Chip Lutz put himself in good position to earn a berth in
match play at the U.S. Senior Amateur Championship after the opening round of
qualifying Saturday at Eugene Country Club in Eugene, Ore.
No big surprise there. The 63-year-old Reading native has
been one of the top senior amateur players on the planet for the better part of
the last decade. Global Golf Post
went so far as to name him the top male amateur player in the world for 2016.
It was something of a career achievement award for Lutz, who
won The Seniors Amateur Championship for the third time in 2016 after finally
nailing down a U.S. Senior Amateur title in 2015 at Hidden Creek Golf Club in
Egg Harbor Township, N.J. That’s not to mention the two Canadian Men’s Senior
Championship titles he also owns.
Lutz, who plays out of LedgeRock Golf Club, carded a
somewhat adventurous 2-over-par 74 over the 6,869-yard, par-72 Eugene layout
Saturday and is tied for 21st place after the first round of qualifying.
He’ll try to do at least as well and hopefully a little better in Sunday’s
second round in order to earn one of the 64 tickets into the match-play
bracket.
I thought maybe when Lutz, the reigning eight-time Golf
Association of Philadelphia Senior Player of the Year, teed it up in one of
GAP’s senior major championships, the Brewer Cup, in July, he might be planning
a less ambitious summer schedule.
Turned out it was just a tuneup for Lutz’s annual trip
across the pond to play some links golf. First stop was the Old Course at St.
Andrews for the Senior Open Championship in late July. Guess if Lutz was
eligible to tee it up at the home of golf under championship conditions, he
wasn’t going to pass that up.
I was hanging out at the caddyshack at Stonewall when
first-round Senior Open Championship coverage popped up and there on the second
page of the leaderboard was one Chip Lutz at 3-under, his opening round at St.
Andrews a sparkling 69.
He shot 11-over 83 in the second round, his 8-over 152 total
missing the cut by six shots. That doesn’t really diminish the fact that the
guy showed up at St. Andrews and threw a little 69 at the Old Course at age 63.
From there it was on to Royal Porthcawl Golf Club in Wales
for The Seniors Amateur Championship, which he won back-to-back in 2011 and
2012 before adding his third title in 2016.
Lutz finished tied for fourth, matching par in the first two
rounds with 72s and finishing up with a 3-over 75 for a 3-over 219 total. He
was never really in contention for the title as Englishman Trevor Foster
blitzed the Royal Porthcawl layout with an opening-round 63 and never looked
back on his way to a nine-shot victory. But Lutz was only two shots out of
second.
So, as is often the case, Lutz showed up in Eugene battle-tested
and ready to go. He made four birdies to offset four bogeys and a double bogey.
He will be a tough out if he can make it into the match-play bracket.
David Blichar, who was the medalist in the GAP-administered
U.S. Senior Amateur qualifier at Tavistock Country Club, got off to a great
start with a 1-over 73 and is in the group tied for 15th.
Blichar, one of the Lehigh Valley’s top senior players in
his first year of eligibility for the U.S. Senior Amateur at age 55, had a
steady round that featured two birdies and three bogeys.
Reigning U.S. Senior Amateur champion Sean Knapp, one of
western Pennsylvania’s top amateur players for years, is tied for 34th
place at 3-over 75. Knapp defeated Paul Simson, a two-time U.S. Senior Amateur
champion, 2 and 1, in the final a year ago at The Minikahda Club in Minneapolis.
Knapp captured the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s Senior
Amateur Championship earlier this month at the Philadelphia Cricket Club’s
Militia Hill Course.
Two other players who emerged from the Tavistock qualifier,
David West of Exton and Edward Armagost, a former PGA Tour caddy who loops at
Pine Valley Golf Club, are part of a large group of players tied for 62nd
place at 5-over 77. They have some work to do to earn a spot in match play.
Merion Golf Club’s George “Buddy” Marucci, the 2008 U.S.
Senior Amateur champion and two-time winning U.S. Walker Cup captain, posted a
79.
Pine Valley’s James Dunne, who also earned his ticket to
Eugene at the Tavistock qualifier, struggled to an 86. Dunne is also a member at
Shinnecock Hills and was featured in a story The Golf Channel broadcast in the
run-up to this summer’s U.S. Open at the William Flynn classic on the eastern
tip of Long Island.
Leading the way after the opening round of qualifying is
Gregory Condon of Monte Vista, Colo, who fired a 5-under 67.
A Google search on Condon revealed a pretty neat story from
the USGA archives about his run to the second round of the now defunct U.S.
Amateur Public Links Championship in 2012 when he was 50.
He doesn’t look like a golfer, but the guy can really play.
After making a bogey on the second hole at Eugene Saturday, Condon made birdies
at five, seven and eight to get to
2-under at the turn and then rattled off birdies at 15, 16 and 18 in a
finishing burst that left him two shots clear of the field at 5-under.
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