Bina comes up just short in third-place finish in Dixie Amateur

   I’ve covered a lot of high school golf over the years and sometimes you can stump a young golfer by simply asking him or her to go back over their round. Birdies and bogeys, at least. A lot of times you get a blank stare, although eventually you can usually piece the round together.

   But hey, they’re high school kids and they might be talking to a reporter they don’t know for the first time in their lives.

   There were exceptions, of course. And one of them was Carey Bina, one of the many standouts to come through Andy Achenbach's Radnor program. Bina finished in a tie for 16^th in the 2011 PIAA Championship as a junior, a shot better than big brother Kavian, who finished in the group tied for 19^th.

   So, I was more than a little interested when I checked in on last week’s Dixie Amateur in Coral Springs, Fla. and saw that Bina was very much in contention right from the start as he fired a brilliant 6-under-par 66 at Heron Bay Country Club in Tuesday’s opening round.

   Bina stayed atop the leaderboard through two more rounds on the tough Eagle Trace Golf Club layout as conditions got increasingly difficult before coming up just short in Friday’s final round. Bina bogeyed the last two holes for a final round of 8-over 80 that left him a shot out of a playoff for the title.

   Jonathan Keppler, a redshirt junior at Florida State from Marietta, Ga., who trailed Bina by four shots heading into the final round, carded a final round of 3-over 75 and won in a playoff over Linus Lo, a redshirt sophomore at Western Kentucky from Heathrow, Fla. Lo, who had been Bina’s closest pursuer through three rounds, finished up with a 77 as he and Keppler both landed on 3-over 291.

   Bina was that rare youngster who was a treat to interview after a round. He remembered every shot. He didn’t just remember each shot, he could tell you what his approach was to the shot, why he took the club he chose if he was between clubs.

   And he didn’t just remember the good shots. He gave you even more detail when he made a mistake as if he was already mentally fixing it in his head so he wouldn’t repeat the miscue.

   The post by Julie Williams of AmateurGolf.com after he had matched par in the second round at Eagle Trace with a 72 to remain in the lead was pure Carey Bina.

   I knew Bina had planned to go to Wake Forest, but I knew he had no shot to make the golf team there. At some point I ran into him and he was planning to transfer to Elon, still uncertain if he was going to play college golf.

   Turned out he became the president of the club team at Elon. Who knew that there was such a thing as the National College Club Golf Association? Turns out one of the four players who finished tied for fifth in the Dixie Amateur, Tyler Stahle, was the senior captain of a Villanova club team that played in the NCCGA fall national championship in December of last year in Las Vegas. Again, who knew?

   I also knew that Bina had been doing some volunteer work with the Golf Association of Philadelphia when he wasn’t competing and showing up on leaderboards at some of GAP’s big events.

   At 23, Bina is spending the winter in South Florida, working when and where he can and hoping to figure out a way to get to the PGA Tour. It is the third time he’s teed it up in the Dixie Amateur. It is not the conventional route to the big time, but it is Bina’s goal. And he still has a dual degree in mathematics and Spanish from Elon to fall back on.

   The highlight of Bina’s even-par 72 in the second round at Eagle Trace was a 3-wood from 265 yards away at the par-5 10^th that finished a foot from the hole for a tap-in eagle. He remained atop the leaderboard with a 2-over 74 in the third round.

   Bina’s lead disappeared when he made a quadruple bogey 7 on the par-3 seventh in the final round. But nobody was going low in near gale-force winds and he was still very much in the hunt when he birdied the 10^th. But bogeys at the 11^th, 14^th, 17^th and 18^th holes on his way home left him a shot out of the playoff at 4-over 292.

   Still, he had put himself in position to win the tournament.

   “I’m satisfied with how I played and I know as much as I believed that I was going to win this … you learn from everything,” Bina told AmateurGolf.com’s Williams. “I think this is good because I haven’t been in this position before at such a competitive event. I’m definitely going to learn how to handle myself coming down the last couple holes.”

   Jamie Wilson, a junior at South Carolina out of Mount Pleasant, S.C., was another three shots behind Bina in fourth at 7-over 295. His back-to-back 77s in the third and fourth rounds gives you a pretty good idea how tough Eagle Trace was playing Thursday and Friday.

   It looks like Stahle, the former Villanova club team captain, is out of Andover, Mass. He finished up with back-to-back 75s in the third and fourth rounds to get his piece of fifth at 9-over 297, two shots behind Wilson.

   Joining Stahle in the foursome tied for fifth were Michael Cotton, a graduate assistant coach at South Alabama who finished with a solid 2-over 74, Nicholas Cummings of Weston, Mass., who struggled to a  final-round 81 and Grant Godfrey, a sophomore at Toledo out of Delaware, Ohio who finished up with a 77.

   Meanwhile, the Women’s Dixie Amateur was being contested simultaneously at Woodlands Country Club’s East Course in Tamarac, Fla. and Alexa Pano, the remarkable 14-year-old from nearby Lake Worth, Fla. shrugged off the tough conditions to fire a final round of 3-under 69 and hold on for a one-shot victory over Kent State’s Michaela Finn, a senior from Sweden.

   Pano first got on my radar when she won the defunct PDQ / Philadelphia Runner Junior at Saucon Valley’s Weyhill Course as a 12-year-old in just her second American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) start in 2016. A little less than a month earlier as an 11-year-old, Pano had teed it up in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Rolling Green Golf Club, although she failed to qualify for match play.

   With apologies to all those guys who teed it up in a U.S. Open sectional qualifier – known as “Golf’s Longest Day” – but golf’s longest day in 2018 was authored by Pano. The U.S. Girls’ Junior at Poppy Hills Golf Course on northern California’s Monterey Peninsula was plagued by fog delays the whole week.

   Pano edged 15-year-old Lucy Li, coming off an outstanding showing as a member of the winning U.S. Curtis Cup team and ranked in the top 10 in Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), 1-up, in a morning semifinal.

   Pano and fellow finalist Yealimi Noh, who would turn 17 the following week, were offered the opportunity to play half the scheduled 36-hole final that afternoon and come back and finish it the next day. Nah, let’s just play, was the response. By the time Noh, who was in the middle of a stretch of spectacular golf, finished off a 4 and 3 victory, Pano had played 51 holes.

   The Women’s Dixie Amateur is part of the unofficial Orange Blossom Tour for women’s amateur golfers each winter and Pano has taken full advantage of her proximity to the events to gain some invaluable experience against top-notch amateur competition. It was Pano’s fourth start in the Women’s Dixie Amateur, including a tie for sixth two years ago when she was a 12-year-old.

   Pano lost in the final of the Ione D. Jones / Doherty Amateur Championship to fellow Floridian Meghan Stasi, the South Jersey native who has won the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship four times. Pano won the Jones / Doherty two years ago.

   Pano opened the Women’s Dixie Amateur with a 3-under 69 in relatively benign conditions and added rounds of 1-over 73 and even-par 72 before finishing up with her 3-under 69 to finish at 5-under 283.

   Still holding out hope that Pano will still be an amateur when the Curtis Cup Match comes to Merion Golf Club’s East Course in 2022. She doesn’t turn 18 until later that summer, so we’ll see.

   Finn surged into the lead on the strength of a 5-under 67 in the second round and added a 1-over 73 in the third round. Her 2-under 70 left her a shot behind Pano at 4-under 284.

   Kenzie Wright, a junior at Alabama out of Frisco, Texas, carded a 1-under 71 in the final round to finish alone in third at even-par 288, four shots behind Finn. Wright transferred to Tuscaloosa from SMU.

   Tuan-Yu Chiang – the native of Taiwan goes by Erica for a first name on the Baylor roster – grabbed the lead after three rounds with a 4-under 68 Thursday before a final-round 77 left her alone in fourth at 2-over 290. Chiang was a junior college standout at Seminole State College before joining the powerful Baylor program.

   Kelly Whaley, the senior leader at North Carolina, headed a group of three players who finished tied for fifth at 3-over 291. Whaley has always been listed as being from Farmington, Conn., but the Women’s Dixie Amateur results list her as being from Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., which means she’s probably hanging out with her mom Suzy, who was recently elected as the first woman president of the PGA of America and is probably spending a lot of her time at PGA headquarters these days.

   Kelly Whaley grabbed the opening-round lead at Woodlands with an opening-round 68 on the East Course. She sandwiched a pair of 76s around a 1-under 71 in her final three rounds to land at 291.

Whaley will return to Chapel Hill this spring with every intention of leading the Tar Heels back to the NCAA Championship at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark. after they came up just short of reaching the Finals in last spring’s San Francisco Regional.

   Also in the group at 291 was Michigan State freshman Valery Plata, a native of Colombia who finished up with a 2-over 74.

   Plata was the qualifying medalist in a Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered qualifier for the U.S. Girls’ Junior at the Steel Club and went on to reach the quarterfinals at Poppy Hills before falling to Pano.

   Rounding out the trio at 291 was Kerttu Hiltunen, a junior standout from Finland whose week at the Woodlands was highlighted by a 3-under 69 in the third round.

   A week earlier Eagle Trace hosted the Dixie Senior Amateur Championship and Michael Hughett of Owasso, Okla. fired a final round of 4-under 68 to capture the title with a 1-under 215 total. T.J. Brudzinski of Columbus, Ohio also closed with a 4-under 68, but came up a shot behind Hughett and settled for runnerup honors at even-par 216.

   Hughett’s final round featured five birdies against a lone bogey.

   Doug Hanzel of Savannah, Ga., a quarterfinalist in last summer’s U.S. Senior Amateur Championship, was in contention all the way. A final-round 70 left him alone in third at 2-over 218, two shots behind Brudzinski. Hanzel fell to Sean Knapp, the Pittsburgh area native who was the 2017 U.S. Senior Amateur champion, in the quarterfinals of this year’s championship at Eugene Country Club.

   Scotty Scott of Hoschton, Ga. had the best round of the day in the final round with a 5-under 67 to finish fourth at 4-over 220. Ken Kinkopf of Dublin, Ohio was another two shots behind Scott in fifth at 6-over 222 after a final round of 2-over 74.

   Adam Armogast, a Pine Valley Golf Club and Seminole Golf Club looper who, I’m told, was a mini-tour legend back in the day, finished ninth at 230 after a final-round 76. Armogast earned a trip to the U.S. Senior Amateur at Eugene in a GAP-administered qualifier at Tavistock Country Club last summer and when he got there, he qualified for a berth in the match-play bracket and won a match.

   Edward Turner of Richardson, Texas was a runaway winner of the Super Senior division. A final round of 3-over 75 gave him a 4-over 220 total. Turner took control of the tournament with a 1-under 71 in the second round.

   Marc Fried, who, from what I can tell off the Internet, is a northern Ohioan, finished seven shots back in second at 11-over 227. Fried posted a 3-over 75 in the final round.