The winner of the Pennsylvania Amateur Championship each of
the last two years has been a member of the Penn State golf team.
Two years ago at Moselem Springs Golf Club it was Cole
Miller, the former Northwestern Lehigh standout who went to have one of the
great seasons in the history of the Penn State program the following season.
Last year at White Manor Country Club it was J.D. Hughes of
Carlisle Country Club winning the state amateur and then helping the Nittany Lions earn an NCAA Regional berth
for the second year in a row in the season that followed.
The 105th Pennsylvania Golf Association (PAGA) Amateur
Championship, presented by LECOM, teed off Monday at Sunnehanna Country Club, an
A.W. Tillinghast classic in Johnstown that is home to the annual Sunnehanna
Amateur, one of the premier stops on the national summer circuit for amateur
golfers.
Latrobe senior Brady Pevarnik of Hannastown Golf Club holed
out his approach shot on the par-4 18th hole for an eagle that
capped a sparkling 5-under-par 65 and gave him a one-shot lead over Hughes
after Monday’s opening round. Pevarnik still has a year of high school left,
but he has committed to Penn State, so if he can hold on and win, it would keep
the state amateur title in the Penn State family.
Pevarnik, who finished tied for third in the PIAA Class AAA
Championship as a sophomore in the fall of 2016, had a steady start to his
round Monday, bracketing seven pars on the front nine with birdies at the first
and ninth holes.
Birdies at the 11th and 15th holes got
him to 4-under for the round before the lone blemish on his card, a bogey at
16, dropped him back to 3-under. But then came the explosive finish, his
hole-out for eagle giving him his 5-under total.
Pevarnik has some talented players breathing down his neck
in the 54-hole event. Round 2 tees off Tuesday.
Chief among them is Hughes, who made six birdies against a
pair of bogeys in fashioning a 4-under 66. A successful defense by Hughes at
Sunnehanna would, obviously, color the state amateur Nittany Blue for a third
straight summer as well. Penn State coach Greg Nye likes what he’s seeing at
the top of the leaderboard at the end of Round 1.
Hughes capped a solid junior season at Penn State with an 18th-place
finish in the Columbus Regional at The Ohio State University’s tough Scarlet
Course as the Nittany Lions finished a frustrating five shots short of making a
return trip to the NCAA Championship.
Alone in third place is Nemacolin Country Club’s Connor
Schmidt, who has been a fixture in Ben Feld’s Drexel lineup in his first two
seasons with the Dragons. Schmidt, a senior on the Peters Township team that
was the runnerup to Radnor in the PIAA Class AAA team competition in 2015,
carded a solid 3-under 67.
Joe Parrini, a four-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier at Central
York in a scholastic career that wrapped up last fall, headed a group of four
players tied for fourth at 2-under 68. Parrini is headed for Arizona and the
powerhouse Pac-12 Conference at the end of the summer.
Also at 2-under is Andy Butler, who was one of Jim Wilkes’
steadiest players in his final two years at Villanova. Butler wrapped his career
on the Main Line this spring. Butler, who plays out of the Pittsburgh Field
Club, was part of a powerhouse Manheim Township group earlier this decade. He
was a junior on Manheim Township’s 2012 PIAA Class AAA championship team.
One the few names on the leaderboard from the southeastern
part of the state is White Manor’s Cole Berger, a sophomore at Lafayette who is
also in the group at 2-under. Rounding out the foursome tied for fourth is
Daniel Thompson, playing out of nearby Windber Country Club.
Lurking in a group of seven players tied for eighth at
1-under 69 are two of the state’s outstanding veteran amateurs, Nathan Smith of
Pinecrest Country Club and Sean Knapp, playing as a PAGA individual member.
Smith won his sixth R. Jay Sigel Match Play Championship,
presented by LECOM, last month at Schuylkill Country Club. He has won the U.S.
Mid-Amateur Championship four times and represented the United States three
times in the Walker Cup Match, two of them wins for the Stars & Stripes,
including the 2009 edition at Merion Golf Club’s historic East Course. He won
the Sunnehanna Amateur on this golf course in 2011.
His buddy Knapp joined Smith as a USGA champion last summer
when he captured the U.S. Senior Amateur championship at the Minikahda Club in
Minneapolis, crediting his success in the match-play event to all the times
he’s butted heads with Smith, the match-play master.
The remaining five players joining Smith and Knapp at
1-under include veteran western Pennsylvania campaigners Darin Kowalski of
South Hills Country Club, Mitch Mercer of Shannopin Country Club, St. Clair
Country Club’s David Brown, winner of the 2017 PAGA Senior Amateur Match Play
Championship, and Derek Baker of Waynesboro Country Club as well as Tanner
Grzegorczyk, a recent Shaler graduate who will join the program at the
University of Findlay later this summer.
No comments:
Post a Comment