Nemacolin Country Club’s Brett Young has been traveling
among the elite in Pennsylvania amateur golf this month.
The guy who was a hockey player right through his time at
Pennsylvania’s California University, but discovered that maybe golf was his best
sport, reached the semifinals of the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s R. Jay
Sigel Match Play Championship at the Country Club of York a couple of weeks
ago.
If anybody thought that was a fluke, there was Young sitting
all alone atop the leaderboard after the opening round of the PAGA’s 107th
Amateur Championship at sweltering Lookaway Golf Club Monday with a sparkling
5-under-par 67. Like the Sigel Match Play, the Pennsylvania Amateur is
presented by Dick’s Sporting Goods.
The Pennsylvania Amateur is 54 holes of stroke play with
Round 2 scheduled for Tuesday and the final round set for Wednesday.
There was really nothing fluky about the way Young
dismantled six-time Sigel Match Play winner Nathan Smith, one of the great
match-play practitioners in the country, 5 and 4, in the quarterfinals at the
Country Club of York. Young fell, 3 and 1, to reigning District One Class AAA
champion Josh Ryan, the eventual Sigel Match Play winner, in the semifinals at
the Country Club of York.
And Young was just really solid again in grabbing a one-shot
lead over a really strong field. With any national aspirations any Pennsylvania
amateur golfer might have harbored in 2020 scuttled by the coronavirus
pandemic, the local and state association events have been the only game in
town and thus have drawn the cream of the crop among the state’s players.
Starting on the back nine at Lookaway, Young began his
opening round quietly enough, offsetting his lone bogey of the day at the 14th
hole with a birdie at the 15th hole.
But as the weather heated up, so did Young. After making a
birdie at the first hole, Young ripped off three straight birdies at the
fourth, fifth and sixth holes before finishing off a 5-under 31 tour of
Lookaway’s outward nine with a birdie at the ninth hole.
Northampton Country Club’s Zach Juhasz, a former scholastic
standout at Bethlehem Freedom who has emerged as one of the Lehigh Valley’s top
amateur players, and LuLu Country Club’s Michael Brown Jr., one of the
Philadelphia area’s top mid-amateur players, finished the opening round in a
tie for second place, each posting a 4-under 68.
Juhasz had six birdies on his scorecard to offset two
bogeys.
Brown, owner of three Golf Association of Philadelphia major
championships, was typically efficient with four birdies in a bogey-free round.
Starting on Lookaway’s front nine, the patient Brown made a birdie at the sixth
hole and then got it going late in his round with a birdie at the 13th
hole and back-to-back birdies at the 17th and 18th holes
to close out his round.
Looming in a group of three players tied for fourth place at
3-under 69 is GAP’s reigning William Hyndman III Player of the Year Jeff
Osberg, who has won six of GAP’s major crowns. I don’t believe Osberg has a
Pennsylvania Amateur title on his glittering resume and I’m quite sure he’d like
to fix that this week.
Osberg was joined at that figure by Pat Kelly, a four-time
PIAA Class AAA qualifier at Cathedral Prep who plays out of Erie’s Kahkwa Club,
and Blue Bell Country Club’s Anthony Barr, a junior on Brian Quinn’s Temple
golf team.
Two members of Greg Nye’s Penn State golf team, sophomore
Patrick Sheehan of Talamore Country Club, and Louis Osakovsky, a PAGA
individual member, were part of a nine-player logjam tied for seventh place at
2-under 70.
Sheehan, the 2018 District One Class AAA champion as a
senior at Central Bucks East, had his freshman season with the Nittany Lions
cut short by the pandemic this spring. Olsakovsky, who played his high school
golf at Upper St. Clair, was a finalist in the Sigel Match Play a year ago at
Llanerch Country Club.
Makefield Highland Golf Club’s Michael O’Brien, who lost in
BMW Philadelphia Amateur final last month at Lancaster Country Club, is also in
the group at 2-under. O’Brien, who was the top player on the Saint Joseph’s
roster during the ill-fated 2019-2020 season, will conclude his college career at
Florida Gulf Coast, taking up the NCAA on its offer of another year of
eligibility for those who lost the spring portion of last season to the
pandemic.
Two of Pennsylvania’s top junior players, the Country Club
of Harrisburg’s Garrett Engle and Jericho National Golf Club’s Calen Sanderson
are also in the group at 2-under.
Engle is home-schooled and has always bypassed the PIAA
postseason, but Oklahoma thinks enough of him that the Sooners will add him to
their high-powered program in the summer of 2021. Sanderson, a junior at Holy
Ghost Prep, finished in a tie for second in last fall’s District One Class AAA
Championship before he, too, abandoned the PIAA postseason trail to play in a
national junior event.
Huntingdon Valley Country Club’s Steve Cerbara, the 2015
PIAA Class AAA champion as a senior at Holy Ghost Prep and a senior on Ben
Feld’s Drexel golf team, also checked in with a 70.
Rounding out the large group at 2-under and very much in
striking distance with 36 holes to go were Whitemarsh Valley Country Club’s
Will Davenport, GAP’s 2019 Middle-Amateur champion and a qualifier for match
play in the 2019 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Colorado Golf Club, French
Creek Golf Club’s Matthew Smith and Lehigh Country Club’s Brian Albertazzi.
The PAGA is conducting a team competition at Lookaway and
LuLu, behind Brown, grabbed a two-shot lead over Makefield Highlands and Blue
Bell after Monday’s opening round.
Drexel junior Jeffrey Cunningham added a 1-under 71 to
Brown’s 68 to give LuLu a 5-under 139 total. Christopher Ault’s 78 was tossed
by LuLu in the three-score-two format.
O’Brien’s 70, combined with a 71 by Jack Irons, gave the
two-man Makefield Highlands team a 3-under 141 total.
Kyle Vance, the former Methacton standout who is a senior at
Kansas State, backed up Barr’s 69 with a 1-under 71 to help Blue Bell join
Makefield Highlands at 3-under.
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