it was “a little intimidating” joining a tour and competing against golfers he spent the majority of his life watching, he’s now at a point where he feels confident.
“I’m out there trying to beat you, just like you’re trying to beat me,” he said.
O’Neal’s golf life is the story of a long, arduous and heartbreaking journey. The missed opportunities and the financial burden of being a golf journeyman where money was so tight he often stayed four to a hotel room with fellow golfers, and where he sometimes didn’t travel with his staff bag (choosing a smaller carry bag instead) because of the extra overweight baggage fees.
That was then. O’Neal’s Instagram page should include Kool Moe Dee’s “How Ya Like Me Now” as its theme song. The page includes images of O’Neal lounging beachside in the days before the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai (his first trip to Hawaii); on the practice green in Morocco alongside the staff bag he can now afford to travel with; and the GQ magazine-like image shared by the PGA after he recorded his first win.
Seeing O’Neal’s achievements make the people who followed his journey from the start, like Randy Watkins — who ran the Jackson, Mississippi, golf courses where O’Neal played in college — proud.
“If you like golf and go through the things Tim did, you might go find something else to do,” Watkins said. “But if you love golf, you take the licks and punishment and you keep at it. He’s the perfect example of what you can get out of life if you are truly dedicated.”
Poet Langston Hughes once wrote: “What happens to a dream deferred?”
In O’Neal’s life, that dream deferred didn’t leave his aspirations derailed.
It just resulted in delayed gratification.
“My mother used to tell me, ‘When it’s your time, it’s your time.’ ” O’Neal said. “I never made the PGA Tour, and it turned out to be my time to get on this tour. I’m glad I made the decision to stick with it. The experience has been awesome.”
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