Now that Andrew Mason has resumed his amateur career, it
seems to be a good time to fill in one of the few missing items on his local
amateur resume.
After surviving a 21-hole marathon with Aronimink Golf
Club’s Michael Davis in Thursday morning’s quarterfinals, Huntingdon Valley
Country Club’s Mason claimed a 3 and 2 victory over Spring-Ford Country Club’s
Ryan Tall, a recent Conestoga High graduate, to reach the final of the BMW
Philadelphia Amateur Championship at Whitemarsh Valley Country Club.
Mason’s opponent in Saturday’s scheduled 36-hole final at
the 6,789-yard, par-72 Whitemarsh Valley layout will be Manasquan River Golf
Club’s Jeremy Wall, who recently completed his college career at Loyola of
Maryland.
Wall absolutely dismantled the reigning Philadelphia Open
and Met Amateur champion Matt Mattare of Saucon Valley Country Club in a
stunner of an 8 and 7 victory in the quarterfinals before getting past Marty
McGuckin, a former Malvern Prep standout out of RiverCrest Golf Club &
Preserve, with a 4 and 3 decision in the semifinals.
Mason, a former Temple standout, was the best amateur golfer
in Pennsylvania in 2011 and 2012. He won back-to-back Philadelphia Open and
Pennsylvania Amateur crowns in those two years and threw in a Patterson Cup victory
as well in 2011 when he was the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s William
Hyndman III Player of the Year.
Mason decided to turn pro and well, you know, it is a
measure of how difficult the professional golf thing is that a guy as good as
Mason can’t quite make it happen. The 29-year-old Mason regained his amateur
status last year and here he is, battling for a chance to add his name to the
J. Wood Platt Trophy.
“I wasn’t expecting to be here by any stretch of the
imagination,” Mason told the GAP website. “It’s been fun. There have been a few
other Huntingdon Valley members to have won it here and some other great
players to win at Whitemarsh, like Michael McDermott. It would be nice to add my name to that list.”
There is always at least one match in the wild and crazy
four-matches-in-two-days Philly Am schedule like the one Mason survived against
Davis, the 2015 Philly Am runnerup to his Inter-Ac League rival Cole Berman at
Llanerch Country Club who recently completed an outstanding career at
Princeton.
Seven springs ago I was at White Manor Country Club for the
last Bert Linton Inter-Ac League Championship held in the spring and Davis, a freshman
at Malvern Prep, birdied the last three holes to capture the title. He’s always
been a good player.
Davis was 2-down to Mason with three holes to play when he
rolled in a long birdie putt at 16 and took a conceded birdie at 17 when Mason
made a bit of a mess of the hole.
The match went to the 21st hole when neither player
drove it well. But Mason ultimately got the job done with an approach to six
feet and a par putt that won the hole. Survive and advance. It’s the name of
the game in the Philadelphia Amateur.
There is nothing worse in match play than to catch a good
player who gets on a roll. Such was the fate of Mattare, the reigning GAP
William Hyndman III Player of the Year. Wall holed out from a greenside bunker
for birdie on the second hole and went off.
He birdied the next two holes and the ninth and it was over
by 11th hole. Wall was 4-under through 11.
Mason’s surprise semifinal opponent was Tall, who won the Central
League title as a junior and finished third at Turtle Creek last fall. Tall,
who is headed for Lafayette, cruised to a 5 and 4 win over Peter Barron III of
Greate Bay Country Club in his morning quarterfinal match.
Mason took control of the match by winning seven, eight and 10
with pars to take a 3-up lead. Tall battled back by winning the par-5 11th
with a birdie, but Mason restored his 3-up lead by taking the par-3 12th
with a par.
It was really a tremendous showing for Tall and a testament
to the outstanding junior program that
head pro Rich Steinmetz has going at Spring-Ford.
There was another Bert Linton Inter-Ac League champion from Malvern
Prep in the final eight in McGuckin, who won the title as a senior in
the fall of 2015. He battled past Drexel golf coach Ben Feld, another
Huntingdon Valley guy, 2 and 1, to earn a semifinal meeting with Wall.
Wall’s younger brother Jack, the last of the four Wall
brothers to star at Christian Brothers Academy in Monmouth County, made some
noise this spring by finishing just two shots shy of a trip to the U.S. Open in
a strong showing in the sectional qualifier at Canoe Brook Country Club in
Summit, N.J. Jack Wall, who still has a year of high school left, has committed
to play college golf at South Carolina.
But it turned out that U.S. Open week belonged to big
brother Jeremy and McGuckin couldn’t quite cool him off in their semifinal
match.
Wall had a 2-up lead after they halved the seventh with
bogeys. Wall then ripped off eight straight pars, the last at the 15th to finish off
his 4 and 3 victory.
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