Batavia, Ohio — Everybody was hot at the 2026 Queen City Classic on Monday.
The scores were low. The temperature pushed past 90 degrees and stayed there. And at Stonelick Hills Golf Club, Austin Schoonmaker somehow managed to stay a step ahead of a leaderboard that spent most of the afternoon refusing to belong to anyone.
By day’s end, nine players had broken 70.
Schoonmaker was the one standing at the top.
His bogey-free 65 gave him his first Main Division victory of the season, but the number doesn’t quite tell the story of how crowded things became behind him.
Stonelick Hills is a quirky place in spots, with reachable par 5s and greens that reward the player who is striking it well and putting it even better. Schoonmaker was doing both.
He opened with four birdies on his first nine, including a pair of 2s on the par 3s. The par 5s, meanwhile, offered the kind of opportunities players have learned they can’t afford to ignore if they want to stay near the top of the leaderboard.
By the time Schoonmaker made the turn, the tournament had become a traffic jam.
Ty Drobot and Kyle Sanders had already posted 68s to set the clubhouse target at 4-under. Adam Taulbee and Sam Arnold soon joined them. For a while, six players were tied for the lead.
Schoonmaker finally broke the deadlock with a birdie on 15, one of Stonelick Hills’ more demanding holes. It was a lead he never gave back.
Jared Jones nearly made things interesting.
Jones can turn a quiet round into a very loud one in a hurry, and he did exactly that on the back nine. Five birdies over his first six holes after the turn pushed him to 6-under. He had the added advantage of playing in the final group.
Then came 16 and 17.
Two bogeys brought Jones back toward the field, but he wasn’t finished. He answered with an eagle on the 18th to close with a 6-under 66 and finish alone in second.
Nick Scott’s bogey-free back nine carried him to a 5-under 67 and solo third.
Arnold claimed the Senior Division, while Schoonmaker added the Associate Division title to his Main Division victory.
Now the individual season goes quiet for a few weeks.
The Queen City Classic was the final individual tune-up on the SOPGA schedule before the 2026 Southern Ohio PGA Section Championship. TPC River’s Bend will host the 81st Section Championship August 31-September 1.