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Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Schmidt surges in final round to claim Pennsylvania Amateur crown at Sunnehanna


   When the 2018-2019 college golf season gets under way in a month or so, Drexel coach Ben Feld will be welcoming a Pennsylvania Amateur champion back to his lineup.
   Connor Schmidt, the former Peters Township standout playing out of Nemacolin Country Club, unleashed a birdie barrage in the final 10 holes Wednesday at Sunnehanna Country Club in Johnstown to pull away for a victory in the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s 105th Amateur Championship, presented by LECOM.
   Schmidt, a junior at Drexel, ran off six birdies in a stretch of eight holes, beginning with the par-5 ninth over the classic A.W. Tillinghast design at Sunnehanna, home to the annual Sunnehanna Amateur, one of the marquee stops on the summer amateur circuit. It enabled Schmidt to fire a 5-under-par 65 that gave him a 7-under 203 total and a two-shot victory.
   Anthony Sebastianelli, a scholastic standout at Abington Heights who just completed a solid college career at Central Connecticut, had returned to Sunnehanna Wednesday morning to complete his second round.
   He was 4-under for his round with five holes to play and he birdied two of those final five to complete the low individual round of the tournament, a sparkling 6-under 64. That drew  Sebastianelli, who plays out of Huntsville Golf Club, even with Brady Pevnarik, the Latrobe senior who had led by himself after an opening-round 65. Pevnarik and Sebastianelli teed off for the final round deadlocked at 6-under.
   For a long time, nobody made a move. There was little warning of the explosion to come for Schmidt, who birdied the first and then made bogeys at two and four to fall to 1-over for his round.
   When a 10-foot birdie putt at the par-5 ninth went around and in, Schmidt was off and running. He made it three straight with birdies at 10 and 11. Then he birdied 13 and 14.
   Still, Sebastianelli, playing two groups behind Schmidt, was hanging tough and the two were tied for the lead when Schmidt teed off at the par-5 15th with more weather threatening to interrupt the proceedings.
   With the wind coming up, Schmidt ended up in the fescue after a couple of indifferent shots. He gouged it out and then chipped it close for a par save that might have been just as important as all those birdies.
   He had one more birdie left in him, though. His 8-iron shot on the 175-yard, par-3 16th finished eight feet from the hole. He rolled in the birdie try for his seventh of the day. He had three 2s on his card with birdies on all three of the par-3s on Sunnehanna’s inward nine.
   “Most of the putts I made on the back nine were right to left,” Schmidt told the PAGA website concerning that final birdie putt at the 16th. “I was seeing the lines really well because of that and this was another one. I rolled it dead center with the perfect speed.”
   Pars at the last two holes gave Schmidt a brilliant back nine of 5-under 30 and a place alongside the greats of Pennsylvania amateur golf on the trophy.
   Sebastianelli settled for a runnerup finish as a final round of 1-over 71 left him alone in second place at 5-under 205.
   Pevarnik, playing out of Hannastown Golf Club, finally backed off in the final round after sitting at the top of the leaderboard for two days. The Penn State recruit had a 3-over 73 Wednesday to finish tied for third at 3-under 207. I’m sure Penn State head coach Greg Nye can’t wait to pencil Pevarnik’s name in the lineup, but he’ll have to wait until the kid finishes his senior year of high school.
   Joining Pevarnik at 3-under was Nathan Smith, Pennsylvania’s finest amateur since Jay Sigel was winning this championship 10 times. Smith, playing out of Pinecrest Country Club, was his routinely excellent self, posting a third straight 69.
   Rounding out the trio tied for third was Windber Country Club’s Daniel Thompson, who was right in the thick of things the whole way, matching par in the final round with a 70. I’m sure he had some local support from the J-town golf community.
   Mark Goetz couldn’t quite overtake Pevnarik for low-Hannastown honors, but he closed with a 2-under 68 to finish alone in sixth at 2-under 208. Goetz, a scholastic standout at Kiski Prep, is a sophomore at West Virginia.
   Pevnarik and Goetz did take the state team title back to Greensburg with them. The team competition was the first two rounds, so it wasn’t official until Tuesday’s second round was completed Wednesday. Pevnarik and Goetz put up a 6-under 274 to finish five shots clear of the Nemacolin pair of Schmidt and Brett Young, who finished second at 1-under 279.
   The western Pennsylvania types dominated at Sunnehanna and the southeastern Pennsylvania contingent was led by a couple of unlikely players as Carey Bina of Radnor Valley Country Club and Evan Brown, a PAGA individual member, shared seventh place, each landing on 1-under 209.
   I chronicled Bina’s scholastic career at Radnor in an earlier life at the Delco Daily Times. The Central League champion as a junior in 2011, Bina went to college at Wake Forest and Elon, but never played college golf. But he obviously has not forgotten how to play. After opening with a 73, Bina rattled off consecutive 2-under 68s.
   Brown was the Ches-Mont League champion as a senior at Kennett in the fall of 2016 and is coming off his freshman season at Loyola of Maryland. He carded a spectacular final round of 4-under 66 – only Schmidt’s 65 was better on this day – to join Bina at 209.
   Brandon Knaub, a reinstated amateur who was a high school standout at Dallastown, closed with a 2-under 68 to finish alone in ninth at even-par 210.
   Defending champion J.D. Hughes was unable to keep the Pennsylvania Amateur in Penn State hands for a third straight year. Hughes, a senior for the Nittany Lions who plays out of Carlisle Country Club, couldn’t sustain any momentum he might have had from an opening-round 66. A final-round 74  left him in a tie for 10th place at 1-over 211.
   He was joined at that figure by Oakmont Country Club’s Chuck Nettles, who had a final round 72. Nettles, like the champion Schmidt, is a Peters Township product, although a decade or so earlier.







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