With the 2013 U.S. Open teeing off at Merion Golf Club’s historic East Course for the fifth time in just 26 days, it’s a good time to recap the three local Open qualifiers that have been held over the last week or so at three different courses in Chester County.

   In Friday’s Daily Times, I had a story on Braden Shattuck, the 2011-12 Daily Times Player of the Year at Sun Valley, advancing out of the local qualifier at Waynesborough Country Club May 9 with a 1-over 72.

    I also  mentioned that Michael Kania, the two-time Haverford School All-Delco who recently capped an outstanding three years with the Villanova program , lost in a playoff for the last of the seven available spots out of the Waynesborough qualifier.

   I’ll get back to some of the other Delco players who teed it up at Waynesborough.

   This Thursday, the last of the three qualifiers in Chester County was held at Applebrook Golf Club. There, another Haverford School All-Delco who also teed it up this spring for Villanova, Cory Siegfried, was one of four survivors among the eight players who carded 1-over 72s at the 6,810-yard, par-71 Applebrook layout as he parred the third extra hole to earn a shot at the 36-hole sectional qualifying test.

  Siegfried, the 2010 Pennsylvania Amateur champion, was the only amateur to qualify at Applebrook. Among the players he beat in the playoff were another former Haverford School standout, Nelson Hargrove, and Spring-Ford Country Club head pro Rich Steinmetz, one of the Philadelphia Section PGA’s top players.

   Siegfried went to the University of Virginia out of high school and then resurfaced in graduate school at Villanova with a year of eligibility remaining that he put to good use in giving the Wildcats some veteran depth during the 2012-13 campaign that only recently wrapped up.

   “It’s pretty nice,” Siegfried told the Golf Association of Philadelphia website. “It feels good to move on, especially since I’ve never done it. It’ll be interesting to see what the second stage is like. I can imagine it’s a lot harder.”

  Also at Applebrook, James Kania, like younger brother Michael at Waynesborough, just missed with his 2-over 73 a shot out of the playoff that Siegfried survived. James Kania was the 2005-06 Daily Times Player of the Year.

   By the way, James Kania helped Overbrook Golf Club reach the final four of the GAP team matches when he picked up a couple of valuable points in a battle with Huntingdon Valley’s Andrew Mason in a meeting of the respective 2009 and 2011 winners of the William Hyndman Award that goes to the GAP Player of the Year. Philadelphia Cricket Club (with a big boost from Haverford School All-Delco and two-time Inter-Ac League champion Cole Berman) prevailed last weekend to take the title in the GAP team matches.

  Also on the near-miss list at Applebrook was another Overbrook member, Episcopal Academy senior Sean Fahey, who matched James Kania’s 73.

   Billy Stewart, the former Malvern Prep standout who honed his game growing up at Llanerch Country Club, had a 75. At 76 were Overbrook Golf Club veteran Chris Lange and Ted Brennan, the third member of the Haverford School connection at Villanova this season along with Michael Kania and Siegfried.

   Radnor Valley Country Club head pro George Forster was at 77, Anthony List and Merion Golf Club head of instruction Mark Sheftic were at 78, Jason Loehrs of Drexel Hill and Conrad Von Borsig, the 2004-05 Daily Times Player of the Year at Strath Haven, were at 79. Former Haverford High standout Jimmy Pokorny had an 81.

   In the local qualifier held Monday at a chilly Whitford Country Club, Strath Haven All-Delco Steve Seiden, a member at Llanerch, carded a 77, one shot behind the final qualifying cutoff. Seiden was joined at that figure by Mike Ladden, the head pro at Whitford.

   John Allen of Media carded an 80.

   Gettting back to the Waynesborough qualifier of May 9, Eddie Johnson of Havertown was another of the group that included Michael Kania at 74 who failed to survive the playoff.

   Stu Ingrahm, the head instructor  at the M Golf Range in Newtown Square and the reigning Philadelphia Section PGA Player of the Year, was at 75, as were Radnor High All-Delco Carey Bina and Drexel Hill’s Chris Hoyle.

   Michael McDermott, the five-time GAP Player of Year, would dearly have loved to get a shot at qualifying for an Open at his home course, but he posted a 77 at Waynesborough.

   Michael Davis, a member at Aronimink Golf Club and the Inter-Ac League champion as a freshman at Malvern Prep in 2010, had a 79, as did Overbrook veteran Oscar Mestre.

   Among the group at 80 were Radnor High sophomore Paul Yun, Jimmy Johnston, a Wayne resident and another member of the Villanova golf team this season, former Marple Newtown and Philadelphia University standout Ryan O’Donnell and Gerhard Van Arkel Jr. of Haverford.

  

  With just 33 days until the 2013 U.S. Open tees off at Merion Golf Club’s East Course (and the 2011-12 Daily Times Player of the Year from Sun Valley Braden Shattuck has put himself in position to get a shot at being in the field, a story I’ll be working on this week), it was a big weekend on the NCAA women’s golf front.

   Aurora Kan, the 2010 PIAA champion as a senior at Chichester, and her Purdue teammates will be taking a lot of momentum to the NCAA Tournament May 21-24 at the University of Georgia Golf Course in Athens, Ga., after a strong second-place finish to top-ranked Southern California at this weekend’s West Regional Tournament.

  It took something of a miraculous finish by the Trojans to edge the Boilermakers by a single shot, 859-860, for the team title.

   All Southern Cal needed was a school-record 8-under 63 from freshman Kyung Kim and a 3-under 68 from freshman Annie Park, which enabled her to share individual honors with Purdue senior Paula Reto.  Kim was a prize recruit for the Trojans, but all she did Saturday was rattle off nine birdies, including four straight from holes 14 to 17, to give Southern Cal its fourth straight reigional crown.

   There were plenty of heroes for Purdue, led by Reto, the native of South Africa. Reto flashed her talent with a final round of 5-under 66 that included five birdies and  no bogeys over the 6,267-yard, par-71 Stanford Golf Course in Stanford, Calif. Combined with her first two rounds of 71 and 69, it gave Reto a 7-under 206 and a share of first place with USC’s Park, who had rounds of 67 and 71 before her final-round 68.

   Reto’s total broke her own school record for a 54-hole event by a shot.

   Reto led the way as Purdue put up rounds of 291, 285 and 283 for its 859 total. Going into the final day, Purdue had held a one-shot edge on Vanderbilt  and led USC by two shots. Led by Park and Kim, the Trojans made up the difference with a final-round 280. Purdue certainly didn’t blow this tournament, USC had to be very, very good to beat the Boilermakers.

   Purdue’s freshman phenom, Belgian Margaux Vanmol, was at her best at Stanford with steady rounds of 74, 72 and 70 for a 3-over 216 total that gave her a share of 10^th place.

   Redshirt senior Kishi Sinha, a native of India, was also solid with rounds of 74,72 and 73 for a 219 total that left her in a tie for 22^nd. Senior Laura Gonzalez-Escallon, like Vanmol, a native of Belgium, finished in a tie for 33^rd with rounds of 72,76 and 74 for a 222 total.

   Kan, a sophomore and a three-time Daily Times Player of the Year at Chichester, rounded out the Purdue contingent in a tie for 39^th, a shot back of Gonzalez-Escallon. Kan had rounds of 75, 73 and 75 for a 223 total.

   Vanderbilt couldn’t keep up with the torrid pace established by USC and Purdue, but easily earned third with a final-round 291 for an 869 total.

   The top eight teams earned spots in the NCAA Tournament and after the top three, the qualifiers were South Carolina (874), host Stanford (875) and Arizona, Oregon and San Jose St., all of whom finished in a tie for sixth at 889.

   Purdue will be joined at the NCAA Tournament by fellow Big Ten teams Michigan St.,  Northwestern and Wisconsin. Northwestern, which shared the Big Ten Tournament team title with Purdue, finished sixth in the East Regional Tournament. Wisconsin and Michigan St. were seventh and eighth, respectively, at the Central Regional Tournament.

   What started as 2009 PIAA champion Jackie Calamaro’s senior project to raise money for The First Tee of Philadelphia will happen for the third time in four years, although the beneficiary is new.

   Seniors Jamie Susanin and Allie Ziegler, co-captains of Radnor’s PIAA championship team last fall, will once again try to get in a 100-plus holes of golf in a golf marathon to raise money for Women Golfers Give Back.

   Three years ago Calamaro, fellow senior and All-Delco Jin Hwang and Radnor coach Andy Achenbach played 102 holes at Walnut Lane Golf Club. Calamaro’s effort paid off to the tune of nearly $10,000 raised and also earned her the prestigious Presidents’ Leadership Award, a joint venture by the American Junior Golf Association and the United States Golf Association to pay tribute to exceptional volunteerism by junior golfers.

   A year ago, the second edition of the marathon was played at Susanin’s home course, Overbrook Golf Club, with Susanin, Ziegler, Caitlin Sullivan, captain of Radnor’s District One champion 2011 team, and Achenbach getting in 104 holes.

   This year’s marathon will again be played at Overbrook, Monday, May 20. Susanin, who will play golf at Dartmouth next fall, and Ziegler, who is headed for Vanderbilt, want to give back to a sport that has given them so much throughout their youth.

Radnor co-captains Jamie Susanin, left, and Allie Ziegler are planning to play at least 100 holes of golf at Overbrook Golf Club, Monday, May 20 in a golf marathon designed to raise money and awareness for Women Golfers Give Back, an organization designed to promote the game of golf  to young girls.

   That’s why the beneficiary is Women Golfers Give Back, an organization founded in 2003 by a group of woman golfers who wanted to give back to the community and promote the game of golf to deserving young girls.

   To learn more about Women Golfers Give Back or to make a donation in conjunction with the golf marathon being staged by Susanin and Ziegler, visit www.womengolfersgiveback.org

 

Kim takes second at Sand Barrens

   The future of the Radnor girls golf program is hard at work on the Philadelphia PGA Junior Tour these days.

   Gabriella Kim, expected to join the program next fall, finished second in the 13-to-15 age group at Sunday’s Junior Tour stop at the Sand Barrens Golf Club near the Jersey shore with a 96. She finished six shots back of Katie Lee of Ringoes, N.J.

   There’s a pretty good chance that that was Gabriella’s little sister June who finished in a tie for 10^th among the nine-holers at Sand Barrens with a 61.

   Other top-10 finishers among the nine-holers included Lucas Zhu of Wayne, who finished In a tie for sixth with a 48 and Reed Curtis of Springfield, who matched Kim’s 61 to share 10^th place.

   In the boys 16-to-18 division, Garnet Valley junior Jack Highfill finished fourth with an 83 and fellow Jaguar Michael Stanilka, a sophomore, finished in a tie for 11^th with a 90.

    As the 2013 U.S. Open approaches (the countdown is at 37 days until the best players in the world tee off at Merion Golf Club’s East Course), I’ve often thought of Chris Lange, the veteran Overbrook Golf Club standout who is the only player in the 117-year history of the Golf Association of Philadelphia to have won all four of its major championships (Amateur, Mid-Amateur, Open and Patterson Cup).

   A whole bunch of local college players, including three-time Daily Times Player of the Year Adam Cohan of Radnor, and, in the case of Malvern Prep’s Cole Wilcox, a high school player, earned berths in the 2005 U.S. Amateur at Merion.

   The one exception was Lange, who is the same age as me, which means he turned 50 that year. They gathered all the local qualifiers at Merion for  Media Day and I’ll always remember the impassioned plea Lange made to bring the Open back to Merion.

   He said when he was driving in the neighborhood of the East Course, he would often take a detour down Golf House Road and admire the 14^th and 15^th holes that border the road, just because he loved the course so much.

   “Give Merion its Open,” Lange said that day. I guess somebody was listening.

   Lange came to mind with news last week that he took his game out of mothballs and fired a 1-under 70 at White Manor Country Club to capture GAP’s Warner Cup (gross) event.  The victory came on the heels of a 2012 campaign during which Lange kept the sticks in the shop for most of the year, citing a bit of golf burnout.

   “I’ve been chasing tournaments for 50 years,” the 58-year-old Lange told the GAP website. “It’s nice to shoot a good score in competition. This was a surprising round. I haven’t been playing that well. I have an ear infection, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to come out and get it in.

   “You feel OK once you start making birdies. It puts a different perspective on things. Today I had two thoughts that worked: A thought with the long game and a thought with putting and I was like a different guy out there. My rolodex is getting very long.”

   Birdies on the third, sixth and seventh holes enabled Lange to  make the turn in 32. He struggled a little on the inward nine, but when a six-foot par putt hung on the lip and then tumbled in, he completed his tour of the 6,626-yard, par-71 White Manor layout under par.

   Another of Overbrook’s stable of senior standouts, Ray Thompson, finished in a tie for third with a 2-over 73.

   Mike Owsik, proprietor of the M Golf Range in Newtown Square (and a fellow Class of ’73 Archbishop Carroll product of mine), was at 78. Merion’s Gordon Jamieson and Aronomink Golf Club’s Martin Klagholz were at 78 and Edgmont Country Club’s Michael Quinn was at 79.

   Overbrook’s Frank McFadden and Rolling Green Golf Club’s Robert Billings were at 80 and The Springhaven Club’s Andrew Harmer was at 81.

   Lange and Thompson also took top honors in their respective age groups, 55-to-59 and 60-and-over.

Berman gives TMac another mulligan.

   With the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club’s East Course in the Ardmore section of Haverford Township teeing off in just 42 days, a few thoughts from Monday’s Media Day.

   I read a lot of golf publications and it seems like in the wake of the U.S. Open every year, someone who fancies himself or herself quite the golf purist (OK, it’s almost always a guy because women don’t pay much attention to announcers), takes a shot at Chris Berman for his role as part of ESPN’s broadcast team for the first two days of coverage.

   So who would have to end up witnessing me hacking it around one of the finest golf courses in the world on Media Day, but Boomer himself.

   It rained pretty steadily Monday morning and I despaired even getting out on the course.

  And the poor weather certainly persuaded some among the media to sit this one out. So that’s how it ended up with me paired in a twosome with Berman teeing off the first hole. Just him and me and our caddies, carrying single bags. Pancho had Berman’s bag and John mine. They were veterans – as I had once been a proud veteran caddy at Merion – and if I had been a little more on the ball, I would have their last names, but that gives me something to work on during Open week.

   A couple of Berman’s ESPN colleagues, including “Baseball Tonight” host Karl Ravech, were in the group ahead of us, but Berman was happy to tee it up with a “local guy” like me, even moreso when I told him I was an old Merion looper myself and had a bag in the 1981 Open.

   As we worked our way around the course, Berman penned some notes on each hole on a scorecard. He paid attention to all the Merion stories Pancho, John and myself could dole out. And he got a pretty nice putting tip from Pancho, who gives lessons to city kids at a range at 33^rd and Oxford in Philadelphia.

   He left all of the Boomer shtick at the office and he cared a lot about the course and his game, which got steadily better as the day wore on. Again, considering he had to watch me hit 100-yard popups off just about every tee, it was amazing he was able to muster a half-dozen or so pars.

   OK, I did get a bit of a nickname.

   To save the fairways, in certain areas your caddy lays down a driving-range style mat to hit off. Apparently, even the membership has had to put up with this since late last fall. Anyway, I hit some of my best shots off the mat, probably owing to my driving-range roots. We had to hit off the mats on the shortest hole on the course, the par-3 13^th, which is only about 115 yards, but is protected by a massive bunker in front. I hit a soaring 8-iron off the mat right on to the green (3-putted it, of course, for a bogey).

   My mastery of hitting off the mat (probably combined with my Penn State headcovers) earned me the nickname … Matt Millen. Made sense.

   Then rain stopped just about when we started and pretty much held off until the last three holes. And despite my inability to keep my ball out of the nefarious Merion rough, it was a very enjoyable day.

   Berman never even came close to big-timing me and, of course, he had some interesting stories to tell out of what I’m certain is a limitless supply of them.

    I will probably catch some of the replays of ESPN’s coverage. Most years, when the U.S. Open is not here (or at Oakmont), I watch the coverage live and the replays, just because it’s the U.S. Open.

   It will be interesting to hear Berman’s broadcast this year. I know for a fact he will be prepared because I got to see some of his preparation up close. And I know he knows his golf, particularly when it comes to the Open. And I will take the critics a little less seriously this year because I got to see how seriously Berman takes this assignment.

 As for the golf course …

   I had been warned a little about this, so it wasn’t a total shock, but two of the alterations done to the East Course in preparation for this Open seemed unnecessary.

   In the case of both the 12^th and 15^th greens, the slippery front portions have been rendered less slippery, probably taking away two really neat pin placements. They are both still tough greens and the yawning bunkers that protect the right side of the greens will still provide USGA executive director Mike Davis the opportunity to set up a couple of sucker pins.

   But anybody who has ever seen a player – even some good ones – putt one right off the green from above the hole when the pin was set in the front left of either hole, will probably be wishing, as I am, that maybe the old 12^th and 15^th greens will be restored when the Big Show leaves town.