Chip Lutz of LedgeRock Golf Club and Reading might be 66-years old, but are you really surprised anymore when the guy shows up at the U.S. Senior Amateur, nearly shoots his age with an opening-round 68 and finishes second in qualifying for match play? Really?
Well, you shouldn’t be surprised. Lutz may not be the best senior amateur player on the planet, which he was for the better part of a decade after turning 55 in 2010, but apparently he’s still more than capable of making some noise in the U.S. Senior Amateur.
Lutz kept knocking on the door in the U.S. Senior Amateur before finally winning the title in 2015 at Hidden Creek Golf Club in Egg Harbor Township, N.J. By then he had already won The Senior Amateur Championship across the pond three times and the Canadian Senior Amateur Championship twice.
Global Golf Post was so impressed by Lutz’s domination of the 55-and-older set that it named him the 2016 male Amateur of the Year.
Lutz had a share of the lead following the opening round of qualifying for match play Saturday at the Country Club of Detroit in Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich. after firing a sparkling 4-under-par 68.
Lutz added a 2-under 70 in Sunday’s second round to finish in second place, four shots behind medalist Tim Hogarth of Northridge, Calif. All Hogarth did was match the single-round U.S. Senior Amateur qualifying record with a sizzling 7-under 65 in Sunday’s second round for a 10-under 134 total that also matched a U.S. Senior Amateur scoring record.
Lutz, playing in his 11th U.S. Senior Amateur, ripped off seven birdies in his opening-round tour of the Country Club of Detroit layout where Arnold Palmer won the 1954 U.S. Amateur to offset three bogeys. After making a birdie at the first hole and a bogey at the second, Lutz rattled off birdies at the third, fourth, eighth and ninth holes to get it to 3-under for the round. He stumbled briefly with back-to-back bogeys at the 12th and 14th holes before closing with birdies at the last two holes.
Starting off the 10th tee in Sunday’s second round, Lutz got off to a hot start with birdies at the 10th, 11th and 14th holes. Bogeys at the sixth and eighth holes ended Lutz’s hopes of winning medalist honors, but he made a birdie at the ninth hole to get it to 6-under. The ultimate goal, making it into the match-play bracket, was accomplished with relative ease.
“I’m quite pleased with the way I played the last two days,” Lutz told the United States Golf Association website. “Really, you just need to get into match play and anything can happen. I’m a perfect example of that. I’ve been in five semifinal matches and lost four times. I was in three (semis) and lost before winning.”
It was the 11th time Lutz has teed it up in the U.S. Senior Amateur Championship and he has made it into the match-play bracket 11 times.
Playing in his second U.S. Senior Amateur, Chris Fieger of Denver, Lancaster County, made it into the match-play bracket for the second time with a strong showing at the Country Club of Detroit.
Fieger, a member of the golfing Fieger family from Delaware County, was just a shot behind Lutz and the other two co-leaders after he carded a solid 3-under 69 Saturday that featured five birdies against two bogeys. He matched par in Sunday’s second round and landed in the group tied for sixth place at 3-under 141.
Fieger emerged from the Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered qualifier earlier this month at Radnor Valley Country Club.
Two of the other players who got through at Radnor Valley, Merion Golf Club’s Joe Roeder and Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Pat Dougherty, just missed getting a spot in the match-play bracket as both landed on 5-over 149 with the cutoff to make it falling at 4-over 148.
Roeder of Marlton, N.J., one of the co-medalists in the Radnor Valley qualifier, bounced back from an opening-round 77 by matching par in Sunday’s second round with a 72. Dougherty of North Wales got himself in position to make it to match play with an opening round of 2-over 74, but a second-round 75 left him one shot short of making it.
LuLu Country Club’s Glenn Smeraglio, the other co-medalist at the Radnor Valley qualifier, never got it going at the Country Club of Detroit. Smeraglio of Newtown added an 81 to his opening-round 80 for a 161 total.
Hogarth, playing in his 37th USGA event, but a U.S. Senior rookie at age 55, had opened with a solid 3-under 69, but really went off in Sunday's second round with seven birdies, including three straight at the 14th, 15th and 16th holes, and nary a bogey.
It was the third time Hogarth has been a medalist in qualifying in a USGA event. He was a co-merdalist in the 2010 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at the Atlantic Golf Club in Bridgehampton, N.Y. and reached the final, falling to Pittsburgh's Nathan Smith, who won one of his four U.S. Mid-Am titles that year.
Another Pennsylvania senior standout, Oakmont’s Sean Knapp, winner of the 2017 U.S. Senior Amateur at the Minikahda Club in Minneapolis, got it going in Sunday’s second round at the Country Club of Detroit to the tune of a 6-under 66 that left him a tie for third place with Sherrill Britt of West End, N.C., a shot behind Lutz at 5-under 139.
Knapp nearly won the U.S. Senior Amateur back to back as he fell in the final in defense of his title in 2018 at Eugene Country Club in Eugene, Ore. At age 59, Knapp teed it up in the U.S. Amateur earlier this month at Oakmont Country Club, a couple of miles from his home and where he first got turned on to the game as a caddy.
Britt added a 4-under 68 to his opening-round 71 to join Knapp at 139.
Match play gets under way Monday with Lutz taking on Robert Nelson of Fairhope, Ala. and Fieger squaring off against Danny Arvanitis of Minnetonka, Minn.
The second and third rounds of match play are scheduled for Tuesday.
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