LuLu's goal of a BMW GAP Team Matches title is finally realized

    Had a chance to pay Jon Rusk a visit in the spring of 2018 at LuLu Country Club, the distinctive Donald Ross layout in the Glenside section of Upper Dublin Township, for an article I was doing about the club for Joe Burkhardt’s Tri-State Golfer.

   The new clubhouse, being built to replace the one that had burned to the ground in October of 2015, was nearly complete. The swimming pool was gone. As Rusk, who took over ownership of LuLu with several partners in 2012, explained it, LuLu was going to be about golf.

   At the time, Rusk, one of the best high school golfers ever produced by District One during his career at Council Rock, was still the head pro at LuLu. Three years later, Rusk is a reinstated amateur and the general manager at LuLu. And LuLu’s transformation to a haven dedicated to golf was complete three weekends ago when the club claimed the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s BMW GAP Team Matches Playoff for the first time in the history of a club that dates back to 1912.

   As an amateur golfer now, the 42-year-old Rusk got in on the game as he was the leadoff player on the three-man team that was given the job of protecting the home turf at LuLu. The home team piled up 23 points at home, led by a nine-point sweep by Richard Riva, a former Saint Joseph’s standout who reached the quarterfinals of the BMW Philadelphia Amateur at Lancaster Country Club, not far from his Lancaster roots. Rusk earned six points.

   Like many of golf’s rites of spring, the BMW Team Matches were a casualty of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Teams from all over the Golf Association of Philadelphia participate in the Team Matches on three Sundays each spring.

   The winners of the four groups that comprise Division AA, the top tier, get together for a Playoff. Matches are played at all four courses with three-man teams from each club taking on three players from the other three clubs in singles and partners scoring. Got that? Trust me, the guys involved are keenly aware how important each point is and the sprawling nature of the day with matches all over the place has team captains relentlessly refreshing their laptops amid reports from each site.

   LuLu came up two points short of Huntingdon Valley Country Club -- HVCC has won the thing 33 times, including two separate runs of seven straight titles from 1898 to 1904 and again from 1970 to 1976, which was the heyday of the Hyndmans and David Brookerson and a talent pipeline that seemed to never run dry -- two years ago.

   And LuLu trailed Huntingdon Valley by a couple of points May 9^th with the results all in from LuLu, Huntingdon Valley and Philadelphia Cricket Club, which has dominated the Team Matches in recent years with four titles since 2013. But the matches had started a little later at Tavistock Country Club in South Jersey and the title hung in the balance.

   In addition to the 23 points LuLu’s home team had compiled, LuLu had more than held its own with 17 points at the Cricket Club and 16 at Huntingdon Valley.

   When Michael R. Brown Jr., who captured the Pennsylvania Amateur Championship last summer at Lookaway Golf Club under the LuLu banner, swept 8.5 of a possible nine points at Tavistock, LuLu was on its way. LuLu picked up 18 points at Tavistock to finish with 71 points. Huntingdon Valley was a close second with 66.5 points, the Cricket Club was in third place with 54.5 points and Tavistock finished fourth with 24 points.

   “In total, we had a lot of guys grind out a lot of points,” LuLu captain James Sullivan Jr., who earned six points as part of the LuLu contingent at Huntingdon Valley, told the GAP website. “Dan Charen getting seven points in the two slot at Cricket is phenomenal.

   “Mike Brown is our horse and he got 8.5 in the one slot at Tavistock. Tavistock started a couple of hours later and that made (Brown’s match the) focus. And for Brownie to come in with 8.5 points right away, he’s my personal hero. It was a great day for us and a great day for LuLu as a club.”

And Rusk’s dream of a LuLu where the golf matters most of all, well that seems to be alive and well.