Mark Joseph Wilson

Born in Menomonee Falls on October 31, 1974, he starred at Wisconsin Lutheran High School, where he won WISAA titles in 1989 and 1992. At Wollaston Golf Club in Milton, Massachusetts, in the 1992 U.S. Junior Amateur final, Wilson went two-up with five holes to play. Woods birdied the sixteenth, won the eighteenth with a bogey, and became the first male to repeat as junior champion. Wilson was the first player all week who had led him. That same summer he also won the Wisconsin State Junior Boys championship.

He took the 1996 ACC championship at North Carolina and the Ben Hogan Award as the nation’s top collegian that same year. On Tour the wins came in bunches once they started: the Honda Classic (2007), Mayakoba (2009), the Sony Open in Hawaii and the Phoenix Open (both 2011), and the Humana Challenge (2012). He peaked at No. 24 in the world in February 2012. His first PGA Tour appearances came in 1998 at the U.S. Open in San Francisco and the Greater Milwaukee Open at Brown Deer Park. In 2009 he and Woods were paired in the third round of the BMW Championship—the first time together since Wollaston.

He still comes home for the State Open. The junior loss is the story Wisconsin golf people tell first. Menomonee Falls owns the birth and the high-school years; the Tour résumé is national.