Alexander Čejka (born 2 December 1970) is a Czech-German

professional golfer A professional golfer is somebody who receives payments or financial rewards in the sport of golf that are directly related to their skill or reputation. A person who earns money by teaching or playing golf is traditionally considered a "golf p ...

. Čejka was born in

Mariánské Lázně Mariánské Lázně (; german: Marienbad) is a spa town in Cheb District in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 12,000 inhabitants. Most of the town's buildings come from its Golden Era in the second half of the 19th cent ...

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

. He left the country with his parents as a refugee at the age of nine, eventually settling in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

, where he lived for many years, becoming a West German citizen. Čejka lives in

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Veg ...

and also has a home in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

Professional career

Čejka turned professional in 1989 and played on the

European Tour The European Tour (currently known as the DP World Tour for sponsorship reasons), legally the PGA European Tour is the leading men's professional golf tour in Europe. The organisation also operates the European Senior Tour (for players aged fi ...

from 1992 to 2002. His biggest tournament win was the

Turespaña Masters Open de Andalucía The Instituto de Turismo de España – Turespaña (Tourism Institute of Spain), is the official agency of the Government of Spain responsible for the marketing of the country as a tourist destination throughout the world. It depends on the Minis ...

at Islantilla Golf Club in 1995. That year he came 6th on the European Tour's Order of Merit. Since 2003 he played mainly on the U.S. based

PGA Tour The PGA Tour (stylized in all capital letters as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in the United States and North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also ...

. In 2003 he reached as high as No. 33 in the

Official World Golf Ranking The Official World Golf Ranking is a system for rating the performance level of professional golfers. It was started in 1986. The rankings are based on a player's position in individual tournaments (i.e. not pairs or team events) over a "rolli ...

. Čejka took a five-shot lead into the final round of the

2009 Players Championship The 2009 Players Championship was a golf tournament in Florida on the PGA Tour, held at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, southeast of Jacksonville. It was the 36th Players Championship. Henrik Stenson shot a bogey-free 66 in the final round to ...

after rounds of 66, 67 and 72. He shot a 42 on the front nine, however, en route to a 79 and an eight-stroke loss to

Henrik Stenson Henrik Olof Stenson (; born 5 April 1976) is a Swedish professional golfer. He is the first male Swedish and first male Nordic major champion, having won the 2016 Open Championship at Royal Troon with a major championship record score of 26 ...

. He represented Germany in the

World Cup A world cup is a global sporting competition in which the participant entities – usually international teams or individuals representing their countries – compete for the title of world champion. The event most associated with the concept i ...

12 times, including in 2011 at Mission Hills Haikou in

Hainan Island Hainan (, ; ) is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of China (PRC), consisting of various islands in the South China Sea. , the largest and most populous island in China,The island of Taiwan, which is slight ...

, teaming with partner Martin Kaymer to tie for second, two strokes behind the winning United States team of

Matt Kuchar Matthew Gregory Kuchar (born June 21, 1978) is an American professional golfer who plays on the PGA Tour and formerly the Nationwide Tour. He has won nine times on the PGA Tour. Kuchar briefly enjoyed success in the early 2000s before suffering ...

and

Gary Woodland Gary Woodland (born May 21, 1984) is an American professional golfer who plays on the PGA Tour. Woodland won the U.S. Open in 2019, his first major championship and sixth professional victory. Following a successful college career, he turned ...

. Čejka teamed with Kaymer in four World Cup appearances. In 2012 Čejka finished 177th on the PGA Tour and moved to the Web.com Tour. He finished 64th in 2013, then 6th in 2014 to earn a return to the PGA Tour. Čejka won his first PGA Tour event in his 287th Tour start, the

2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...

Puerto Rico Open. Two players bogeyed the 18th hole ensuring a five-man playoff; Čejka won with a birdie at the first playoff hole. He is the first golfer born in the Czech Republic to win a PGA Tour event and first non-American to win the Puerto Rico Open. At the time, he was also the third oldest first-time winner on the

since 1970. Alex Cejka at 2015 PGA Championship

He competed at the

2016 Summer Olympics ) , nations = 207 (including IOA and EOR teams) , athletes = 11,238 , events = 306 in 28 sports (41 disciplines) , opening = 5 August 2016 , closing = 21 August 2016 , opened_by = Vice President Michel Temer , cauldron = Vanderlei Cordeiro de ...

. With most of the sports world on hold due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, Čejka played on the Arizona-based Outlaw Tour, one of the few professional golf tours in operation during the pandemic, where he won two events. In May 2021, Čejka won his first tournament on the

PGA Tour Champions PGA Tour Champions (formerly the Senior PGA Tour and the Champions Tour) is a men's professional senior golf tour, administered as a branch of the PGA Tour. History and format The Senior PGA Championship, founded in 1937, was for many year ...

at the

Regions Tradition The Tradition (known as the Regions Tradition for sponsorship reasons) is an event on the PGA Tour Champions. First staged in 1989, the PGA Tour recognizes the event as one of the five senior major golf championships. Unlike the U.S. Senior Ope ...

. Čejka won this major tournament in a playoff over

Steve Stricker Steven Charles Stricker (born February 23, 1967) is an American professional golfer who plays on the PGA Tour and the PGA Tour Champions. He has twelve victories on the PGA Tour, including the WGC-Match Play title in 2001 and two FedEx Cup play ...

. Three weeks later, Čejka won his second PGA Tour Champions major tournament of 2021 at the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship at

Southern Hills Country Club Southern Hills Country Club is a private golf and country club in Tulsa, Oklahoma. History The club was established in 1935 from land donated by multimillionaire oilman Waite Phillips (Frank Phillips, Waite's brother, was the namesake and fo ...

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...

. Čejka shot a final-round 67 Sunday to beat

Tim Petrovic Tim Petrovic (born August 16, 1966) is an American professional golfer. He won one PGA Tour event, and has finished runner-up in four senior major golf championships. Early life Petrovic was born in Northampton, Massachusetts. He played colleg ...

by four shots.

Professional wins (17)

PGA Tour wins (1)

PGA Tour playoff record (1–1)

European Tour wins (4)

Web.com Tour wins (1)

''*Note: The 2014 Pacific Rubiales Colombia Championship was shortened to 54 holes due to rain.''

Challenge Tour wins (4)

Outlaw Tour wins (2)

*2020 Arrowhead Classic, Parker Open

Other wins (2)

*1990 Czech Open *1992 Czech Open

PGA Tour Champions wins (2)

PGA Tour Champions playoff record (1–0)

European Senior Tour wins (2)

Results in major championships

''Results not in chronological order in 2020.'' CUT = missed the half-way cut
WD = withdrew
"T" = tied
NT = No tournament due to

Summary

*Most consecutive cuts made – 4 (twice) *Longest streak of top-10s – 1 (twice)

Results in The Players Championship

CUT = missed the halfway cut
"T" indicates a tie for a place

Results in World Golf Championships

¹Cancelled due to

9/11 The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...

QF, R16, R32, R64 = Round in which player lost in match play
"T" = Tied
NT = No tournament

Senior major championships

Wins (2)

Results timeline

DQ = disqualified
"T" indicates a tie for a place

Team appearances

Alfred Dunhill Cup The Alfred Dunhill Cup was a team golf tournament which ran from 1985 to 2000, sponsored by Alfred Dunhill Ltd. It was for three-man teams of professional golfers, one team representing each country, and was promoted as the "World Team Championshi ...

(representing Germany):

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which Sinking of the MS Estonia, sank in ...

1995 File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is O. J. Simpson murder case, acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the 1994, year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The ...

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...

(representing Germany):

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

Seve Trophy The Seve Trophy was a biennial golf tournament between teams of professional male golfers; one team representing Great Britain and Ireland, the other team representing Continental Europe. The tournament was played in years when there is no Ryder ...

(representing Continental Europe):

(winners),

References

External links

* * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cejka, Alex Czech male golfers German male golfers European Tour golfers PGA Tour golfers PGA Tour Champions golfers Olympic golfers of Germany Golfers at the 2016 Summer Olympics Winners of senior major golf championships Korn Ferry Tour graduates People from Mariánské Lázně Sportspeople from Munich Sportspeople from Las Vegas Czechoslovak emigrants to Germany 1970 births Living people