For the 52-year-old, this week is going to be special. After a grueling weekend, the veteran finally sealed the Charles Schwab Cup Championship. The crowd was jubilant at the Phoenix Country Club, chanting Stewart Cink’s name. But there is one voice that particularly stood out. His mother’s.

For years, Cink has been playing professional golf. And every time he was on the course, winning or not, his mother, Anne, would be back home, watching him play. Only this time it was different.

“32 years we’ve been watching him, and this is the first time we’ve seen him in a tournament,” she said after his win. “We’ve got family here, so we’re visiting family as well as watching him play in this beautiful club. We love Phoenix.”

At the Phoenix Country Club, Cink delivered a stellar performance to close out his first full PGA Tour Champions season. He posted rounds of 64-68-65-67 and finished 20-under. He was two strokes ahead of New Zealander Steven Alker as he walked home with the trophy. Sunday was bogey-free, but the days before that were not as easy.

After Friday’s second round, the duo got paired together. For Sink, it was “exciting” to be in a group with Alker, someone he “needed to hunt down.” They again got paired for Sunday’s final, and by the time they reached the 12th tee box, Cink was leading by three shots.

But what made this win more special for him was the presence of his family. As his mother said, Cink’s entire gang was behind the ropes, cheering for him. “I’ve got ties and memories going back to my childhood around here,” he shared. “My aunt and uncle still live here, grandparents passed away, but this is an area that we came to a lot for visiting and it means a lot to me. And my parents were here. It’s a family week for us.”

After the win, his mother crossed the ropes, calling his name out. As Cink bends down to hug her, a visibly emotional Anne kisses him on the cheek and pats his back. The moment is captured by the cameras and posted on the PGA Tour Champions official Instagram page. The caption says, “A special week for the Cinks ❤️.” And it truly was.

This was Cink’s fourth Champions Tour title in just 36 starts and his third win of the 2025 season. Before this, he had emerged victorious at the Insperity Invitational and The Ally Challenge. The season-long Charles Schwab Cup points race shifted with it, lifting Cink from third to first and moving Alker into second.

He now also became the fourth player to win both the Schwab Cup Championship tournament and the season-long Cup in the same year. Tom Watson, Tom Lehman, and Kevin Sutherland are some notable names that have defined this excellence. And for his mother, raising such a successful player is everything to her.

“Stewart is a very kind person, and that means a lot to me,” she said with a beaming smile. “He’s kind to everybody. He treats everybody the same, and it means the world. I know it, but it really means something when people come up and say it to me and acknowledge it and validate it.”

Long before Stewart Cink won the Open Championship or became a defining name on the PGA Tour, the anchor in his life was his mother, Anne. An accomplished golfer herself, she inculcated a love for golf in her son’s heart. This showed soon enough.

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Anne’s foundation for raising a champion

As a young boy in Alabama, Stewart spent endless afternoons at the Florence Country Club, chipping and putting. Anne, meanwhile, dropped him off or, at times, waited for his practice to get over.

For Anne, her philosophy was simple. Let her son enjoy the game, rather than be burdened with expectations. A poignant moment in their lives came when Stewart won his 2009 Open Championship at Royal Turnberry. That was his first major championship victory after playing more than a decade professionally. Unfortunately, Anne could not be present there. But she watched from her home in Florida.

When Cink made a birdie putt on the 18th hole, Anne clicked a picture of the leaderboard and texted it to her son. A single word followed “Beautiful.” 16 years later, at the Phoenix Golf Club, the meaning of this word has multiplied manifold.