Kept running into Von Borsig at Stonewall in 2019 and other highlights from the year gone by

   Looking back at another year of golf blogging and some more looping at Stonewall …

   What I was really looking forward to in 2019 was the return of the BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship, the marquee event on the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s calendar each year, to Stonewall for the first time since 2009.

   Regular readers of T Mac Tees Off are aware that I had revived a caddying career that I thought was over following the second round of the 1981 U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club’s historic East Course at Stonewall, Tom Doak’s twin gems in the northwest corner of  Chester County, since the newspaper business quit me early in 2016.

   The spring weather was kinder than it had been in recent years and Stonewall superintendent Dan Dale had the Old Course and the North Course, 10 years the Old’s junior and nearly as demanding, in fairly pristine condition for the 119^th battle for the J. Wood Platt Trophy.

   I had really been able to focus on the golf scene in my last eight years or so at my final stop of a 38-year journalism career at the Delaware County Daily Times, where the T Mac Tees Off blog had its humble origins, designed to act as a supplement to the golf stuff that I could jam into an increasingly tiny news hole.

   Oddly enough, the first time I laid eyes on the Old Course at Stonewall was when I took a ride up Route 401 to check out a golf course I had heard a lot about and because two guys whose high school careers I had chronicled in the Daily Times, Conrad Von Borsig, a District One champion at Strath Haven, and James Kania Jr., a winner of the Bert Linton Inter-Ac League Championship at The Haverford School, were going at it in that 2009 Philadelphia Amateur final.

   Funny how life completes little circles that way. Von Borsig, coming off his junior season at Virginia, built up a big early lead and claimed a 6 and 4 victory over Kania, who was playing collegiately at Kentucky.

   So there I was 10 years later, this time proudly wearing a Stonewall bib and looking forward to carrying a bag in a Philly Am qualifier for the first time in 39 years when my Merion regular, Bill Ginn Jr., had me along on a rainy day at Whitemarsh Valley Country Club and Sunnybrook Golf Club in 1980.

   The Philly Am qualifiers were well attended last spring because Stonewall, in a little more than 25 years, has gained that reputation that the good courses have, the kind of courses that players, particularly good players, want to play, want to see how their games stand up to the challenge they know they will face.

   I gave Noah Schwartz, a former Penn Charter standout who had just completed his freshman season at Cornell, a guided tour of the North Course in the week leading up to the Philly Am. Schwartz had a little more accomplished adviser in his morning round at the Old Course that day in R.J. Wren, a former Twin Valley standout and an occasional Stonewall looper who was coming off a solid junior season at Delaware.

   R.J. was already spoken for for the tournament proper, so when Schwartz asked if I wanted to go with him, I gladly accepted.

   Schwartz, a Cherry Hill, N.J. resident who was playing out of Galloway National Golf Club, struggled in the opening round of qualifying on the North Course, some unforced errors leading to three double bogeys and an 81.

   It had been a weird weather day at the start, heavy overnight rains giving way to bright sunshine that was ushered in by roaring northwest winds just as we headed to the first tee.

   But to his everlasting credit, Schwartz put that round behind him in the afternoon. His 30-footer for birdie at the tough par-4 10^th hole, our first hole of the afternoon on the Old Course, found nothing but the bottom of the cup (“double breaker, net straight,” I believe was the read).

   Schwartz was on his way to a 2-over 72 that was about the highest score he could have recorded. Schwartz made it a point to stay aggressive and just kept hitting quality golf shot after quality golf shot.

   Schwartz’s 13-over 153 total missed the playoff for the final two spots in match play by three shots. It is so tough to make the top 32 that compete in match play at a Philly Am. There just isn’t a big margin for error.

   I left my Stonewall bib at home and brought my clipboard for the next two days and wandered around looking for matches that appealed to me. The Philly Am field of 32 is quickly whittled down to the two finalists in those two days.

  I caught up to one of the early afternoon matches, a second-round meeting between Talamore Country Club’s Patrick Sheehan, who I had seen a lot on the postseason high school trail the previous two falls, and Jack Wall, the younger brother of defending Philly Am champ Jeremy Wall, both playing out of Manasquan Valley Golf Club at the Jersey Shore.

   Sheehan, who will join Greg Nye’s Penn State program later this summer, had won the District One Class AAA championship as a senior at Central Bucks East in the fall of 2018. Jack Wall, who moved into the starting lineup as a freshman at South Carolina this fall and stayed there, and his Christian Brothers Academy teammate Brendan Hansen had advanced to match play in the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at the Bandon Dunes Resort in Oregon a few weeks before the Philly Am.

   Jack Wall claimed a 4 and 2 victory, but it was really a lot of fun to watch a couple of guys who had just walked in their high school graduations playing some really high-level golf.

   And after that, well, I just couldn’t resist checking in on the kid I had covered in high school, the kid I had watched win a Philly Am title 10 years earlier at Stonewall. And Conrad Von Borsig, no longer a kid at 32, was as fun to watch play the game as ever.

   I ran over to the back nine just in time to see Von Borsig pull off a masterful up-and-down for par from the left of the 13^th green, the diabolical 13^th green at the Old Course, that took the wind out of the comeback bid by Sakima Country Club’s Zachary Falone, who had ripped a brilliant approach from 230 yards away to seven feet only to miss his birdie try and settle for a frustrating half. Von Borsig finished off a 4 and 3 victory two holes later.

   I thought Von Borsig’s comments afterwards were as good a summarization of the challenges of the Old Course as I’ve heard.

   “I’m not comfortable here,” Von Borsig said. “I hit it in the fescue non-stop. But I think it’s because this golf course is really complicated. You have to have some experience. It’s the kind of course where you really have to think your way around the golf course.

   “You get yourself in situations where you have to make a decision and the outcome of the match can depend on what you decided in that moment.”

   I caught the end of Von Borsig’s tense 1-up quarterfinal victory over Saucon Valley Country Club’s talented mid-am Matt Mattare the following morning via GAP’s live stream on Twitter.

   That earned him a semifinal showdown with Jeremy Wall, the defending champion who had been able to detour around a Pennsylvania Turnpike shutdown to rally for a 3 and 2 victory over the pride of Penn State Berks, Andrew Cornish, playing out of the RiverCrest Golf Club & Preserve.

   Younger brother Jack Wall had not been so lucky. He had left Brielle, N.J. earlier for his quarterfinal match against Jeff Osberg, the 2014 Philadelphia Amateur champion who had claimed medalist honors in qualifying at Stonewall with a pair of matching 1-under 69s. Jack Wall was hopelessly caught in the closure caused by an overturned dump truck and was forced to forfeit his match to Osberg.

   I got to watch all of the Jeremy Wall-Von Borsig match and Jeremy Wall’s 1-up victory was just a short-game clinic. As Von Borsig said afterwards, “it was like I was playing against myself.”

   Von Borsig was 2-down with two holes to play when he drilled in a 40-footer straight downhill for birdie at the 17^th hole to send  the match to the home hole. Jeremy Wall had to make a testy five-footer for par at the Old Course’s scenic 18^th hole to hold on for the victory.

   Von Borsig has joined what has become the most powerful collection of talent in GAP at Philadelphia Cricket Club. His caddy, following a first-round exit after also qualifying for match play, was Marty McGuckin, the 2015 Bert Linton Inter-Ac champion as a senior at Malvern Prep and another recent addition to the Cricket Club roster.

   There were, as you might expect, some Cricket Club guys following the match and between all the good golf and all the Conrad stories, and there are a ton of those, it was just a fun day.

   I was looping and didn’t catch a lot of the final, but Jeremy Wall’s short-game mastery earned him a 3 and 2 victory over Osberg and made him the first repeat winner of the Philly Am since Overbrook Golf Club legend Chris Lange did it 25 years earlier.

   As I mentioned at the time, Jeremy Wall’s game is quite similar to that of Lange in his heyday.

    Osberg, who played his high school golf at Owen J. Roberts (Stonewall lies within the Owen J. borders) and was a member of Guilford College’s 2005 Division III national championship team, took the loss in stride, knowing full well that there is no shame in falling in a Philly Am final. You had to play great golf to get there, it’s just that somebody played better than you that day.

   Osberg rebounded by claiming his second Philadelphia Open crown at Huntingdon Valley Country Club, which had been his home course before he made Pine Valley Golf Club his new base. Then he won the last of GAP’s major championships, a rain-shortened Patterson Cup at Applebrook Golf Club.

   They were the fifth and sixth GAP major championships added to Osberg’s resume and he nailed down a fourth Silver Cross Award with his Patterson Cup victory as well. By the time GAP held its Champions Dinner in October, Osberg’s name was added to the William Hyndman III Player of the Year trophy for the third time.

   The Philly Am, however, was not the last time I would run into Von Borsig at Stonewall in 2019.

   One of my favorite events at Stonewall is the Fall Scramble, an open tournament that brings together really good two-man teams. I have been fortunate to draw some good pairs and that was again the case when I was assigned to the Philadelphia Country Club duo of Trip McCulloch and Peter Sharkey Jr.

   McCulloch wasn’t a total stranger to Stonewall as his father was one of the original members, so he had played it as a younger man, but not so much in recent years. He also possessed a silky putting stroke, which was a big reason why the McCulloch-Sharkey pairing finished the first day at the Old Course atop the leaderboard with a sparkling 6-under 64.

   With Sharkey putting first in the scramble format, McCulloch usually had a pretty good idea of the line and he was deadly, although Sharkey might have made the toughest birdie putt of the day when he rolled in a tough, left-to-right breaker to a front left pin location on the aforementioned diabolical 13^th green.

   For Round 2 on the North Course, we were paired with our closest pursuer. Guess who? None other than Von Borsig and yet another talented Cricket Club guy, Brendan Mahoney.

   Von Borsig put on a show that he capped by making an impossible seven-footer for birdie on the second hole – the next-to-last of our round – on a line that only he could see as his ball took the side door into the cup. Von Borsig and Mahoney shot a 61. Pretty sure my guys ended up with a respectable top-five finish. But the weather was spectacular and boy, was it a fun two days.

    Pretty sure the runnerup team included Will Davenport, the winner of GAP’s Middle-Amateur Championship at Rolling Green Golf Club last spring who earned a spot in match play in the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Colorado Golf Club. After getting ousted from match play,  Davenport grabbed the bag of Aussie Lukas Michel and helped the 25-year-old capture the title.

   I dedicated my 2018 year-in-review post this time a year ago to some of the spectacular junior players who had made such a big splash in the Philadelphia area. And that encouraging trend continued in 2019.

   A week after the Philly Am, two of the players who had qualified for the match-play bracket at Stonewall, Sheehan and Austin Barbin of the golfing Barbin family of Elkton, Md. hooked up with GAP’s Junior Boys’ Championship on the line at Coatesville Country Club.

   Coatesville is way too close to my home base for me to pass up catching some of this match. Barbin had surged into match play at Stonewall with a brilliant 5-under 65 in his afternoon round at the North Course. It would mark the beginning of a sizzling stretch of golf for the talented kid who worked his way into the Maryland lineup as a freshman this fall.

   Sheehan was the qualifying medalist at Coatesville and he and Barbin were on a collision course. Barbin broke open a close match by going 6-under in a stretch from the eighth to the 13^th holes on his way to a 5 and 4 victory. They both just crush it off the tee.

   Barbin would go on to add another of GAP’s major junior championships, the Christman Cup at The 1912 Club, qualified for trips to both the U.S. Junior Amateur at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio and the U.S. Amateur at the Pinehurst Resort & Country Club – coming up just short of match-play berths in both USGA championships – finished in a tie for ninth in the Boys Junior PGA Championship at the Keney Park Golf Course in Windsor, Conn. and wrapped up his junior career with a stunning 11-shot victory in a debut American Junior Golf Association event,  the Imperial Headwear Junior Classic at DuPont Country Club.

   Barbin was GAP’s Junior Player of the Year. But with Barbin out of town for the U.S. Junior Amateur, Sheehan grabbed a victory in GAP’s Jock Mackenzie Memorial at Sandy Run Country Club and earned the Harry Hammond Award, which goes to the GAP Junior stroke-play champion.

   I was hoping that both Sydney Yermish and Elizabeth Beek, two of the rising junior stars of the last couple of summers, would show up on the high school postseason scene in the fall and I got my wish.

   Yermish, a freshman at Lower Merion, opened the District One Class AAA Championship with a sizzling 6-under 65 at Raven’s Claw Golf Club, home of the Symetra Tour’s Valley Forge Invitational, and added a 1-under 71 the next day at Turtle Creek Golf Club in a runaway victory.

   Beek, a freshman at Wissahickon, finished third at districts, but turned the tables on Yermish the following week by capturing the title with a scorching 6-under 66 in the Class AAA East Regional at Golden Oaks Golf Club. Yermish matched par with a 72, but settled for runnerup honors.

   I spent Day 2 of the PIAA Championship at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort following the two talented freshmen along with another freshman, Unionville’s Mary Dunigan, and West Chester East sophomore Victoria Kim as they battled it out for a state championship.

   As I suspected, Mary Dunigan’s father is John Dunigan, a Golf Digest top instructor in America a couple of years ago. He was out watching his daughter, of course, but he is also the swing coach for Beek and Kim, so he had plenty of rooting interests.

   Yermish, a student of Mark Sheftic, the head of instruction at Merion Golf Club, stiffed her approach at the par-4 ninth hole, the group’s final hole of the round, for a birdie that got her into a playoff with Beek and Kim, the trio all landing on 2-over 146.

   It looked for a second that Yermish might take the title on the first playoff hole, but her eagle try at the 18^th hole just slid by. She was knocked out with a three-putt on the second hole of the playoff and Beek finally nailed down the title when Kim found the water, again at the 18^th hole, twice on the third hole of the playoff.

   The Beek-Yermish rivalry should be fascinating to watch over the next few years and they are just the tip of a talented group of youngsters on the girls side in District One.

   It was a solid year for District One on the boys side, too, as Norristown junior Josh Ryan was an impressive winner of the Class AAA district crown at Turtle Creek and Conestoga junior Morgan Lofland earned the East regional title a week later at Golden Oaks with a sparkling 5-under 67. Ryan would reach the PIAA Championship for third time in his high school career and Lofland punched his ticket to Heritage Hills for the second time in three years.

   Nobody was going to deny probably Pennsylvania’s most talented scholastic golfer, Central York’s Carson Bacha, who closed out his high school career with a victory in the PIAA Class AAA Championship at Heritage Hills. You can look for Bacha teeing it up at Auburn at the end of next summer.

   I made it out to the Central League Championship at Turtle Creek, both days of districts at Raven’s Claw and the Turtle, the second day of individual competition in the state championship at Heritage Hills and the Bert Linton Inter-Ac League Championship at Gulph Mills Golf Club in a busy October.

   I don’t get to live blog much, but I like to make it count. If you want to relive any of those days, just click the October tab for 2019 and my posts are there for the reading. I like to think of this blog as sort of a journal of a golf geek and there’s nothing like the high school postseason to get a look at the stars of the future.

   Back at Stonewall, I finally managed to grab a loop in The Bull, Stonewall’s annual member-guest in the fall, for the first time. Teams play five nine-hole matches, three at the North Course on a Friday and two more at the Old Course the following day with rolling point totals determining flight winners followed by a playoff to determine the overall winner.

   I drew Joe Noll and his guest Phil Romano, a resident of the Hershey area who officiates in USGA matches. Pretty interesting guy for a golf geek like me to chat up.

   No, we didn’t get out of our flight. But in a year when I saw a lot of golf shots, the best one I saw was struck by Noll. He had 139 yards into the par-4 second hole in our first match of Day 2 at the Old Course. The shot took one hop toward the tough back-right pin position and went right in the hole. The foursome ahead of us on the third tee had the best view and their reaction made it clear that Noll had holed out for eagle.

   I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the sudden passing of my favorite colleague in the Stonewall caddyshack.

   Darryl Grumling and I went way back to the days when he was a fledgling sports writer at the Reading Eagle and I was the sports editor at The Mercury in Pottstown, our paths first crossing while covering a spectacular decade of American Legion baseball by those Boyertown Bears in the 1980s.

   It’s funny how you have those people who come into and out of your life at different times and, after not hearing from Darryl in a while, he reached out to me in 2017 and wondered if they needed any caddies at Stonewall. So there we were, a couple of former scribes looping at the ’Wall, trying to figure out those tricky greens at both courses and some complicated caddyshack politics and generally enjoying it, although there are easier ways to make a buck.

   We had both become pretty close followers of the horse racing scene and it will never be lost on me that the last time I saw Darryl was on Derby Day. We had spent a couple of slow days that week discussing handicapping strategies for the big day.

   And then he was gone. It can be a tough crowd, that caddyshack group. But Darryl, trust me when I tell you, you are missed.

   Hopefully, I’ve found a little niche with this blog, covering the kids, the Philly Section PGA pros, checking out the USGA qualifiers and then trying to follow up on how the survivors of those local qualifiers do (like Brynn Walker finally making match play at the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 2019 at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, Miss. and then winning a match), and my favorite guilty pleasure, the college golf scene.

   And the plan is to keep those blog posts – and hopefully a loop at Stonewall  here and there -- coming in 2020.

Kwon earns a share of second place in Dixie Men's Amateur at Eagle Trace

   Vince Kwon and Troy Vannucci authored one of the highlights of 2019 on the Golf Association of Philadelphia scene, even though they were a couple of thousand miles away at the Bandon Dunes Resort in Oregon.

   The U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship was staged at Bandon Dunes’ Old Macdonald Course, an event that started over the Memorial Day weekend. And Kwon, who plays out of Huntingdon Valley Country Club, and Vannucci, part of the deep stable of talent at Little Mill Country Club, made it all the way to the semifinals before falling to eventual champions Scott Harvey, winner of the 2014 U.S. Mid-Amateur at Saucon Valley Country Club, and his partner Todd Mitchell.

   In reaching the semifinals, the Marlton, N.J. golfing buddies were exempt from qualifying for the 2020 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball. And they won’t have nearly as far to travel to get to next year’s edition of the USGA’s youngest and quite popular championship since it will be held at Philadelphia Cricket Club, where, reportedly, Kwon has caught a couple of loops over the years.

   In an attempt to keep their competitive juices set on high, Kwon and Vannucci headed to South Florida this week for the Men’s Dixie Amateur, held at Eagle Trace Golf Club, once one of the more challenging stops on the PGA Tour when it played host to the Honda Classic in Coral Springs, Fla.

   And if you thought Kwon’s solid play throughout 2019 was some kind of fluke, when the 72-hole event was over Friday, there he was with a share of second place at 6-over-par 294.

   Kwon never really threatened the champion, Middle Tennessee State redshirt freshman Michael Barnard of Gallatin, Tenn., whose 1-over 289 total was really impressive as the same harsh wind that ushered in some stinging cold to the Philadelphia area made it all the way to South Florida and made a tough Eagle Trace layout play even tougher.

   Kwon, a product of Cherry Hill East High, birdied three of the last four holes, 15, 16 and 18, around a bogey at the 17^th hole in Friday’s final round to match par with a 72 as he shared second place at 294 with Canadian Bennett Ruby.

   Kwon and Vannucci were both in the hunt at the halfway point as both stood at 2-over 146. Kwon opened with a 2-over 74 before matching par in Wednesday’s second round with a 72. After opening with a 76, Vannucci turned in a sparkling 2-under 70 in the second round.

   While Vannucci struggled to an 80 in Thursday’s third round after rain and wind was replaced by chilly temperatures and a lot of wind, Kwon held it together with a 4-over 76 that left him five shots behind Ruby, who held the 54-hole lead at 1-over 217.

   Vannucci finished up with a 4-over 76 Friday to land among the group tied for 15^th place at 14-over 302.

   After opening with a 3-over 75, Barnard was solid the rest of the week. He carded a 1-under 71 in the second round and matched par in the third round with a 72. Barnard trailed Ruby by a shot heading into Friday’s final round.

   Barnard had a bogey early, at the third hole, and a bogey late, at the 16^th hole, but in between he had birdies at the eighth, 10^th and 12^th holes on his way to another 1-under 71 that enabled him to cruise to a five-shot victory over Kwon and Ruby, who closed with a 5-over  77.

   Noah Connor of Reidsville, N.C. closed fast with a 1-under 71 to finish alone in fourth place at 8-over 296, two shots behind Kwon and Ruby.

   Canadians seemed to have found Eagle Trace to their liking as two more entries from north of the border, Zack Mason and Phil Arci, a top Canadian mid-amateur, shared fifth place at 9-over 297.

   Mason owned the lead at the halfway point at 1-under 143 after adding a second-round 73 to his opening round of 2-under 70 and still only trailed his countryman Ruby by a shot after posting a 75 in the third round. But Mason struggled a little with a final-round 79. Arci finished strong, closing with a solid 1-over 73.

   The Women’s Dixie Amateur was contested concurrently this week at the Woodlands Country Club’s East Course in Tamarac, Fla. and 16-year-old Katherine Schuster, a high school hotshot in North Carolina from Kill Devil Hills on the Outer Banks, captured the title when Auburn junior Mychael O’Berry of Hoover, Ala. couldn’t hang around for a playoff.

   O’Berry had a flight to catch Friday and petitioned tournament officials to send her out early. Playing in the first group off, O’Berry, who helped the Tigers advance out of the Auburn Regional they hosted to the NCAA Championship last spring, put up a sparkling three-birdie, no-bogey 3-under 69 that left her at 8-under 280. The bar was set and it was set pretty darn high.

   But Schuster, winner of the Girls’ Junior North & South Championship at the Pinehurst Country Club & Resort’s No. 6 Course last summer, was able to match O’Berry with a 3-under 69 of her own, albeit a little more adventurous than O’Berry’s loop at Woodlands’ East Course, to also finish at 8-under 280.

   Schuster offset two bogeys on the outgoing nine with a pair of birdies. She twice went back-to-back on the back nine, making birdies at the 11^th and 12^th holes and the 15^th and 16^th holes around a bogey at the 13^th hole to get it to 8-under.

   Schuster was the winner of the Girls 14-15 division in the 2018 Drive, Chip & Putt National Finals at Augusta National Golf Club the Sunday of Masters week and this fall earned her third straight high school state championship in North Carolina. I’m sure the First Flight High junior is high on several college recruiting lists.

   She had jumped out to a big lead at the halfway point at Woodlands East, adding a sparkling 5-under 67 to her opening-round 71 that left her at 6-under 138 through 36 holes.

   But while Schuster fell back a little with a 1-over 73 in tough conditions in Thursday’s third round, O’Berry, with a 4-under 68, and Canada’s Emily Zhu, with a scintillating 6-under 66 that featured six birdies in a seven-hole stretch, caught Schuster, each landing on 5-under 211 after three rounds.

   Zhu, winner of the Canadian Junior Girls Championship last summer, posted a final round of 1-over 73 to finish alone in third place, four shots behind the top two at 4-under 284.

   Jieming Yang, a talented junior player from China who is based in Orlando, Fla., closed strong with a 4-under 69 to finish a shot behind Zhu in fourth place at 3-under 285.

   Casey Weidenfeld of Pembroke Pines, Fla. shared fifth place with Paris Hilinski of La Quinta, Calif. at 2-under 286.

   Weidenfeld teamed with Jillian Bourdage, a U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship finalist at SentryWorld in the summer, to reach the final of the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Timuquana Country Club in Jacksonville, Fla. last spring. Weidenfeld closed fast at Woodlands East with a 3-under 69.

   Hilinski teed it up in last spring’s U.S. Women’s Open at the Country Club of Charleston at age 15 and earned a spot in the match-play bracket in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, Miss. in the summer. The California Kid finished up with a 2-under 70 to get her share of fifth place with Weidenfeld.

   Speaking of teen phenoms, the defending champion in the Women’s Dixie Amateur, 15-year-old Alexa Pano of Lake Worth, Fla. and No. 26 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking, made a run at a repeat with a 4-under 68 in the third round, but closed with a 75 to finish alone in seventh place at 1-under 287.

   It was a busy week for Pano, who was one of 12 players invited to participate in a practice session for candidates for the team that will represent the United States in the Curtis Cup Match against Great Britain & Ireland June 12 to 14 at Conwy Golf Club in Caernarvonshire, Wales.

   U.S. captain Sarah Ingram, a three-time U.S. Mid-Amateur champion, got a look at some potential members of her side at Loblolly in Hobe Sound, Fla. The practice session was scheduled for Sunday through Tuesday, but Pano might have been given an excused absence to go defend her title in the Women’s Dixie Amateur, which, like the Men’s Dixie Amateur, teed off Tuesday.

   The Dixie Women’s Amateur is the opener of the Orange Blossom Tour, an unofficial series of women’s amateur tournaments in South Florida that will continue after the holidays. Pano has built quite a competitive base at a young age by competing in many of the Orange Blossom Tour events in the last four winters.

   While Pano, the 2018 runnerup to Yealimi Noh in the 2018 U.S. Girls’ Junior at foggy Poppy Hills, was the youngest invitee to the Loblolly practice session, the oldest was 2015 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur champion Lauren Greenlief of Ashburn, Va.

   The 29-year-old Greenlief also teed it up at Woodlands’ East Course – looks like she was paired with Pano for the first two rounds – and had a solid showing, finishing among the group tied for 23^rd place at 5-over 293. Greenlief, who reached the semifinals in last summer’s U.S. Women’s Mid-Am at Forest Highlands Golf Club’s Meadow Course in Flagstaff, Ariz., rattled off three straight rounds of even-par 72 before struggling a little in Friday’s final round with a 5-over 77.

   Reigning Pennsylvania Women’s Amateur champion Jackie Rogowicz finished among the group tied for 31^st place at 8-over 296. A scholastic standout at Pennsbury, Rogowicz completed an outstanding four-year career at Penn State last spring.

   Rogowicz struggled in the opening round at Woodlands East with a 77, but flashed her considerable talent with a sparkling 3-under 69 in the second round. She finished up with back-to-back 3-over 75s.

   Allison Cooper, who played college golf at Penn State Harrisburg after an outstanding scholastic career at Central Dauphin, failed to make the cut that fell after 54 holes. Cooper posted a solid 1-over 73 in the second round, but sandwiched that effort with a pair of 81s.

   The Dixie Amateur’s Senior, Mid-Master and Super Senior divisions were contested last week at Eagle Trace with Jeffrey Scott Ray of Central City, Ky. holding off decorated senior Gene Elliott of West Des Moines, Iowa to capture the Senior division by a shot.

   Ray hasn’t done a whole lot on the national stage, but after winning two of the last three Kentucky Senior Amateur crowns he’s planning to branch out with more of a national schedule in 2020.

After opening with an even-par 72 and adding a 2-under 70, Ray shared the top spot heading into the final round at 2-under 142 with Joe Shaktman of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

   Elliott, who has had an outstanding 2019 campaign, was six shots behind the co-leaders heading into the final round and promptly birdied the first four holes to surge into contention.

   Elliott won his second Canadian Senior Amateur crown last summer at Cedar Brae Golf Club after falling in a playoff to fellow American Craig Davis in The Seniors Amateur Championship at North Berwick Golf Club. Elliott also won the senior division in the Crump Cup at Pine Valley Golf Club.

   With Shaktman starting to struggle, Elliott grabbed a one-shot lead over Ray after making a birdie at the 10^th hole that got him to 5-under for the round. Ray, however, responded with birdies at the 11^th and 13^th holes to retake the lead and held on for the title.

   Ray closed with a 1-over 73 for a 1-under 215 total. Elliott finished up with a sparkling 4-under 68 to end up a shot behind Ray at even-par 216. Shaktman signed for a final-round 77, but still finished third at 3-over 219.

   Jeff Slagle of Southlake, Texas was another six shots behind Shaktman in fourth place at 9-over 225. Slagle fired a solid 2-under 70 in the second round before falling back with a final-round 79. It was another five shots back to Michael Hughett of Owassa, Okla., who landed at 14-over 230 in defense of the Dixie Amateur senior crown he won a year ago. Hughett finished up with a 78.

   It was the debut of the Mid-Master division for players ages 40 to 54 and the title went to Chad Branton of Cartersville, Ga., whose 2-under 214 total was 10 shots clear of the rest of the field.

   At age 50, Branton was one just three 50-somethings to earn a spot in the match-play bracket in the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Colorado Golf Club last summer, although he fell in the opening round.

   After posting back-to-back 2-under 70s in the first two rounds, Branton closed with a 2-over 74 for his 214 total.

   Joseph Crannell of Carmel, Ind. matched par in the final round with a 72 to earn runnerup honors at 8-over 224. Glenn Przbylski of Frankfort, Ill. was two shots behind Crannell in third place at 10-over 226 after a final-round 78. Przbylski had opened with an even-par 72.

   Jason Coolik of Atlanta and Mike Heffner of Powder Springs, Ga. shared fourth place, each finishing up a shot behind Przbylski at 11-over 227. Coolik closed with a 4-over 76 and Heffner finished up with a 77.

   Edward Turner of Richardson, Texas sandwiched a 1-under 71 with a pair of 3-over 75s to capture top honors in the Super Senior division with a 5-over 221 total. Turner outdueled Fred Stern of Boca Raton, Fla. by a shot as Stern posted a final round of 4-over 76 to finish up at 6-over 222. Stern opened with an even-par 72 and added a 2-over 74 to share the 36-hole lead with Turner at 2-over 146.

   It was another nine shots back to Doug Hopton-Jones of Mansfield, Texas and Lawrence Culler of Pompano Beach, Fla., who finished in a tie for third place at 15-over 231. Hopton-Jones carded a final-round 77 while Culler closed with a 76.

   Garland Yates of Asheboro, N.C. was three shots behind Hopton-Jones and Culler in fifth place at 18-over 234 after a final-round 82.