Stewart Cink Hopes to Ride Hot Driver to Senior PGA Championship Victory

BRADENTON, Fla. – Stewart Cink loves the long ball.

And the long ball loves him.

Since committing full-time to the PGA TOUR Champions in late 2024 – and committing to golf’s power surge years prior – Cink has become one of the dominant players on the 50-and-older circuit.

Cink is the betting favorite (5 ½-to-1) to win this week’s Senior PGA Championship at The Concession Golf Club, and for good reason. He has won three of his last five starts, dating back to last year’s Charles Schwab Cup Championship.

His other results? A T2 and a T6. That’s dominant.

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“It has been fun,” Cink said. “It’s nice to know that what I have is enough to be in contention at the end of a week. Winning is its own thing. You don't necessarily wrestle that bull to the ground. Sometimes that just has to happen, but I know I'm going to be in the story if I am myself.”

There’s no secret to his success: The driver.

Cink leads the PGA TOUR Champions in total driving and average driving distance (304 yards). The 6-4, 205-pounder is turning 7,000-yard courses into pitch-and-putt courses, not only with his drives, but his accurate long-iron game.

“My driver has been a real weapon this year,” Cink said. “The power is still there. We work really hard on that. My driver has been a bigger part of my scoring than you would think.

“I think the fans like watching guys hit it far. If you can hit a ball far, it's a lot of fun to do that, especially if you can keep it in play. It's an effective way to play golf, and right now, it's been leading to a lot of the success I've been having recently.”

Cink joined the PGA TOUR around the same time as Tiger Woods, which wasn’t good for winning majors, but fabulous for realizing hitting the ball a long way was the future of the game.

“The players that came before me might have missed that just by a little bit,” Cink said of the power game. “The guys coming out on the Champions Tour worked on speed really hard for the bulk of their career. I'm in that group. Everybody from here on out that turns 50 will have participated in the PGA TOUR's power grab where we all knew that at some point you had to keep your speed up and try to hit it farther.”

But there’s one issue for Cink’s power game at The Concession: He may hit the driver only about half of the available 14 holes because of the course setup and design.

“This course is negatively biased against the driver in a lot of ways, because it just takes the driver out of your hands,” he said. “This course is much more of an approach course than it will be a driving course.”

Cink won the 2009 British Open in a four-hole playoff against 59-year-old Tom Watson for his only major title to go with eight PGA TOUR wins. But a generation later, Cink said he’s not obsessed with winning more majors; his primary goal is to defend his Charles Schwab Cup title.

“I do want to have a whole bunch of senior majors on my career record when I get finished, but I'm not specifically focused on trying to win major championships,” Cink said. “All the tournaments mean a lot to me. If I win the Charles Schwab Cup again without any majors, I will be satisfied, OK? I want to be clear on that.”

Cink is in that sweet spot of his career where every week feels like a victory. The days of grinding over every putt are over. He has Mondays and Tuesdays off most weeks, giving him time to spend with his three young grandchildren and enjoying the benefits of his success.

“This is the best part of professional golf for me,” he said. “We're out here competing in the game we love to play, and it's very pure. Out here it's just kind of all gravy, and we're having fun.”

Especially when he’s gripping it and ripping it.