The BMW Golf Association of Philadelphia Team Matches is a
sprawling affair spread out over a number of weeks in the spring, when the
weekend weather can be notoriously, shall we say, spotty.
At the top level, four divisional winners convene for the
Playoff, each sending three-man teams to each course, to determine the overall
champion. It was supposed to be completed May 11 and well, half of it was.
This year’s divisional winners were LuLu Country Club’s
first team, which had to beat the two-time defending champion, Philadelphia
Cricket Club’s first team, just to get to the Playoff, Huntingdon Valley Country
Club’s first team, Overbrook Golf Club’s first team and, the depth of talent
being what it is at the Cricket Club, Philadelphia Cricket Club’s second team.
The teams of three competing at LuLu and the Cricket Club
completed play May 11, but the rain fell more heavily at Huntingdon Valley and
Overbrook that weekend and those courses were just unplayable. You know what
happens in spring after that. Events are scheduled, college graduations are
going on, Memorial Day weekend, well, you can’t schedule Team Matches then.
So, the teams at Huntingdon Valley and Overbrook finally got
out there Saturday and Huntingdon Valley began the day trailing a tough LuLu
team by 4.5 points.
But Huntingdon Valley’s home three, Sean Seese, Brian
Isztwan and Sean Ryan, piled up 19 points to LuLu’s 12.5, and Huntingdon
Valley’s trio at Overbrook, Andy Butler, Connor Hill and Billy Reube, managed a
17-17 deadlock with LuLu.
Huntingdon Valley ended up with 68.5 points, two points
better than LuLu’s 66.5. The Cricket Club’s second team finished third with
49.5 points and Overbrook was fourth at 31.5.
LuLu had done a lot of heavy lifting to get past the Cricket
Club’s top team during the regular season, but its loaded lineup came up just
short in its bid for a first BMW GAP Team Matches title. It was the 33rd
GAP Team Matches title for Huntingdon Valley, but its first since 2010. The
only players left from that last victory are Seese, the former La Salle High
and Saint Joseph’s standout, Ryan and Dan Pinciotti Jr., the team’s captain.
“This is unexpected,” Pinciotti told the GAP website. “LuLu
has such a stout team. We thought overcoming 4.5 points was going to be
extremely difficult. It’s a shocking result.”
Reube, a 27-year-old trader for Corbin Capital Partners,
lives and works in Manhattan, but is still a weekend warrior at Huntingdon
Valley. Reube, a product of North Penn and Drexel, didn’t know it at the time,
but his six-footer for par at Overbrook’s
18th hole – he got it up and down from a bunker -- turned out to be
the shot on which the outcome turned.
That’s because LuLu’s Glenn Smeraglio, who swept both the
GAP and Pennsylvania Golf Association (PAGA) Senior Amateur crowns two summers
ago, got every one of the nine points he could in a sweep at Overbrook that
nearly put LuLu over the top.
Huntingdon Valley and LuLu both picked up 17 points apiece
at Overbrook and the Cricket Club’s second team and home-standing Overbrook
each ended up with 10 points.
Isztwan, the former Penn Charter standout who capped a solid
freshman season at Harvard by finishing in a tie for 26th in the Ivy
League Championship at Hidden Creek Golf Club over the Easter weekend, came up
big for Huntingdon Valley on the William Flynn-designed gem that is its home
course.
Isztwan picked up 7.5 of a possible nine points to spark the
home team to the 6.5-point edge over LuLu that helped wipe out the big deficit
it faced going into Saturday. Huntingdon Valley picked up 19 points, LuLu and the Cricket Club’s second team each
finished with 12.5 points and Overbrook had 10 points.
Three weeks earlier the Huntingdon Valley trio of Pinciotti,
Conor McGrath, coming off a solid freshman season at Temple, and Drew Taylor managed
to stay within three points of LuLu at LuLu. The home team piled up 18.5
points, Huntingdon Valley was three points behind at 15.5 points, the Cricket
Club’s second team had 14.5 points and Overbrook ended up with 5.5 points.
LuLu was tough at the Cricket Club, but again the Huntingdon
Valley trio of Vince Kwon, Andrew Mason, the runnerup at last summer’s BMW
Philadelphia Amateur Championship, and Liam McGrath, like his younger brother
Conor a member of the Temple golf team, picked up enough points to keep LuLu
from building an insurmountable lead.
LuLu piled up 18.5 points at the Cricket Club, Huntingdon
Valley earned 17 points, the home-standing Cricket Club’s second team ended up
with 12.5 points and Overbrook had six points.
By the way, Kwon, who occasionally loops at the Cricket
Club, reached the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship along
with his partner and fellow Marlton, N.J. resident Troy Vannucci last week at
the Bandon Dunes Resort in Bandon, Ore. I did a pretty extensive post a couple
of days ago recapping the run of Kwon and Vannucci and how the contingent of
players with local ties fared at Bandon Dunes.
Even though Overbrook finished fourth, it was an emotional
return to the BMW GAP Team Matches Playoff for the perennial power. Overbook
lost one its most dependable players with the sudden passing of Ray Thompson
last November.
But clearly going all out to honor the memory of one of the
great players in the history of the Team Matches in Thompson, a guy who always
went on the road and, more often than not, came home with points, Overbrook
managed a 27-27 tie with a tough Llanerch Country Club side in its last match
of the regular season to get into the Playoff.
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