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Tuesday, June 11, 2019

A few thoughts from a long day of looping in BMW Philadelphia Amateur qualifying for match play


   It is such an impressive gathering of golf talent, qualifying for match play in the BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship.
   To have spent a long, fascinating day doing my best to try to help Noah Schwartz of Galloway National Golf Club be one of the 32 who will tee it up in match play Wednesday morning at Stonewall’s Old Course and coming up a little short is to appreciate just how good a player you have to be to survive the 36-hole test.
   Tuesday dawned chilly and breezy with the last gasps of overnight rains starting to head for the coast. Suddenly, sun and bright blue skies broke through the clouds, but the change in the weather was ushered in by stiff winds out of the northwest that stuck around all day.
   There were a ton of storylines, it’s the beauty of Philly Am qualifying day, after all.
   You’ll be able to get one of the most interesting of those storylines on the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s outstanding website – and, once again, if you’re not following GAP on Twitter, you should be, for days like this especially – or from The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Joe Juliano, who was on the scene Tuesday.
   Pretty sure their focus will be on qualifying medalist Jeff Osberg, who captured the 2014 BMW Philadelphia Amateur title at White Manor Country Club. Osberg, who plays out of Pine Valley Golf Club these days, was the only player to finish under par for the day with an outstanding 1-under-par 69 at the North Course in the morning and a 1-under 69 at the Old Course in the afternoon for a 2-under 138 total.
   Let me say this about Osberg. When my bag in the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Stonewall was teeing off in the first round of qualifying for match play, Osberg was in alternate limbo, waiting for a tee time that he never got. I’m sure his frustration was exacerbated because he knows how well Tom Doak’s twin gems at Stonewall fit his game.
   If anyone doubted that, Osberg’s performance Tuesday, on a day when relentless winds made both courses play really tough, certainly made it clear. Stonewall is Osberg’s kind of place. They are muscular golf courses and Osberg has a muscular game. But both courses demand touch around the greens and he has that, too.
   It’s pretty cool, too, that a pair of brother acts, defending champion Jeremy Wall and younger brother Jack, playing out of Manasquan River Golf Club, and Team Barbin out of Elkton, Md., Zachary, a member of the Liberty golf team, and younger brother Austin, are in the match-play bracket.
   And that Vince Kwon of Huntingdon Valley Country Club and Troy Vannucci of Little Mill Country Club, coming off a rousing run to the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at the Bandon Dunes Resort, both made match play.
   But the one guy I couldn’t get away from Tuesday was the next-to-last player to make it into match play, William Mirams, who was playing out of Shawnee Country Club.
   Mirams captured the PIAA Class AA championship last fall as a senior at Notre Dame of East Stroudsburg. Last summer he came down the Northeast Extension and reached the final of GAP’s Junior Boys’ Championship before falling to Ryan Tall.
   As I scrolled through my latest edition of Global Golf Post very early Tuesday morning – hey, that 8 a.m. starting time at the North Course came early – whose name did I come upon but one William Mirams.
   Turns out he was awarded the 2019 USGA-AJGA Presidents’ Leadership Award along with Lauryn Nguyen of Seattle, Wash. last week.
   Paraphrasing the release on the American Junior Golf Association website, the award goes to one male and one female junior golfer who demonstrate leadership, character and community service through their involvement with the Leadership Links program, a joint initiative founded by the USGA and the AJGA in 2005 to further develop junior golfers through volunteerism.
   I first became aware of the award when former Radnor High standout Jackie Calamaro, the 2009 PIAA champion, received it in 2010 after she turned a dawn-to-dusk golf marathon into a First Tee fund-raiser by the sheer force of her will.
   Turns out the previous year, both the male and female winners were Philadelphia area kids, Zach Herr of the first family of Council Rock North golf, and former Mount St. Joseph standout Emily Gimpel, who can occasionally be seen hitting the ball around Stonewall these days.
   Mirams was introduced to the game by his grandmother and when she died of breast cancer, he made it his mission to not just raise awareness about the disease, but to raise money to help the family members who are left to deal with the aftermath of their loved one’s journey while battling breast cancer.
   Mirams started the Doreen Mirams Charity. He started a golf tournament to raise money for his charitable initiative. He wrote a children’s book, “Golf, Grandma and Me.” He has raised more than $100,000 in four years to benefit those affected by breast cancer.
   Oh yeah, and the kid is a pretty good golfer and I’m sure somewhere his grandmother is pretty proud of that, too. Mirams shot a 77 on the Old Course in the morning Tuesday and gutted out a 73 on the North Course in the afternoon and got into a 6-man playoff for the final two spots in match play.
   When he drained a nine-foot putt for birdie on the Old Course’s tough par-3 ninth hole, Mirams was in. Sounds like a case of good things happening to good people.
   Only in the Golf Association of Philadelphia would two of the casualties of such a playoff include a former Spring-Ford High standout, Ben Pochet, a two-time District One Class AAA champion who is coming off his freshman season at Drexel, and a Spring-Ford social studies teacher, John Brennan, a member of the deep roster of talent at Philadelphia Cricket Club.
   A few of my favorites from many years of covering scholastic golf at the Delaware County Daily Times got in, highlighted by the winner of the 2009 BMW Philadelphia Amateur the last time it was held at Stonewall, Conrad Von Borsig, another Cricket Club guy. Conrad, whom I covered when he was at Strath Haven, gave me a shout from his vehicle as he was headed to the North Course for his afternoon round as I pulled into the Old Course after Noah Schwartz completed his first round at the North.
   Another Cricket Club guy and another former Philly Am champ, 2015 winner Cole Berman, got in. He was such a great high school player at The Haverford School.
   And former Radnor High standout Carey Bina was the last guy in as he knocked it close at the par-4 10th hole at the Old Course and dropped a birdie putt to end a long, long day of golf at Stonewall.
   And look out for Patrick Sheehan, the District One Class AAA champion at Central Bucks East as a senior last fall. I make it a point to keep showing up at the big postseason high school events for a little live-blogging and Sheehan has been a fun guy to watch the last two falls. The kid bombs it.
   Sheehan, who is headed for Penn State at the end of the summer, finished in a tie for eighth, adding an even-par 70 at the North Course to his opening-round 74 at the Old Course. Sheehan reached the second round of match play in the Philly Am a year ago at Whitemarsh Valley Country Club, so he’s been here before.
   As for my man Noah Schwartz, it was a disappointing morning at the North Course. Pretty sure there were three double bogeys on the card, although a birdie at the 18th hole was a nice way to finish an otherwise forgettable 81.
   But a funny thing happened when Schwartz, a former Penn Charter standout coming off a solid freshman season at Cornell, lined up a 30-footer for birdie on the par-4 10th hole on the Old Course, the first hole of our afternoon round. It went right in middle of the cup for a birdie.
   He could have gotten down on himself after the morning round, but he battled back, stayed aggressive and played an outstanding round of golf, a 2-over 72, at the Old Course. Schwartz hit a ton of good golf shots.
   Schwartz’s 153 total was three shots out the playoff, but he showed me a lot with that afternoon round. I think I can safely say that Cornell will be getting back a better player than the one who finished tied for 32nd in the Ivy League Championship earlier this spring at Hidden Creek Golf Club in Egg Harbor Township, N.J.
   Our playing partners, Steven Owens III of The Shore Club and Josh Barnett of Running Deer Golf Club, had their rough patches, finishing a shot apart, Owens at 166 and Barnett at 167.
   But I did see Barnett produce one of the all-time birdies on the 15th hole at the North in the morning. Left with a really bad-luck lie on the edge of the bunker that intrudes on the middle of the fairway of the uphill par-4, Barnett somehow slashed a shot that got all the way to the top level of the multi-tiered green and proceeded to pour in a 20-footer with at least a foot of break.
   Some really good players hitting really good shots on two really tough golf courses in really tough conditions. That’s what Tuesday was like in match-play qualifying in the 2019 BMW Philadelphia Amateur. It was really neat to experience it as a looper.




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