Meadow Brook pro Matt Dobyns resumes quest at PGA Championship

Meadow Brook Club head professional Matt Dobyns begins another quest to fulfill a careerlong goal at the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club starting on Thursday. He really wants to make the cut.

This will be the sixth time that Dobyns has played in the major tournament run by the PGA of America. He has yet to play on the weekend.

“Missing the cut by three I think is my best finish,” Dobyns said. “Making the cut is a career long goal of mine.”

Dobyns, 46, is one of the mostly highly accomplished players in the Met Section of the PGA. He has won the Met Open, Met PGA Championship twice, the Long Island Open twice and the Met Head Pro Championship.

He was the PGA’s National Player of the Year in 2015. He qualified for this PGA Championship by finishing tied for 16th in the PGA Club Pro Championship at Fields Ranch in Frisco, Texas, in April.

He’ll travel to Valhalla, outside of Louisville, on Sunday and get right to work on Monday.

"I try to schedule my week where I get the vast majority of my course work on Monday,” said Dobyns, who has been at Meadow Brook for six years. “My serious strategy stuff squared away on Monday and then Tuesday sort of anything I missed and Wednesday is a fun day, sign autographs, play nine holes, the nine I’m going to start on on Thursday.”

He’s never played Valhalla, but he might try to get a leg up on the course at Meadow Brook.

“Apparently we have it on our golf simulator at the club,” Dobyns said. “I might try to sneak a round in on our simulator. It can’t hurt and it’s kind of nice to play the golf course without all the walking.”

As for playing in a tournament with all the top players in the world, it’s special but he’s no longer wonderstruck.

“First few times I was sort of awestruck. I was a bit younger, more naive about what goes on during the week,” he said. “But these days I just look around and see a bunch of good players and mostly good guys and not anything more or less than that. You run into the occasional superstar from time to time and that’s kind of neat. But 85% of the field, if I walked by them on the street, they might look familiar but I’m not picking them out by names.”