Rick Cloninger ended the day singing the praises of his friend Yancey Johnson.

“Yancey is a great young talent, you’re going to hear a lot more about him in the coming years,” said Cloninger, team captain of the South Carolina squad that won the team portion of the International Senior Invitational on Saturday.

Johnson, at 57, really is relatively new to the senior amateur circuit. His performance down the stretch in the final round at Cartersville (Georgia) Country Club, however, illustrates Cloninger’s point that this is a guy who is going to make some noise.

South Carolina started the day just one shot off the team lead but ended up claiming the title by two shots. The team finished 54 holes at 6 under in the play-three-count-two team format and edged second-round leader Utah by two shots. Kentucky climbed five spots in the final round on the strength of Tony Wise’s 67 and finished solo third, ahead of Iowa in fourth place.

As for that South Carolina performance, big credit goes to Johnson’s back-nine 33, which included birdies at Nos. 12, 14 and 18.

“We started the day right there together and I don’t think we ever got that far apart,” Cloninger said of the final-round horserace that unfolded between his team and Utah. “I had a couple birdies on the back side that kind of helped and same thing for Yancey there going down the stretch.”

Johnson put up a 70 and Cloninger had a 71 in the final round. Even more telling, South Carolina’s throw-out score on Saturday was a 73 from Gino Berchiatti.

Credit the South Carolina players’ strong finish at least in part to their strong athletic backgrounds. Cloninger played college football and baseball at Wofford while Johnson played basketball at the College of Charleston.

“So we got athletes,” Cloninger said before joking, “We mutated into golfers.”

Despite coming to the game late, Cloninger is a veteran of nearly 20 U.S. Golf Association championships. In 1995, he played on the Florida team in the inaugural U.S. State Team Championship, a championship the USGA retired in 2017. He went on to play that championship twice more with the Georgia team and twice with the South Carolina team as he moved around the Southeast.

Cloninger, who recently retired from a career in the construction equipment industry, likened the International Senior Invitational to the U.S. State Team.

“It’s not overly stressful,” he said of this week’s team event, “but things can change rapidly in a team deal if somebody has a rough hole.”

The International Senior features an individual component, too. Johnson fared well on that leaderboard, finishing solo fourth at 5 under for 54 holes. Cloninger also finished inside the top 10 with his 1-under total.

For the second time in three years, Joe Lyons from Ireland won the individual component, going 7 under for the week at Cartersville. He finished one shot ahead of early-week leader Shane McMillan from Utah and Mike McCoy from Iowa. McCoy is the reigning U.S. Senior Amateur champion.

Lyons, who also won this title in 2023, has a robust international resume. He has won multiple Irish Senior Men’s Amateur Close Championships as well as the Spanish, Portuguese, and Irish senior amateur championships.

As for Cloninger, he not only had praise for his teammates after South Carolina’s victory, but also for the venue.

“The place is a wonderful golf course,” he said of Cartersville Country Club, “the volunteers are second to none. The support that’s going on in Cartersville for this event is tremendous.”

So will he get the band back together for this event again next year? Potentially.

Cloninger intended to compete in the International Senior a year ago, but he blew out a tire on the way there. He and Johnson were scheduled to play with a different teammate, Eddie Hargett, but Hargett also had to miss the event last minute as a hurricane brewed off the South Carolina coast near his home.

This year, when Hargett was unable to compete, Berchiatti stepped in as the third. Cloninger jokes that putting together next year’s team may involve some sort of qualifying between Hargett and Berchiatti.

“We’re going to let Eddie and Gino fight out for that spot,” he joked. “We’re going to put [them] on a points list for this year.”