2026 Colorado PGA Professional Champ Geoff Keffer the Section’s overall Player of the Year for record-extending 11th time; other CPGA player honorees include Matt Schalk, Ashley Tait-Wengert and Behrod Keshtavar
By Gary Baines
If this were a Colorado golf-related game show, instead of asking how many times Geoff Keffer has been named the Colorado PGA’s Dow Finsterwald Player of the Year in the last 15 years, it might be equally challenging to find who could name the non-Keffer winners of the award since 2012 — without looking it up.
On Friday, when the Section holds its awards gala at Cherry Hills Country Club, Keffer will be recognized for the 11th time since 2012 as the top player in the Colorado PGA. To resolve the question above, the only players not named Keffer to have won the award in the last 15 times it’s been given are Caine Fitzgerald (2013 and ’19), Doug Rohrbaugh (2018) and Ben Lanting (2022).
Other than that, it’s been Keffer and more Keffer.
In August, the Section announced the majority of its 2026 award winners (CLICK HERE for more) — including Cherry Hills Country Club head professional Bryan Nicholson as its Golf Professional of the Year — but the players of the year have been finalized since. And Keffer, a PGA assistant pro at Lakewood Country Club — has been named the Dow Finsterwald POY for a record-extending number of times. For those keeping track, he’s been the Colorado PGA’s overall player of the year in 2012, ’14, ’15, ’16, ’17, ’20, ’21, ’23, ’24, ’25 and ’26.
Another possible Colorado golf trivia answer: The golfer with the next-most CPGA overall player of the year awards is Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Bob Hold, who earned seven of them from 1966-71 and ’74.
In other words, Keffer is certainly in a league of his own regarding this honor. And, by the way, he’s also been the CPGA’s Associate Player of the Year three times — in 2007, ’10 and ’11.
This year, as usual, Keffer not only competed in a lot of Section events, but he excelled in a great many of them. Most notably, that includes winning the Colorado PGA’s top tournament, the CPGA Professional Championship, for the fourth time — and second in a row. All told, he’s captured that title in 2016, ’20, ’25 and ’26.
This golf season, the 48-year-old ended up with more than double the points in the Player of the Year standings as the second-place finisher, Justin Carlock of Eaton Country Club. Keffer won or shared the title in 10 Section tournaments in 2026, also including the season-long Masek Match Play title.
As for the other Section Players of the Year who will be among those honored on Friday at Cherry Hills:
— Senior Player of the Year: Matt Schalk, PGA general manager at Colorado National Golf Club in Erie. Schalk, the 2022 national Senior PGA Professional Champion, landed this honor for the second straight year and the third time since 2023. Schalk tied for third in the Inspirato Colorado Senior Open, marking his fourth straight top-8 finish in the event. He was the overall champion at the CPGA’s Fort Collins, Flying Horse North and Cheyenne Pro-Ams.
— Women’s Player of the Year: Ashley Tait-Wengert, PGA instructor at Turkey Creek Golf. Tait-Wengert earns the women’s POY award for the third consecutive year after Sherry Andonian-Smith captured the honor the first six times it was presented. Tait-Wengert, a three-time girls state high school champion and winner of the 2008 CGA Women’s Amateur, finished third in the Colorado PGA Women’s Championship in 2026.
— Associate Player of the Year: Behrod Keshtavar, an instructor at Experience Golf. Keshtavar became the first winner of this award since 2021 other than Andy Connell, who claimed the honor five straight years. Keshtavar was a semifinalist in the CPGA’s season-long Masek Match Play Championship.
About the Writer: Gary Baines has covered golf in Colorado continuously since 1983. He was a sports writer at the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, then the sports editor there, and has written regularly for ColoradoGolf.org since 2009. The University of Colorado Evans Scholar alum was inducted into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 2022. He owns and operates ColoradoGolfJournal.com
