Latrobe's Pevarnik finishes with a flourish to grab lead after opening round of Pennsylvania Amateur

   The winner of the Pennsylvania Amateur Championship each of the last two years has been a member of the Penn State golf team.

   Two years ago at Moselem Springs Golf Club it was Cole Miller, the former Northwestern Lehigh standout who went to have one of the great seasons in the history of the Penn State program the following season.

   Last year at White Manor Country Club it was J.D. Hughes of Carlisle Country Club winning the state amateur and then helping the Nittany Lions earn an NCAA Regional berth for the second year in a row in the season that followed.

   The 105^th Pennsylvania Golf Association (PAGA) Amateur Championship, presented by LECOM, teed off Monday at Sunnehanna Country Club, an A.W. Tillinghast classic in Johnstown that is home to the annual Sunnehanna Amateur, one of the premier stops on the national summer circuit for amateur golfers.

   Latrobe senior Brady Pevarnik of Hannastown Golf Club holed out his approach shot on the par-4 18^th hole for an eagle that capped a sparkling 5-under-par 65 and gave him a one-shot lead over Hughes after Monday’s opening round. Pevarnik still has a year of high school left, but he has committed to Penn State, so if he can hold on and win, it would keep the state amateur title in the Penn State family.

   Pevarnik, who finished tied for third in the PIAA Class AAA Championship as a sophomore in the fall of 2016, had a steady start to his round Monday, bracketing seven pars on the front nine with birdies at the first and ninth holes.

   Birdies at the 11^th and 15^th holes got him to 4-under for the round before the lone blemish on his card, a bogey at 16, dropped him back to 3-under. But then came the explosive finish, his hole-out for eagle giving him his 5-under total.

   Pevarnik has some talented players breathing down his neck in the 54-hole event. Round 2 tees off Tuesday.

   Chief among them is Hughes, who made six birdies against a pair of bogeys in fashioning a 4-under 66. A successful defense by Hughes at Sunnehanna would, obviously, color the state amateur Nittany Blue for a third straight summer as well. Penn State coach Greg Nye likes what he’s seeing at the top of the leaderboard at the end of Round 1.

   Hughes capped a solid junior season at Penn State with an 18^th-place finish in the Columbus Regional at The Ohio State University’s tough Scarlet Course as the Nittany Lions finished a frustrating five shots short of making a return trip to the NCAA Championship.

   Alone in third place is Nemacolin Country Club’s Connor Schmidt, who has been a fixture in Ben Feld’s Drexel lineup in his first two seasons with the Dragons. Schmidt, a senior on the Peters Township team that was the runnerup to Radnor in the PIAA Class AAA team competition in 2015, carded a solid 3-under 67.

   Joe Parrini, a four-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier at Central York in a scholastic career that wrapped up last fall, headed a group of four players tied for fourth at 2-under 68. Parrini is headed for Arizona and the powerhouse Pac-12 Conference at the end of the summer.

   Also at 2-under is Andy Butler, who was one of Jim Wilkes’ steadiest players in his final two years at Villanova. Butler wrapped his career on the Main Line this spring. Butler, who plays out of the Pittsburgh Field Club, was part of a powerhouse Manheim Township group earlier this decade. He was a junior on Manheim Township’s 2012 PIAA Class AAA championship team.

   One the few names on the leaderboard from the southeastern part of the state is White Manor’s Cole Berger, a sophomore at Lafayette who is also in the group at 2-under. Rounding out the foursome tied for fourth is Daniel Thompson, playing out of nearby Windber Country Club.

   Lurking in a group of seven players tied for eighth at 1-under 69 are two of the state’s outstanding veteran amateurs, Nathan Smith of Pinecrest Country Club and Sean Knapp, playing as a PAGA individual member.

   Smith won his sixth R. Jay Sigel Match Play Championship, presented by LECOM, last month at Schuylkill Country Club. He has won the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship four times and represented the United States three times in the Walker Cup Match, two of them wins for the Stars & Stripes, including the 2009 edition at Merion Golf Club’s historic East Course. He won the Sunnehanna Amateur on this golf course in 2011.

   His buddy Knapp joined Smith as a USGA champion last summer when he captured the U.S. Senior Amateur championship at the Minikahda Club in Minneapolis, crediting his success in the match-play event to all the times he’s butted heads with Smith, the match-play master.

   The remaining five players joining Smith and Knapp at 1-under include veteran western Pennsylvania campaigners Darin Kowalski of South Hills Country Club, Mitch Mercer of Shannopin Country Club, St. Clair Country Club’s David Brown, winner of the 2017 PAGA Senior Amateur Match Play Championship, and Derek Baker of Waynesboro Country Club as well as Tanner Grzegorczyk, a recent Shaler graduate who will join the program at the University of Findlay later this summer.