The U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship has gained in
popularity since its 2015 debut.
It started a little slowly, probably owing to the fall
qualifying for a spring event in a lot of places. But the USGA knew how popular
better-ball-of-partners events are on the local and state levels and just
figured it was time to take it to a national stage.
That’s what drew all sorts of two-man teams to Waynesborough
Country Club and Rolling Green Golf Club Monday for a pair of local qualifiers
administered by the Golf Association of Philadelphia with the goal to get a
starting time for the 2018 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship, which tees off
May 19 at the famed Jupiter Hills Club in Tequesta, Fla.
The start of play was delayed at both sites as rain left
over from Sunday finally stopped only to be replaced by chilly temperatures and
a fierce wind and a three-for-two playoff at Waynesborough didn’t finally
conclude until Tuesday morning.
But one thing was never in doubt at Waynesborough and that
was the identity of the qualifying medalists. The St. Davids Golf Club pair of
Brian Gillespie and Stephen Dressel – pretty sure both starred scholastically
at Conestoga, but more than a decade apart – fired a 7-under-par 64 over the
6,848-yard, par-71 Waynesborough layout to
finish two shots ahead of the pack and punch their ticket to Jupiter Hills.
Both were coming off solid summers on the GAP circuit. The
29-year-old Dressel finished tied for second in the GAP Middle-Amateur
Championship at Overbrook Golf Club and the 42-year-old Gillespie finished tied
for third in the Patterson Cup at Wilmington Country Club’s South Course and
finished in the top five in the Silver Cross standings, GAP’s stroke-play
championship.
It will be the first USGA event for Dressel while Gillespie
will be teeing it up in his seventh USGA championship, including a spot in the
inaugural U.S. Four-Ball in 2015 at The Olympic Club in San Francisco when he
partnered with Little Mill Country Club’s Michael Hyland.
Dressel and Gillespie got it going when they both birdied
the fifth hole, Dressel draining a 30-footer. It was an easy birdie for
Gillespie at the par-5 seventh as he was just short in two, chipped to four
feet and dropped the putt. Gillespie then holed a 20-foot birdie putt at the
eighth and the team made the turn at 3-under.
Dressel did the rest. He birdied 12, 13 and 15 and then
finished with a flourish, reaching the par-5 18 in two with a driver and a
hybrid and two-putting for a birdie.
“I was just trying to keep us in our lane,” Gillespie told
the GAP website. “When he gets going, boy, he really gets going. It was fun to
watch it happen and I was there in case he needed me.”
After that, things got a little messy at Waynesborough as
former North Carolina teammates Brandon Dalinka and Bailey Patrick and two
Philadelphia Cricket Club pairs, Sean Sementz and Jack Wallace and Conrad Von
Borsig and Robby Walizer all carded 5-under 66s.
With the early delay, daylight was in short supply, but
the three teams were willing to give it a go. Dalinka, who plays out of The
Ridge at Back Brook, drilled a wedge to two feet on the first playoff hole, the
par-4 first hole at Waynesborough, and made the putt to punch the ticket to
Jupiter Hills for himself and Patrick of Charlotte, N.C.
At the second hole, Wallace’s drive disappeared into the
darkness of a Halloween eve. Sementz was able to make par and Walizer holed a
par putt with the green being illuminated by car headlights. Saw that image on
Twitter and that alone is a pretty good argument for following GAP on Twitter.
Just sayin’.
The two teams had to call it a day at that point. They were
back at it at 8 a.m. Tuesday and both made par on eight. Everybody involved
made bogey at the ninth with Sementz and Walizer three-putting.
It finally ended on the first hole, the fifth of the
playoff. Von Borsig and Walizer both came up short of the green and had testy
par putts, both of which lipped out. Sementz made his three-foot par putt to
send him and Wallace, who also teamed up at The Olympic Club in 2015, to
Florida in May.
It was a tough month of October for Von Borsig, whose
scholastic career at Strath Haven I chronicled in a previous life at the Delco Daily Times. It looked like he was
going to make match play in the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship earlier in the
month when he made a triple bogey on his last hole of qualifying, the ninth at
Atlanta National Golf Club, to miss a 25-for-16 playoff by a shot.
Von Borsig and Walizer are the first alternates. Samuel Banks
of Glen Allen, Va. and Marco Poccia of Richmond,
Va. are the second alternates as they carded a 4-under 67.
Heading the list of near misses was the formidable pairing
of three-time BMW Philadelphia Amateur champion Michael McDermott of Merion
Golf Club and 2014 Philly Amateur champion Jeff Osberg of Huntingdon Valley
Country Club, who carded a 3-under 68.
It figured to be a good spot since Osberg is pretty familiar
with a golf course where his dad Rick was the head pro for many years.
McDermott and Osberg qualified for the 2016 U.S. Four-Ball at Winged Foot Golf
Club, but failed to make match play. Less than a month later they waged an epic
battle in a Philly Amateur final for the ages at Merion’s famed East Course
with McDermott winning on the 36th hole.
Nice to see the Overbrook Golf Club brother tandem of James
and Michael Kania, both former Haverford School standouts, give it a go at
Waynesborough. Team Kania posted a 1-over 72.
Over at Rolling Green, the William Flynn gem in Springfield,
Delaware County, only two tickets to Jupiter Hills were available and two teams
of out-of-towners grabbed them.
Lifelong friends from Westwood, Mass., John Lazor, a junior
at Dartmouth, and Patrick Frodigh, a senior at Elon, and the scholastic team of
Jack Kozlowski of Columbus, Ohio and Trey Rath of Powell, Ohio, were
co-medalists and the two qualifiers as each duo posted a 4-under 66 on the
6,713-yard, par-70 Rolling Green layout, site of the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur.
Both teams came into town Saturday, Lazor and Frodigh flying
from their respective campuses and Kozlowski and Rath driving eight hours from
Ohio (I’m guessing a parent or two did most of the heavy lifting driving-wise)
and got in a practice round on a rainy Sunday, although it didn’t seem to
bother all those Eagles fans watching their beloved Birds beat the 49ers at the
Linc to improve to 7-1.
The highlight of the round for the 21-year-old Lazor and the
22-year-old Frodigh was Frodigh blasting a 7-iron from 185 yards into the par-5
seventh hole to three feet and making the putt for eagle.
Kozlowski, a 17-year-old junior at Saint Charles Prep, and
Rath, an 18-year-old senior at Olentangy Liberty High, started their round on
the 10th hole and rode a Kozlowski hot streak in the middle of the
round to get a berth for Jupiter Hills. Kozlowski made three straight birdies
at 17, 18 and one to spark the Ohio teens.
The first alternate is the tandem of Gary Schoeman of Delray
Beach, Fla. and Jonathan Ehrlich of Philadelphia and second alternate is the
pair of Joseph Dulka of Wilmington, Del. and Scott Cahayla of West Chester.
Both teams carded a 3-under 67.
Heading the near-miss category at Rolling Green was the
Aronimink Golf Club pair of Cory Siegfried and Joseph Fabrizio Jr., who carded
a 2-under 68.
There was a neat pairing of Ben Pochet, GAP’s 2017 Junior
Player of the Year, and his Pioneer Athletic Conference rival J.T. Spina. They
matched par with a 70. Pochet, a two-time District One Class AAA champion at
Spring-Ford, and Pope John Paul II’s Spina had wrapped up their scholastic
careers less than a week earlier playing in the same foursome in the final
round of the PIAA Class AAA Championship at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort in
York County.
I was vaguely aware that the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball
Championship had replaced the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship on the
USGA calendar when Radnor’s Brynn Walker and Council Rock North’s Madelein Herr
qualified for a trip to Bandon Dunes in the middle of their junior year
scholastic season in the fall of 2014.
Next thing I knew, I’m standing in the newsroom at the Daily Times the following May watching
them play in the quarterfinals of the inaugural U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball on TV.
They reached the semifinals before falling. It was a remarkable run for a
couple of high school kids who are now stalwarts on their college teams, Walker
at North Carolina and Herr at Penn State.
It was a great experience for them and a bit of an
eye-opener for me as to the possibilities that the U.S. Four-Ball presented. That’s
why all that craziness Monday and a little bit of Tuesday at Waynesborough and Rolling
Green is perfectly understandable.
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