This is a few weeks old, but the accomplishment was too significant to ignore and, besides, I’m a big fan of this guy …
When Carlisle Country Club’s Jeff Frazier finally nailed down a victory in the Golf Association of Philadelphia Senior Amateur Championship Sept. 3rd at Berkshire Country Club in Reading, it completed the GAP Senior Grand Slam.
Only the late, great Ray Thompson of Overbrook Golf Club and Chip Lutz of LedgeRock Golf Club had won the GAP Senior Amateur, the Warner Cup, the Chapman Cup and the Brewer Cup.
But they’ve got company in the 60-year-old Mechanicsburg resident as Frazier grabbed the only missing piece in his GAP senior major championship resume with an 8-under-par 134 total.
I’ve had the opportunity to caddy for Frazier and his pal, Brent Will, an assistant golf coach at Mount St. Mary’s, three different times in the Fall Scramble at Stonewall when it was an open tournament.
They captured the title the first time I was with them in 2016 and contended on the two other occasions I carried for them. In both of those last two Fall Scrambles, the second round at Stonewall’s North Course featured some absolutely horrible late fall conditions for golf.
The one constant through all of those experiences was how competitive Frazier and Will were. I love people who compete and in Frazier and Will, I was looping for a couple of guys who were all-out all the time.
So yeah, seeing Frazier pile up successes on the GAP senior circuit does not surprise me a little bit.
In winning the title in the 55th GAP Senior Amateur, Frazier, the reigning GAP Senior Amateur Player of the Year, also won the Senior Silver Cross for the third straight summer. The Silver Cross Award combines a player’s scores from the Warner Cup, the Chapman Cup and the two rounds of the GAP Senior Amateur. Frazier’s combined total for those three events was 6-under 280.
The left-handed Frazier has all the shots. He can move it left to right or right to left, loves him some driver off the deck, has a deft touch around the greens and can flat-out putt his ball.
Frazier grabbed the lead with a sparkling 3-under 68 over the 6,334-yard, par-71 Berkshire layout. He made birdies at the first, 10th, 12th and 15th holes before finishing with the only blemish on his scorecard, a bogey at 18.
Chris Fieger Sr. of Heidelberg Country Club and Thomas Gramigna of Tavistock Country Club were a shot behind Frazier, each opening with a 2-under 69.
But Frazier would not be denied. He increased his lead early in the second round with birdies at the first, fourth and 10th holes and then put the title away with a birdie at the 15th, a 452-yard, par-4 that played the toughest of any hole at Berkshire.
Frazier launched a 6-iron from 180 yards away in the left rough to 18 feet on the fringe and then drained a tough right-to-left slider.
He added one more birdie at the finishing hole for a 6-under 66 that gave him a five-shot victory over Gramigna.
Frazier’s 8-under total was a tournament record, eclipsing the 5-under totals Lutz recorded in victories at Overbrook in 2023 and at the Country Club of Scranton in 2021.
In both rounds, Frazier was going head-to-head with Fieger, a resident of Dallas, Lancaster County who I first encountered when I was covering high school golf at The Mercury in Pottstown in the early 1980s. Fieger is a Delco guy and was playing for Nether Providence while I was covering Perkiomen Valley’s Rich Steinmetz, the long-time head pro at Spring Ford Country Club.
Fieger, a four-time winner of the GAP Senior Amateur, including a year ago at Rolling Green Golf Club, was coming off a solid showing in last month’s U.S. Senior Amateur Championship at Oak Hills Country Club in San Antonio, Texas.
Fieger finished in a tie for 18th place in qualifying for match play at Oak Hills with a 1-over 143 total before suffering a 2 and 1 setback at the hands of 2021 U.S. Senior Amateur champion Gene Elliott of Norwalk, Iowa in the opening round of match play.
Fieger closed with a 1-over 72 at Berkshire to finish in a tie for third place with Jack Carrigan of Hartefeld National Golf Club with a 1-under 141 total.
Frazier made a splash on a national stage when he reached the semifinals of the U.S. Senior Amateur in 2022 at The Kittansett Club alongside Buzzards Bay on the eastern Massachusetts cape.
“Chris Fieger, to me, is the standard out there,” Frazier told the GAP website. “To be able to beat him head-to-head, that is all I need. I just played a really solid round of golf. I made every five-footer I needed to and didn’t make any mistakes.”
Gramigna, the 2010 GAP Middle-Amateur champion, added a 1-under 70 in the second round to his opening-round 69 to earn runnerup honors with a 3-under 139 total that left him five shots behind Frazier.
Carrigan had opened with a 1-under 70 and matched par in the second round with a 71 to get a share of third place with Fieger at 1-under 141.
Lancaster Country Club’s Ken Phillips, one of the top senior players in GAP for years, was another four shots behind Fieger and Carrigan in fifth place with a 3-over 145 after he added a 2-over 73 in the second round to his opening-round 72.
Little Mill Country Club’s Adam Armogast – not sure if he’s still looping at Pine Valley, but he has quite a background as a caddy in Florida and at the No. 1 course in the world in the New Jersey pine barrens – was a shot behind Phillips at 4-over 146.
Armogast added a 1-over 72 in the second round to his opening-round 74.
Overbrook’s Oscar Mestre, another of the top players in GAP’s deep stable of senior talent, finished in a tie for seventh place with French Creek Golf Club’s Pete Moran and Five Ponds Golf Club’s Christopher Vinci, each ending up with a 6-over 148 total.
Mestre bounced back from an opening round of 7-over 78 with a solid 1-under 70 in the second round. Moran and Vinci had identical splits, each adding a 2-over 73 in the second round to an opening-round 75.
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