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Paul Goydos has a heavenly start at Hoag Classic

March 28, 2026

NEWPORT BEACH — Paul Goydos’ opening day at the Hoag Classic delivered a 9-under-par round of 62 and a one-shot lead at Newport Beach Country Club.

A tad surprising, considering Goydos’ uneven play of late on the PGA Tour Champions circuit. But not as unexpected as Goydos’ favorite team, the Angels, starting their season with a shutout win in Houston.

“Yeah, break ’em up now,” Goydos said.

Zach Johnson, who recently won in his Champions debut, and Brian Gay, trail by a shot at 63.

“It was solid,” Johnson said. “There were a lot of positives. I’m encouraged.”

Two strokes back sit Steven Alker and Freddie Jacobson.

Goydos, a Trabuco Canyon resident and Long Beach State graduate, loves his Halos. He speaks at length of the team’s pros and cons, hopeful that the former sneaks past the latter.

There’s no questioning Goydos’ fandom. The lone autograph he snagged as a kid was a Sandy Alomar Sr. scribble on his baseball glove in 1974, but he said there’s no telling what happened to it.

Which is how Goydos described his game late in 2025.

“Falling off a cliff would have been an improvement over what I did at the end of the year,” Goydos said. “That was into the abyss of golf, which I had never done before. So that tends to make you contemplate things a little bit, too.”

From those depths, Goydos remembered his peaks. The joy that golf produced, but he also wondered – like his old glove – if he could locate it again.

“Well, there is a piece of me that doesn’t want to play if I can’t be even remotely competitive, and I was not competitive by any definition of the term the last two months of the year,” Goydos said. “There were a lot of things I needed to evaluate. One was my attitude and things like that, and I think that I’ve gotten there.”

The biggest switch was embracing a long putter after his traditional one produced a five-putt hole.

“The short putter was like holding a rattlesnake,” said Goydos, who had nine birdies on Friday, with five coming after the turn. “Now it’s only like a python, which is making progress.”

It’s been a wild ride for Goydos and sometimes when eyeing the mirror, he can’t believe the reflection. The swashbuckling 25-year-old player he expects to look back has transformed into a nearly 62-year-old golfer, one who is realizing who he is and what he can still do.

“When you play a game for a living, you always kind of feel young,” he said. “I think it caught up to me a little bit last year.

“It’s a pretty good life. I’m trying to also say, ‘Hey, if you play bad, it’s fine. Just keep doing the work and enjoy the work.’ I’m trying to get there. I’m not saying I’m there, but we’re trying to get there.”

Goydos, a substitute teacher before turning pro, learned plenty of lessons in a career which has brought success – two PGA Tour wins and five triumphs on the 50-and-over circuit – and heartbreak – a rinsed tee shot on No. 17 at the 2008 Players Championship to lose in a playoff to Sergio Garcia.

It’s a journey which started on Long Beach’s public courses, where a pint-sized Goydos scooted around Recreation Park and El Dorado Park with dreams that were grander than his game.

It was a win at the 1990 Long Beach Open that propelled him into an occupation that has yielded $20 million in career earnings. Not sure the substitute teaching stipends could match that.

It’s also a mystery if a certain baseball team can finish with a winning record for the first time in a decade.

“Hopefully this is the start of something great,” Goydos said.

For the Angels or Goydos?

“Hopefully for both,” he said. “I would be OK with both.”

Orange County Register

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Paul Goydos has a heavenly start at Hoag Classic

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