Mario Lemieux's Son Austin Makes His PGA Tour Debut in Bermuda

The most famous surname in Pittsburgh hockey is on a PGA Tour tee sheet today. Austin Lemieux, 30, the son of Mario Lemieux, plays his first round as a PGA Tour player at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, which runs October 22 to 25 at Port Royal Golf Course in Southampton, Bermuda. He is in the 120-man field with no exemption and no invitation. He qualified. Both of his parents have made the trip to watch, Sportsnet reports, and he teed off at 7:52 AM ET alongside Luke Clanton and Neal Shipley, a fellow Pittsburgh-area golfer and a friend.

How did Austin Lemieux get into this field?

Through the open qualifier, which is the hardest door in professional golf. Golfweek reports that Lemieux shot a 6-under 66 at The Country Club of Winter Haven in Florida on October 12 to earn his place. Golf Channel adds that the qualifier drew 68 players for four spots: Adam Long took the medal at 8-under 64, and Lemieux, Matthew Anderson and Willie Mack III all shot 66. It was only Lemieux’s second attempt at a Monday qualifier, and he said he learned from the first one. “I tried to learn from my past experience of my first Monday qualifier, being a little too nervous,” he said. “I just went out there and things kind of started rolling for me. I got a few under par early and just stuck with it.”

The round did two things at once. It was low enough to take one of the places, and it matched the number his father wore on his back for two decades in Pittsburgh. The number 66 sits inside this site’s hockey record pages too, in the scoring company Mario Lemieux kept, as our look at McDavid’s 23 points in eight games and the Lemieux and Gretzky company sets out.

Who is Austin Lemieux as a golfer?

He started as a hockey player. Lemieux was a forward on the Arizona State University hockey team before he left the program to focus on golf, Golfweek records. The golf record since then is real, if modest in scale. In September he won the Western Pennsylvania Mid-Amateur Championship at Fox Chapel Golf Club with rounds of 66 and 67, making a hole-in-one on the third hole in the opening round. Earlier this month he beat Jake Springer in a playoff to win a Minor League Tour event in Florida. His one start on the Korn Ferry Tour, the PGA Tour’s developmental circuit, came at the 2024 LECOM Suncoast Classic, where he shot 78-68 and missed the cut. He plays this week as an amateur.

That is the profile of a strong regional player, not a touring professional, which is exactly what makes a qualifier round like his worth a week in a Tour field. Golf has levels within levels, a point our explainer on the 19th hole in golf only touches from the social side. Lemieux has spent two years climbing the competitive ones, and he knows what he brings. “I drive the ball very well. My middle-iron game is really good,” he said this week. “I feel like the all-around game is there, and hopefully it can show up this week.”

Why is the number 66 the heart of this story?

Because Mario Lemieux made it mean something before his son ever picked up a golf club. Mario wore No. 66 throughout his career with the Pittsburgh Penguins, finishing with 690 goals and 1,033 assists, and he chose the number as a nod to Wayne Gretzky’s No. 99, flipping the digits, Golfweek records. Mario was a serious golfer himself, good enough to win the 1998 American Century Championship at Lake Tahoe. So the family name arriving in golf is not new. What is new is that it has arrived on merit, through a one-day shootout in Florida, carrying the exact score the name is known by.

What is at stake in Bermuda this week?

More than a novelty start. Field Level Media notes this week is the halfway point of the eight-event FedExCup Fall, the stretch that finalises PGA Tour eligibility for 2027, with the top 100 in the standings earning exempt status. Most of the field is playing for a job next season, the same pressure that hangs over the comeback stories elsewhere on the Tour, from Louis Oosthuizen’s return to the DP World Tour to Will Zalatoris’s long injury road back. A qualifier gets one week inside that pressure with nothing to protect. The weather is part of the test: high winds and rain are forecast at Port Royal, Sportsnet reports, and Lemieux arrived on Sunday and played nine holes a day to prepare. A made cut would be a result. A weekend run would be a story that outlasts the surname.

What happens next for Lemieux?

Friday’s cut is the first answer, and this page will be updated with his 36-hole result. Beyond Bermuda, Lemieux has signed up for PGA Tour Qualifying School, Sportsnet reports, hoping to work through its three stages toward a full card. That is the long road, and this week is the shortcut he earned for himself. “I felt like it’s been trending in the right direction for some time now,” he said. “It’s just going to be a great experience for me to come out here and compete with these guys and see if my game’s good enough for the time being.” He shot his father’s number to get here. What he shoots from here is his own.