Thompson completes GAP's career 'senior slam' with victory in Brewer Cup

   It’s almost hard to believe that Overbrook Golf Club’s ageless Ray Thompson hadn’t already achieved a career sweep of the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s major senior championships.

   It was a little piece of unfinished business that the 66-year-old Thompson, who has been a good player for more than 50 years, took care of Wednesday with a 2-up victory over Wilmington Country Club’s Steve Walczak in the final of the Brewer Cup, presented by Callaway, at Old York Road Country Club.

   Only the Brewer Cup – and the tournament’s namesake O. Gordon Brewer, a two-time U.S. Senior Amateur champion, did tee it up in qualifying for match play – had eluded Thompson in a brilliant career in GAP’s senior events, particularly in the last 12 years or so.

   “Out of nowhere, on the back nine, the thought of the (career grand slam) popped into my head,” Thompson told the GAP website. “I’m not sure how or why, but it did. I had to constantly tell myself to stop thinking about it. It’s amazing to think about.”

   And you need to look no further than Thompson’s semifinal opponent to figure out why it took Thompson so long to complete GAP’s senior grand slam. All he had to do was get past 2015 U.S. Senior Amateur champion, Chip Lutz of LedgeRock Golf Club, Wednesday morning to earn a spot in the final opposite Walczak.

   Lutz is the reigning eight-time GAP Senior Player of the Year. GAP awards Player of the Year points for making USGA events and doing well at them and for international events like The Seniors Amateur Championship in the United Kingdom, an event Lutz has won three times, which helps explain Lutz’s stretch of utter dominance of the GAP Senior Player of the Year Award.

   Lutz has been the best senior amateur player on the planet for some time, something Global Golf Post recognized when it named him the top male amateur player in the world for 2016. The 63-year-old Lutz has hinted that he might cut back on his ambitious schedule and just his presence at the Brewer Cup might confirm that he’s going to keep it a little closer to home this year.

   None of which mattered a bit to Thompson, who dropped a 4 and 3 meeting with Lutz in the 2013 U.S. Senior Amateur Championship quarterfinals at the Wade Hampton Golf Club in Cashiers, N.C.

Thompson knew he had a formidable hurdle in Lutz. Thompson got Lutz down and didn’t let him back up in an impressive 5 and 4 victory.

   Not that it was over yet, though. The 61-year-old Walczak won GAP’s Senior Amateur Championship in 2015. He built a 1-up lead on Thompson through six holes of the final.

But Walczak missed a par putt on the seventh to enable Thompson to even the match and then Thompson fired an 8-iron from 155 yards away at the eighth to five feet and made the putt to take a 1-up lead.

   Walczak evened the match again by taking the 10^th, but Thompson won the next two holes to take a 2-up lead with just six to play. Thompson used a wedge out of a gnarly lie from 139 yards away at the 11^th, hit it 15 feet away and made the putt to take the 11^th and another miss by Walczak of a shortish par putt on the 12^th gave Thompson the win there.

   Thompson putted his downhill 20-foot birdie attempt at the 17^th right off the green and eventually made double bogey to enable Walczak to cut his deficit to 1-down heading to the last.

   But Walczak got a tough break on the 18^th when his birdie putt took a hop from the fringe and came up short. When he missed his par putt, he conceded a six-foot par putt and the match to Thompson.

Walczak had a pretty tough customer of his own to deal with in his semifinal match as he claimed a 2-up victory over Lancaster Country Club’s Kenneth Phillips.

   The medalist in Monday’s qualifying was another of GAP’s senior standouts, Glenn Smeraglio of LuLu Country Club, who fired a 3-under 68 over the 6,387-yard, par-71 Old York Road layout. Thompson was a shot back in second with a 2-under 69 and Lutz was third with a 72.

   Smeraglio got knocked out in the opening round by Concord Country Club’s Doug Feroryshyn, who pulled off a 1-up upset.

   Thompson cruised to a 6 and 5 victory over David West, a Philadelphia Publinks Golf Association entry, in his opening-round match Tuesday morning and claimed a 2 and 1 victory over John Alterman of Commonwealth National Golf Club in a Tuesday afternoon quarterfinal match.

   Thompson’s GAP senior record now includes two Francis B. Warner Cup wins, a Frank H. Chapman victory, a pair of Senior Amateur triumphs, three Senior Silver Cross Awards … and a Brewer Cup.

   The area’s dominant Super-Senior, White Manor Country Club’s Don Donatoni, was at it again at Old York Road.

   The reigning five-time GAP Super-Senior Player of the Year cruised to a 5 and 4 victory over Lookaway Golf Club’s Thomas Mallouk in Wednesday’s final to claim the Brewer Cup’s Super-Senior division for the fifth time in six years.

   The 68-year-old Mallouk, a Doylestown resident and a psychologist with a practice based in Rosemont, had knocked off qualifying medalist Robin McCool of Saucon Valley Country Club, 2 and 1, in a quarterfinal match Tuesday.

   McCool had claimed medalist honors Monday with a 1-under 70 over an Old York Road course that measured 5,960 yards for the super-seniors. Donatoni was two shots back in second with a 72.

Donatoni then eased past another Saucon Valley entry, Joe Cordaro, 5 and 3, in his opening-round match.

   In the semifinals, Donatoni claimed a 4 and 3 win over Philadelphia Publinks Golf Association entry Buck Jones, the Silver Cross Award winner among the super-seniors a year ago, and Mallouk edged Ed Chylinski of Chester Valley Golf Club, 2 and 1.

   At 70, Donatoni complained of some ailments that left him not playing his best golf in the early part of the 2018 season, but he obviously regained his form well enough to repeat as the Brewer Cup winner.

   Donatoni proved how tough the GAP senior circuit is when he went out to last summer’s U.S. Senior Amateur at The Minikahda Club in Minneapolis, earned a berth in match play and won a match.

   That earned him a second-round match with the only guy left in the bracket he couldn’t sneak up on, LedgeRock’s Lutz, who claimed a 5 and 4 victory.