‘A little bit of nerves.’ Ex-UK golfer Grover Justice to play against golf icons
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Grover Justice, 52, will play in the Senior PGA Championship at The Concession Golf Club.
- He qualified by finishing 19th in Senior PGA Professional Championship at PGA Golf Club.
- Justice is owner, director at Bluegrass Golf Academy; 3 pros give 450–500 lessons monthly.
If you are searching for the Central Kentuckian slated to have this week’s most memorable experience, ex-Kentucky Wildcats golfer Grover Justice is going to be tough to beat.
From Thursday to Sunday, Justice, 52, will play in the Senior PGA Championship at The Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Florida. A PGA professional at Lexington’s Bluegrass Golf Academy, Justice will compete in a field slated to include 21 previous winners of PGA Tour major championships, including golfing icons such as Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and Bernhard Langer, plus the larger-than-life persona that is Jon Daly.
“I’m very excited,” Justice said last week. “Probably a little bit of nerves, playing in a major senior championship, (something I have) never done before. But I’m really excited to be going down to play and see what I can do.”
A mid-1990s-era UK golfer, Justice qualified last October to play in the Senior PGA Championship by finishing inside the top 35 — he was 19th in a field of 264 — in the Senior PGA Professional Championship at the PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie, Florida.
Justice learned the game of golf while growing up in Pikeville.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Pike County town of some 7,700 was an unlikely incubator of high-level golf talent. In addition to his playing at UK, Justice says among his contemporaries at Pikeville’s Green Meadows Country Club were players who went on to play collegiately at Ole Miss, Central Florida, Wake Forest, Morehead State and Transylvania.
Included in that collection of talent was Robert Damron, who after playing at UCF became a PGA Tour regular and was the winner of the 2001 Byron Nelson Classic.
“There (were) a lot of really good players (in Pikeville),” Justice said. “When you’re playing, you’re looking up to those guys that were better, and they would kind of mentor (you) in playing and competing.”
While at UK in 1995, Justice won the state match play championship and the Kentucky Intercollegiate Championship.
Once his college career ended, Justice pursued his dream of playing professional golf. For six years, he toiled on what is now the Korn Ferry Tour, essentially the PGA Tour’s version of Triple-A baseball. Married to his high school sweetheart, Justice had his wife, Heather, working as his caddy.
Said Justice: “If I needed (advice), ‘Should I lay up or should I go for it?’ It was kind of a joke between us, I knew she was always going to say ‘Go for it.’ But we were young, not a lot of money to travel the country and pay for caddies. It was very nice to have my wife be able to experience that with me ... and be very supportive of my dreams of trying to play (professional) golf.”
Ultimately, Justice accepted his dream of making the PGA Tour was not going to happen. “I think I gave it my best shot,” he said. “Golf’s hard, and if everybody could make it, then (making) the big tour, it wouldn’t be special.”
Now, Justice is the owner and director of instruction at the Bluegrass Golf Academy. In that capacity, Justice says he and the other two pros at the BGA “give somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 to 500 lessons a month.”
Looking ahead to this week’s Senior PGA Championship, Justice said he has played The Concession Gold Club, which was designed by Jack Nicklaus and Tony Jacklin, once previously.
“What I know is that it is very difficult,” Justice said of the course. “I played it one time when I was at the PGA Show in January. The weather was not very good. It was about 55 degrees, raining and the wind blowing sideways. So I’m looking forward to maybe (the weather) being a little bit better. ... It’s like most Florida courses, there’s water just about every hole. But the green complex there is very difficult. So you have to (place the ball) in the right spot.”
As he has geared up to play in the Senior PGA Championship, Justice has utilized in his preparation one of the tools the Bluegrass Golf Academy uses to teach its students — the Trackman Golf Simulator.
One of the courses included on the simulator is The Concession Golf Club.
“So I have played (The Concession Gold Club) many times on the simulator,” Justice said. “Say hole number one is going to be 430-yards par four. I can go and put the ball on the tee at this distance and hit tee shots. Or, you know, the par three, number four is going to be at 205 yards. I can go and hit tee shots from that. So (using the simulator) gives me an idea, at least, what the club selection will be off the tee.”
This week, Justice will get to experience the life to which he aspired when younger by testing his game against some of the best golfers of his generation.
“It will be pretty cool to see Vijay Singh, Ernie Els, Benhard (Langer),” Grover Justice said. “They’re all guys that I looked up to.”
