Brian Cooper is proud of what he has accomplished late in his golfing career, which, he proudly notes, is not bad for the son of a millworker from McKeesport.
After he turned 50, he was the only player to make it to the finals of qualifying school for PGA Tour Champions in seven consecutive years, finally earning his card as a full-time member in 2023. He is the only player to hold the Arizona Open and Arizona Senior Open titles at the same time.
But, at his core, he is something of a homebody, a person who functions best and is most content with the security of family and friends around him. That’s why life on the Champions Tour, which lasted only one season, did not turn out well. No matter how well he played — or how poorly he played (which, he freely admits, was too often the case — the lonely nights, the empty hotel rooms were not for him.
At a time when the tragic death of PGA Tour player Grayson Murray has shone the light on the seriousness of mental health, Cooper discovered his issues were not isolated solely to himself. A year earlier, he had battled depression trying to rehab from a shoulder injury that put in jeopardy his goal of becoming a full-time member of the Champions Tour. He was very open about it in social media posts.
“I found through therapy, when I have down time, when I’m alone, that’s when I’m at my worst,” Cooper said. “When I’m busy, I’m OK. But I dreaded getting off the golf course because I knew I would be alone. It made me not want to be there. I was kind of checked out. This just wasn’t for me.”
So Cooper, 57, did what he really wanted to do. After losing his tour card, he decided he wanted to come home. Not just to his wife, Shelley, and son, Ashton, 11, in Phoenix but back to Western Pennsylvania, back to where he was a criminal justice major and played hockey at Duquesne University, back to where he grew up with his three brothers. His wife, a New Jersey native, was all for it.
He is the new director of golf at Fort Cherry Golf Club, a rolling 18-hole, 6,205-yard layout in McDonald, Washington County, that offers a clean look, tilted greens and a steady diet of public play.
“I think there’s a lot of growth potential here,” Cooper said. “If given the opportunity, I can make this really good. I can make it a Fort Cherry they’ve never seen before, if they let me do it.”
It already has a different feel to the place. After all, how many public courses have a former touring professional as director of golf, especially in Western Pennsylvania?
“Not many places can say that,” said Don Seese, the club’s general manager. “It was a great hire. We love having him here.”
To be sure, it is not the life he left behind in Arizona. Fort Cherry is not the type of course he was accustomed to playing on the Champions Tour or the senior major tournaments for which he qualified — the 2018 and 2019 U.S. Senior Open and the 2019 British Senior Open. And the weather, unlike Arizona, is not conducive to year-round golf.
But none of that seems to matter.
Cooper had his moment, did what not many people thought he could do when he moved to Arizona to dedicate himself to becoming a better player. He was disappointed he didn’t play better on the Champions Tour — his best finish in 21 starts was a tie for 23rd at the Sanford International — but he came to understand that playing better might not have chased away the demons of loneliness that waited for him after every round.
“I just wasn’t happy out there,” Cooper said, sitting in the clubhouse restaurant one day last week. “Plain and simple, I hated being out there. A lot of it comes back to when I struggled from depression. I battled with that. I hated being out there. I couldn’t wait to get home.
“It sucks. People are like, ‘Why don’t you play really good golf so when you get to the hotel room, you’ll be in a really good mood?’ No, it doesn’t matter if I played good or I played bad. Soon as I get that downtime by myself at 2 in the afternoon, I’m like, ‘What am I going to do until tomorrow?’ That’s the problem. It doesn’t matter if it shoot 62 or 82. You still have that downtime where the problem happens.
“And it gets magnified when you play bad golf, but the bad golf is put in place because you’re dreading that downtime that’s about to happen.”
Cooper even pointed to his successes — qualifying for the Champions Tour, concurrently winning the Arizona Open and Arizona Senior Open — as the antithesis of what can happen in comfortable surroundings. Each success was accomplished close to home. The final stage of qualifying was at the Champions Course at TPC Scottsdale with his brother, Dana, on the bag. He could go home after each round and sleep in his own bed. His happy place.
“I was surrounded by family,” Cooper said. “I was happy. Nothing was wrong.”
So here he is, back not far from where he grew up in McKeesport, seemingly happy again. Part of the decision to move back was to give his son a better chance to develop in the youth hockey programs here. Maybe even be like his dad, who played hockey at Duquesne.
A long-time Steelers season-ticket holder, one of Cooper’s first moves when he got back to Western Pennsylvania was to buy season tickets to the Penguins. He has left tour life behind, making no excuses for his indifferent play in 2023 but proud of what he’s done with his late golfing career.
“I’ve done something only five people in the world do every year,” Cooper said, referring to the number of players who qualify each year for the Champions Tour. “They can’t take it away from me. I’m a steelworker’s son from McKeesport. Nobody thought I’d make it on tour. I did it. I played in majors all over the world. Maybe I didn’t win out there, but I did stuff nobody else was able to do.
“Who would’ve thought a kid from McKeesport would do this? So, for me, it was the greatest thing ever.”
Gerry Dulac: gdulac@post-gazette.com and @gerrydulac on X
First Published: June 8, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: June 8, 2024, 7:42 p.m.
