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Thursday, November 2, 2017

Gillespie, Dressel claim medalist honors in U.S. Amateur Four-Ball qualfier at Waynesborough



   The U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship has gained in popularity since its 2015 debut.
It started a little slowly, probably owing to the fall qualifying for a spring event in a lot of places. But the USGA knew how popular better-ball-of-partners events are on the local and state levels and just figured it was time to take it to a national stage.
   That’s what drew all sorts of two-man teams to Waynesborough Country Club and Rolling Green Golf Club Monday for a pair of local qualifiers administered by the Golf Association of Philadelphia with the goal to get a starting time for the 2018 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship, which tees off May 19 at the famed Jupiter Hills Club in Tequesta, Fla.
   The start of play was delayed at both sites as rain left over from Sunday finally stopped only to be replaced by chilly temperatures and a fierce wind and a three-for-two playoff at Waynesborough didn’t finally conclude until Tuesday morning.
   But one thing was never in doubt at Waynesborough and that was the identity of the qualifying medalists. The St. Davids Golf Club pair of Brian Gillespie and Stephen Dressel – pretty sure both starred scholastically at Conestoga, but more than a decade apart – fired a 7-under-par 64 over the 6,848-yard,  par-71 Waynesborough layout to finish two shots ahead of the pack and punch their ticket to Jupiter Hills.
   Both were coming off solid summers on the GAP circuit. The 29-year-old Dressel finished tied for second in the GAP Middle-Amateur Championship at Overbrook Golf Club and the 42-year-old Gillespie finished tied for third in the Patterson Cup at Wilmington Country Club’s South Course and finished in the top five in the Silver Cross standings, GAP’s stroke-play championship.
   It will be the first USGA event for Dressel while Gillespie will be teeing it up in his seventh USGA championship, including a spot in the inaugural U.S. Four-Ball in 2015 at The Olympic Club in San Francisco when he partnered with Little Mill Country Club’s Michael Hyland.
   Dressel and Gillespie got it going when they both birdied the fifth hole, Dressel draining a 30-footer. It was an easy birdie for Gillespie at the par-5 seventh as he was just short in two, chipped to four feet and dropped the putt. Gillespie then holed a 20-foot birdie putt at the eighth and the team made the turn at 3-under.
   Dressel did the rest. He birdied 12, 13 and 15 and then finished with a flourish, reaching the par-5 18 in two with a driver and a hybrid and two-putting for a birdie.
   “I was just trying to keep us in our lane,” Gillespie told the GAP website. “When he gets going, boy, he really gets going. It was fun to watch it happen and I was there in case he needed me.”
   After that, things got a little messy at Waynesborough as former North Carolina teammates Brandon Dalinka and Bailey Patrick and two Philadelphia Cricket Club pairs, Sean Sementz and Jack Wallace and Conrad Von Borsig and Robby Walizer all carded 5-under 66s.
   With the early delay, daylight was in short supply, but the three teams were willing to give it a go. Dalinka, who plays out of The Ridge at Back Brook, drilled a wedge to two feet on the first playoff hole, the par-4 first hole at Waynesborough, and made the putt to punch the ticket to Jupiter Hills for himself and Patrick of Charlotte, N.C.
   At the second hole, Wallace’s drive disappeared into the darkness of a Halloween eve. Sementz was able to make par and Walizer holed a par putt with the green being illuminated by car headlights. Saw that image on Twitter and that alone is a pretty good argument for following GAP on Twitter. Just sayin’.
   The two teams had to call it a day at that point. They were back at it at 8 a.m. Tuesday and both made par on eight. Everybody involved made bogey at the ninth with Sementz and Walizer three-putting.
   It finally ended on the first hole, the fifth of the playoff. Von Borsig and Walizer both came up short of the green and had testy par putts, both of which lipped out. Sementz made his three-foot par putt to send him and Wallace, who also teamed up at The Olympic Club in 2015, to Florida in May.
   It was a tough month of October for Von Borsig, whose scholastic career at Strath Haven I chronicled in a previous life at the Delco Daily Times. It looked like he was going to make match play in the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship earlier in the month when he made a triple bogey on his last hole of qualifying, the ninth at Atlanta National Golf Club, to miss a 25-for-16 playoff by a shot.
   Von Borsig and Walizer are the first alternates. Samuel Banks of Glen Allen, Va. and Marco Poccia of  Richmond, Va. are the second alternates as they carded a 4-under 67.
   Heading the list of near misses was the formidable pairing of three-time BMW Philadelphia Amateur champion Michael McDermott of Merion Golf Club and 2014 Philly Amateur champion Jeff Osberg of Huntingdon Valley Country Club, who carded a 3-under 68.
   It figured to be a good spot since Osberg is pretty familiar with a golf course where his dad Rick was the head pro for many years. McDermott and Osberg qualified for the 2016 U.S. Four-Ball at Winged Foot Golf Club, but failed to make match play. Less than a month later they waged an epic battle in a Philly Amateur final for the ages at Merion’s famed East Course with McDermott winning on the 36th hole.
   Nice to see the Overbrook Golf Club brother tandem of James and Michael Kania, both former Haverford School standouts, give it a go at Waynesborough. Team Kania posted a 1-over 72.
   Over at Rolling Green, the William Flynn gem in Springfield, Delaware County, only two tickets to Jupiter Hills were available and two teams of out-of-towners grabbed them.
   Lifelong friends from Westwood, Mass., John Lazor, a junior at Dartmouth, and Patrick Frodigh, a senior at Elon, and the scholastic team of Jack Kozlowski of Columbus, Ohio and Trey Rath of Powell, Ohio, were co-medalists and the two qualifiers as each duo posted a 4-under 66 on the 6,713-yard, par-70 Rolling Green layout, site of the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur.
   Both teams came into town Saturday, Lazor and Frodigh flying from their respective campuses and Kozlowski and Rath driving eight hours from Ohio (I’m guessing a parent or two did most of the heavy lifting driving-wise) and got in a practice round on a rainy Sunday, although it didn’t seem to bother all those Eagles fans watching their beloved Birds beat the 49ers at the Linc to improve to 7-1.
   The highlight of the round for the 21-year-old Lazor and the 22-year-old Frodigh was Frodigh blasting a 7-iron from 185 yards into the par-5 seventh hole to three feet and making the putt for eagle.
   Kozlowski, a 17-year-old junior at Saint Charles Prep, and Rath, an 18-year-old senior at Olentangy Liberty High, started their round on the 10th hole and rode a Kozlowski hot streak in the middle of the round to get a berth for Jupiter Hills. Kozlowski made three straight birdies at 17, 18 and one to spark the Ohio teens.
   The first alternate is the tandem of Gary Schoeman of Delray Beach, Fla. and Jonathan Ehrlich of Philadelphia and second alternate is the pair of Joseph Dulka of Wilmington, Del. and Scott Cahayla of West Chester. Both teams carded a 3-under 67.
   Heading the near-miss category at Rolling Green was the Aronimink Golf Club pair of Cory Siegfried and Joseph Fabrizio Jr., who carded a 2-under 68.
   There was a neat pairing of Ben Pochet, GAP’s 2017 Junior Player of the Year, and his Pioneer Athletic Conference rival J.T. Spina. They matched par with a 70. Pochet, a two-time District One Class AAA champion at Spring-Ford, and Pope John Paul II’s Spina had wrapped up their scholastic careers less than a week earlier playing in the same foursome in the final round of the PIAA Class AAA Championship at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort in York County.
   I was vaguely aware that the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship had replaced the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship on the USGA calendar when Radnor’s Brynn Walker and Council Rock North’s Madelein Herr qualified for a trip to Bandon Dunes in the middle of their junior year scholastic season in the fall of 2014.
   Next thing I knew, I’m standing in the newsroom at the Daily Times the following May watching them play in the quarterfinals of the inaugural U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball on TV. They reached the semifinals before falling. It was a remarkable run for a couple of high school kids who are now stalwarts on their college teams, Walker at North Carolina and Herr at Penn State.
   It was a great experience for them and a bit of an eye-opener for me as to the possibilities that the U.S. Four-Ball presented. That’s why all that craziness Monday and a little bit of Tuesday at Waynesborough and Rolling Green is perfectly understandable.




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