Provo • Texas-based sports agent Rocky Hambric has an eye for rising golf talent, and is widely credited for discovering and promoting two of the top golfers in the world, No. 1-ranked Dustin Johnson and recent U.S. Open and PGA Championship winner Brooks Koepka.
Hambric, who has represented professional golfers for more than 40 years, looks for taller, athletic golfers who recently turned pro and can hit the golf ball ridiculously far.
His latest recruit just happens to be from Utah.
Former BYU star Patrick Fishburn, the 6-foot-4 bomber who was an all-state point guard at Fremont High, recently signed on with Hambric Sports. Fishburn will take a break from the Mackenzie Tour in Canada and defend his title at the 92nd Siegfried & Jensen Utah Open this week at Riverside Country Club in Provo.
“Rocky kind of came after me and said I have some of the same characteristics as [Koepka and Johnson] do and I kind of reminded him of them,” Fishburn said. “So coming from him, that kind of meant a lot.”
Hambric has already helped Fishburn get a deal with Titleist and is working to get the Ogden native into some PGA Tour and Web.com Tour events so he doesn’t have to go through Monday qualifying.
“He is really influential in the golf world,” Fishburn said. “He can go to tournament sponsors and say, ‘Hey, you should invite this Fishburn kid, who is kind of a bigger, athletic kid like Koepka and Johnson.’”
Since graduating from BYU, Fishburn has mostly been playing in Canada, where he ranks 43rd on the Order of Merit with $12,170 in winnings in five events, having made the cut in all five. He missed the first two tournaments because he was still playing for BYU and two in July because he was playing in the Web.com Tour’s Utah Championship at Oakridge Country Club and the Pinnacle Bank Championship in Omaha, Neb.
Using his prodigious length off the tee, Fishburn cruised to the Utah Open championship last year with a three-day total of 26-under-par and a nine-shot win over Zahkai Brown of Colorado, the defending champion.
Fishburn shot 63-64-63 to break the tournament record by four shots. Brown got the $20,000 first-place check, however, because Fishburn was an amateur.
“I’d love to take my same scores from last year,” he said, “and maybe get to collect that check this time.”
With his caddy, Ryan Sarlo, along for the ride, Fishburn made the 15-hour drive from events in Calgary and Edmonton the past two weeks to Utah and says he’s playing well enough to defend. He’s played hundreds of rounds at Riverside, BYU’s home course, and figures he can “knock it on the green, or greenside,” on holes 1, 2, 8, 14 and 16 and maybe 10.
“I hit my driver really well last year and it gave me a lot of opportunities to score well,” he said. “My game really doesn’t change — I play aggressively and when the chance comes to bang a driver at the green I do it. My game plan will be like last year — try to birdie every single hole.”
Other locals to keep an eye on include the top five in the Utah Section PGA Player of the Year race: Riverside’s Chris Moody and Matt Baird, Salt Lake City’s Tommy Sharp, Delta’s Casey Fowles and Davis Park’s Zach Johnson, who recently competed in the PGA Championship but did not make the cut.
Fishburn is paired Friday with two-time champion Clay Ogden and 2017 State Am champ Kelton Hirsch, his former BYU teammate.
“It’s a great pairing for me,” he said. “I really like those guys. I’ll be comfortable.”
The 54-hole tournament begins Friday and runs through Sunday. Admission is free.
THE 92ND UTAH OPEN
Where: Riverside Country Club, Provo
Format: 54 holes of stroke play, beginning Friday and running through Sunday
Defending champion: Patrick Fishburn
First-place check: $20,000
Notable past champions: Mike Reid, Dean Wilson, Bruce Summerhays, Boyd Summerhays, Richard Zokol, Jay Don Blake, Mike Malaska, Al Geiberger, Dow Finsterwald, Jimmy Blair
