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Saturday, August 25, 2018

Lutz in good position to make match play after opening with a 74 at U.S. Senior Amateur


   Chip Lutz put himself in good position to earn a berth in match play at the U.S. Senior Amateur Championship after the opening round of qualifying Saturday at Eugene Country Club in Eugene, Ore.
   No big surprise there. The 63-year-old Reading native has been one of the top senior amateur players on the planet for the better part of the last decade. Global Golf Post went so far as to name him the top male amateur player in the world for 2016.
   It was something of a career achievement award for Lutz, who won The Seniors Amateur Championship for the third time in 2016 after finally nailing down a U.S. Senior Amateur title in 2015 at Hidden Creek Golf Club in Egg Harbor Township, N.J. That’s not to mention the two Canadian Men’s Senior Championship titles he also owns.
   Lutz, who plays out of LedgeRock Golf Club, carded a somewhat adventurous 2-over-par 74 over the 6,869-yard, par-72 Eugene layout Saturday and is tied for 21st place after the first round of qualifying. He’ll try to do at least as well and hopefully a little better in Sunday’s second round in order to earn one of the 64 tickets into the match-play bracket.
   I thought maybe when Lutz, the reigning eight-time Golf Association of Philadelphia Senior Player of the Year, teed it up in one of GAP’s senior major championships, the Brewer Cup, in July, he might be planning a less ambitious summer schedule.
   Turned out it was just a tuneup for Lutz’s annual trip across the pond to play some links golf. First stop was the Old Course at St. Andrews for the Senior Open Championship in late July. Guess if Lutz was eligible to tee it up at the home of golf under championship conditions, he wasn’t going to pass that up.
   I was hanging out at the caddyshack at Stonewall when first-round Senior Open Championship coverage popped up and there on the second page of the leaderboard was one Chip Lutz at 3-under, his opening round at St. Andrews a sparkling 69.
   He shot 11-over 83 in the second round, his 8-over 152 total missing the cut by six shots. That doesn’t really diminish the fact that the guy showed up at St. Andrews and threw a little 69 at the Old Course at age 63.
   From there it was on to Royal Porthcawl Golf Club in Wales for The Seniors Amateur Championship, which he won back-to-back in 2011 and 2012 before adding his third title in 2016.
   Lutz finished tied for fourth, matching par in the first two rounds with 72s and finishing up with a 3-over 75 for a 3-over 219 total. He was never really in contention for the title as Englishman Trevor Foster blitzed the Royal Porthcawl layout with an opening-round 63 and never looked back on his way to a nine-shot victory. But Lutz was only two shots out of second.
   So, as is often the case, Lutz showed up in Eugene battle-tested and ready to go. He made four birdies to offset four bogeys and a double bogey. He will be a tough out if he can make it into the match-play bracket.
   David Blichar, who was the medalist in the GAP-administered U.S. Senior Amateur qualifier at Tavistock Country Club, got off to a great start with a 1-over 73 and is in the group tied for 15th.
Blichar, one of the Lehigh Valley’s top senior players in his first year of eligibility for the U.S. Senior Amateur at age 55, had a steady round that featured two birdies and three bogeys.
   Reigning U.S. Senior Amateur champion Sean Knapp, one of western Pennsylvania’s top amateur players for years, is tied for 34th place at 3-over 75. Knapp defeated Paul Simson, a two-time U.S. Senior Amateur champion, 2 and 1, in the final a year ago at The Minikahda Club in Minneapolis.
   Knapp captured the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s Senior Amateur Championship earlier this month at the Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Militia Hill Course.
   Two other players who emerged from the Tavistock qualifier, David West of Exton and Edward Armagost, a former PGA Tour caddy who loops at Pine Valley Golf Club, are part of a large group of players tied for 62nd place at 5-over 77. They have some work to do to earn a spot in match play.
   Merion Golf Club’s George “Buddy” Marucci, the 2008 U.S. Senior Amateur champion and two-time winning U.S. Walker Cup captain, posted a 79.
   Pine Valley’s James Dunne, who also earned his ticket to Eugene at the Tavistock qualifier, struggled to an 86. Dunne is also a member at Shinnecock Hills and was featured in a story The Golf Channel broadcast in the run-up to this summer’s U.S. Open at the William Flynn classic on the eastern tip of Long Island.
   Leading the way after the opening round of qualifying is Gregory Condon of Monte Vista, Colo, who fired a 5-under 67.
   A Google search on Condon revealed a pretty neat story from the USGA archives about his run to the second round of the now defunct U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship in 2012 when he was 50.
   He doesn’t look like a golfer, but the guy can really play. After making a bogey on the second hole at Eugene Saturday, Condon made birdies at  five, seven and eight to get to 2-under at the turn and then rattled off birdies at 15, 16 and 18 in a finishing burst that left him two shots clear of the field at 5-under.




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