If it’s U.S. Open week, that means the best amateur players in the Philadelphia area will be pursuing the J. Wood Platt Trophy that goes to the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Amateur champion.
Huntingdon Valley Country Club will host the Philly Amateur for the first time since 1960. But the Montgomery County layout has certainly produced more than its share of Philly Amateur champions. The club has produced a remarkable 13 champions, including William Hyndman III, whose name is affixed to the award that goes to the GAP’s Player of the Year each year.
The 2011 Player of the Year is Huntingdon Valley member Andrew Mason, but the former Temple standout will not be in the field this week as he is teeing it up in next week’s Sunnehanna Amateur. The Sunnehanna, played in the Johnstown area, is one of the top events on the national amateur schedule each summer.
The Philly Amateur gets under way with 36 holes of qualifying Tuesday at Huntingdon Valley and Torresdale-Frankford C.C. There are two rounds of match play Wednesday and two more Thursday. The two survivors of that grueling schedule then meet Saturday in a scheduled 36-hole final.
Little Mill C.C.’s Michael Hyland returns to defend his title. His victory at Manufacturers G.&C.C. came 11 years after his first Philly Amateur victory. Stephen Hudacek III of Glenmaura National G.C. lost in the final to Hyland at Manufacturers and will be in the field this week.
There will be a strong Delco contingent as has been the case in recent years.
Merion G.C.’s Michael McDermott, who won the 2008 Philadelphia Amateur title and is a five-time winner of the William Hyndman III Player of the Year award, will tee it up.
Overbrook G.C.’s talented Kania brothers, James Jr. and Michael, also have tee times in Tuesday’s qualifying.
James Jr. lost in the 2009 Philly Amateur final to Conrad Von Borsig in a meeting of Daily Times players of the year. James Kania Jr. went on to take the Patterson Cup and earn a William Hyndman III Player of the Year award of his own that year.
Michael Kania, coming off an outstanding junior season with the Villanova golf team, lost in 2010 Philadelphia Amateur final.
Also teeing it up is the Llanerch C.C. duo of Jeff Osberg and Stephen Seiden, a Strath Haven All-Delco a few years ago. Osberg and Seiden were both U.S. Amateur qualifiers a year ago with Osberg taking the medal in qualifying at Llanerch and Rolling Green G.C. and Seiden making the trip to Erin Hills in Wisconsin and getting into the field as alternate.
Somehow managed to fail to include a 2013 U.S. Open at Merion countdown with my last blog post, but with 2012 U.S. Open week upon us, I’ve got 378 days until the 2013 Open tees off in the Ardmore section of Haverford Township.
It should be closer to 365 days, but I’ll keep checking my math. Maybe that’s why my golf scores are so high.
It was certainly an interesting weekend of golf leading into Open week with major champions crowned on the LPGA and Champions tours, the largely overlooked Curtis Cup and Dustin Johnson’s sudden return to the winner’s circle after he was missing in action with a back injury.
There were plenty of big names on the leaderboard at the LPGA Championship in suburban Rochester, N.Y. this weekend. But when the dust cleared it was the first player from mainland China on the tour, 22-year-old Shanshan Feng, who made her first LPGA Tour win a major.
Feng fired a final-round 67 while all those big names were falling out of contention around her and ended up with a two-shot victory.
You can’t help thinking that Feng’s victory might be the same watershed victory for Chinese women’s golf that a young Se Re Pak’s stunning LPGA Championship victory just down the road at the Du Pont C.C. in 1998 proved to be for South Korean golf.
The short Associated Press report on the Curtis Cup we were able to sneak into Monday’s
Daily Times noted that the 10½-9½ loss suffered by the U.S. team means that none of the four major golf Cups — Ryder, Solheim, Walker and Curtis — are in American hands.
While little attention was paid to the Curtis Cup, which was played in Nairn, Scotland, if you ever had the chance to see such an event up close — as many of us around here were able to do when the Walker Cup Match was played at Merion in 2009 — you come to understand the significance of it. The U.S. arrived in Nairn having won the last seven Curtis Cup competitions.
The U.S. didn’t send a bunch of stiffs over there, either. Many of the players whose names were found on the leaderboard at the NCAA Women’s Tournament a couple of weeks ago were on the U.S. roster.
My favorite name in women’s amateur golf, Brooke Pancake, who led Alabama to the NCAA team title, had a good weekend. Playing in the final singles match Sunday, Pancake blitzed Leona Maguire, the Irish U-18 Girls Open Stroke-Play champion, 6 and 5, but by that time Great Britain-Ireland side had already clinched the Cup.
But there is golf talent all around the world these days. Charley Hull, a 16year-old phenom, brought GBI to the brink of the Cup win with a 5 and 3 victory over Lindy Duncan, the ACC’s top player in her senior season at Duke this spring.
Of course, there was a bad omen for the U.S. side right from the start when captain Pat Cornett broke two bones in her left ankle in a golf-cart accident during the first round of matches Friday.
In a major event on the Champions Tour, Tom Lehman captured the title at the Regions Tradition for the second straight year. Lehman joined Jack Nicklaus, Gil Morgan and Fred Funk as the only players with multiple Tradition wins.
Lehman fired a 4-under 68 at Shoal Creek in rainy Birmingham, Ala. to take the title by two shots.
And you might have to add Dustin Johnson to your list of players to watch when the 2012 U.S. Open tees off Thursday at the Olympic Club in San Francisco.
Playing in only his second event since recovering from a back injury (he’s on my fantasy team, trust me, his injury was painful to me, too), Johnson had weekend rounds of 67 and 66 at TPC Southwinds to take the St. Jude Classic title.
