The 2026 Chelsea Classic at Calderone Golf Club in Grass Lake handed out one of the most hard-fought victories of the young Mulligan Tour season on Saturday, and it came down to two players trading blows on the back nine of a cold, windy, exposed golf course until one of them finally pulled away. Tim Markel wins the 2026 Chelsea Classic at net 70 (-2). Scott Wilsey finishes one back at net 72. And the story of how that gap opened up is the kind of back-nine drama that makes Saturday morning Mulligan Tour golf worth getting out of bed for.
Markel and Wilsey were locked in through the turn and into the back nine, each answering the other, neither able to create daylight on a course playing firm and fast in cold, overcast conditions with wind coming off the open fairways at Calderone. Then the 15th hole happened. Markel made birdie. And then — on the tough par 5 16th, the course’s number two handicap hole — Major Markel made eagle. Two holes. Three shots. The back nine was his. Wilsey had his own eagle on 12 and kept himself in the conversation with three more birdies on the back nine giving him six on the day, but a double bogey on 14 was the swing that ended the duel on the wrong side of the ledger. These two have gone at it before. They will go at it again. Saturday at Calderone, Markel had the answers when Wilsey needed him not to.
Third place belongs to Tom Carroll, Chris Stalo, and Michael Thacker in a three-way tie at net 73. Carroll put together another tidy Saturday — five birdies and a round that keeps building on the momentum he’s had all spring. Stalo was arguably the most prolific birdie-maker in the field on Saturday with six, and any other week that total might have been good enough to win the whole thing. The 2022 Chelsea Classic champion keeps producing the kind of rounds that remind you how good he is. Thacker may have had the single most remarkable statistical performance of the afternoon — four birdies, two eagles, and just 28 putts. Twenty-eight putts at Calderone in those conditions is an extraordinary putting performance, and the $10 cash prize on the closest-to-pin at hole 15 belonged to him too. Between the CTP and the eagle production, Thacker had one of those days.
Greg Kline, Noah Kline, Ned Loving, and Mike Wassman tied for sixth at net 75 and every one of those performances deserves its own sentence. Noah Kline had three eagles and a birdie. Three eagles. On a par 72 course in cold and wind, Noah Kline found three separate ways to put the ball in the hole in two under par. The career earnings milestone chase continues for Greg Kline — still $30.56 short of the all-time $3,000 mark — but he and his son shared the same line on the leaderboard on Saturday, which is a storyline all by itself. Ned Loving ran up five birdies. And Mike Wassman — in his first full season on the Mulligan Tour — posted six birdies and an eagle for a net 75 that put him firmly in the top ten. For a player still building his competitive profile from scratch, that is a performance worth highlighting. Jeff Pasz joined him in the hunt with five birdies of his own before finishing tied for tenth with Greg Fobare.
Jeff Klipa’s approach on hole 8 won him the $20 account credit in the closest-to-pin competition — the all-time wins leader making the most of a short iron when it counted.
Eric Birkle, the defending champion, finished tied for 16th at net 80 on a day when the course bit back harder than his game could absorb. After four consecutive events with a win or top-five, the 2026 Chelsea Classic was Birkle’s first genuinely quiet Saturday of the season. The most consistent player in the field took his first step back. The rest of the field exhaled. It won’t last long.
The 2026 Chelsea Classic is in the books and the Western Division leaderboard is getting more crowded by the week. Markel has his first victory of the season. The Sparty Classic played the same weekend in Auburn Hills as the Eastern Division kicked in. And next Saturday the Mulligan Tour keeps rolling — because it always does.