Kevin VandenBerg wins 2025 Golfweek Player of the Year Classic
ORLANDO, Fla. – Two weeks ago. Kevin VandenBerg entered the final round of the Plantation Senior Invitational with a two-shot lead only to find himself trailing at the turn. VandenBerg, 58, dug in, and he came out with a four-shot victory.
That experience changed his mindset entering the Golfweek Player of the Year Classic. This time at Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate, VandenBerg again led by two shots starting the final round on Jan. 18, “but today I set my goal as shoot even par and if someone shoots 3 under – I knew the wind was going to blow and it looked like it was going to blow 15 to 30 – if someone can shoot 3 under, shake their hand and say great job.”
It didn’t quite come to that, but it was close.
VandenBerg was 4 up on the 14th hole when Todd Doss started to cut into his lead. Both men had birdied the 12th but Doss drained a 30-foot putt on No. 14 for birdie there, too. For his part, VandenBerg made a difficult up-and-down there to save par then chipped in on No. 15 for birdie.
Doss left short an 8-footer for birdie on No. 17.
VandenBerg bogeyed Nos. 16 and 17 and then both men stood over their drives in the fairway at the par-5 18th, wind whipping. Doss, of Mandeville, Louisiana, hesitated over his second shot from 250 yards. He knew he needed to be able to reach the back of the green if he was going to go for it because there was no way to get it to stop on that green. Hazards line both sides of the hole. In the end, he laid up to 69 yards, chipped up, drained a 15-footer for birdie and finished one shot shy of VandenBerg.
Doss didn’t feel he had it on the front nine, and so hopes of catching VandenBerg sort of faded away at the turn.
“It’s going to have to be something super low on the back and Kevin would have had to have helped me, and he did not do that. He’s so solid,” Doss said. “He didn’t make any mistakes so I was just playing free and easy, trying to make some birdies.”
VandenBerg’s closing 72 left him at 4 under for the tournament and Doss, with a 71 in the final round, was 3 under.
Doss, 55, is still new to this scene, having played collegiate tennis before beginning his career as a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. He retired in 2020.
“I’m not tournament savvy yet, I still make too many mistakes,” he said. “I hit it good enough but I still do some dumb things from time to time. I wasn’t a golfer growing up so I haven’t played a ton of golf tournaments.”
VandenBerg is the kind of guy who does have the kind of tournament reps Doss is talking about. He played college golf at Kalamazoo College and entered the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame last year. VandenBerg, a money manager who owns his own company, Apogee Investment Management, played more than 40 tournaments each of the past two years and was Golfweek’s back-to-back Senior Player of the Year.
“I just managed it coming in, just tried to not do something stupid,” VandenBerg of the POY Classic. “Just whatever it took to get her done.”
Spoken like a true veteran.
In the Super Senior division, Richard Kerper authored a similar story of holding on to a lead and, like VandenBerg, it’s not his first victory of 2025. Kerper, who turns 67 this week, also won his division at the Plantation Senior.
“I’ve been playing really well,” said Kerper, from Oldsmar, Florida. “I’m working on a couple things in my swing and it worked out really well except for today but I held it together today so really proud of myself for doing that.”
Kerper had at least a share of the lead all three days with rounds of 72-69-74. At 1 under, he was five shots ahead of runner-up Marcus Beck from Tallahassee, Florida.
“My driver is usually my best club and it sort of went somewhere else today,” Kerper said after the final round.
He was also focusing on making pars and after starting with two bogeys on the back nine (he teed off on No. 10), Kerper made birdie at Nos. 13 and 15. He drained a 40-footer for birdie on No. 3 and by that time, there was little anyone could do to catch him.
Kerper still works as a real estate developer and largely competes closes to home. He still will tee it up 20 to 22 times this year.
Don Donatoni, winner of the Legends division by three shots, is looking to scale back his starts. Donatoni won Player of the Year honors in his division in 2022 and he gave Bev Hargraves a good run for that title in 2024 (eventually finishing second to Hargraves).
“Last year I cut back, I didn’t travel nearly as much. This year, too. It’s so demanding,” Donatoni, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, said of the senior golf grind.
Regardless, it’s hard not to immediately get it on your mind when you win in January, as Donatoni did at the POY Classic. His 2-over total left him three shots ahead of Greg Osborne of Lititz, Pennsylvania, who also held the top spot in Golfweek’s National Senior Amateur Rankings for a portion of 2024.
“Today was a pretty good ballstriking day for me,” Donatoni said. “My putter has warmed up over the last round or two so I was able to make a couple of important short putts to save par, make a birdie here or there. The wind came up. . . . That made club selection a little more difficult and I just kept finding myself in between clubs. There wasn’t a stock number.
“I just tried to think about tempo, good rhythm, commit to the shot, find a nice target and then let it go.”
Frank Polizzi, a fellow West Chester, Pennsylvania, resident, won the Super Legend division with a 12-over total that left him five shots ahead of John Osborne and Bill Engel.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Golfweek Player of the Year Classic 2025: Kevin VandenBerg wins
