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Sunday, June 2, 2019

In the end, Huntingdon Valley has the edge on LuLu to claim BMW GAP Team Matches title


   The BMW Golf Association of Philadelphia Team Matches is a sprawling affair spread out over a number of weeks in the spring, when the weekend weather can be notoriously, shall we say, spotty.
   At the top level, four divisional winners convene for the Playoff, each sending three-man teams to each course, to determine the overall champion. It was supposed to be completed May 11 and well, half of it was.
   This year’s divisional winners were LuLu Country Club’s first team, which had to beat the two-time defending champion, Philadelphia Cricket Club’s first team, just to get to the Playoff,  Huntingdon Valley Country Club’s first team, Overbrook Golf Club’s first team and, the depth of talent being what it is at the Cricket Club, Philadelphia Cricket Club’s second team.
   The teams of three competing at LuLu and the Cricket Club completed play May 11, but the rain fell more heavily at Huntingdon Valley and Overbrook that weekend and those courses were just unplayable. You know what happens in spring after that. Events are scheduled, college graduations are going on, Memorial Day weekend, well, you can’t schedule Team Matches then.
   So, the teams at Huntingdon Valley and Overbrook finally got out there Saturday and Huntingdon Valley began the day trailing a tough LuLu team by 4.5 points.
   But Huntingdon Valley’s home three, Sean Seese, Brian Isztwan and Sean Ryan, piled up 19 points to LuLu’s 12.5, and Huntingdon Valley’s trio at Overbrook, Andy Butler, Connor Hill and Billy Reube, managed a 17-17 deadlock with LuLu.
    Huntingdon Valley ended up with 68.5 points, two points better than LuLu’s 66.5. The Cricket Club’s second team finished third with 49.5 points and Overbrook was fourth at 31.5.
   LuLu had done a lot of heavy lifting to get past the Cricket Club’s top team during the regular season, but its loaded lineup came up just short in its bid for a first BMW GAP Team Matches title. It was the 33rd GAP Team Matches title for Huntingdon Valley, but its first since 2010. The only players left from that last victory are Seese, the former La Salle High and Saint Joseph’s standout, Ryan and Dan Pinciotti Jr., the team’s captain.
   “This is unexpected,” Pinciotti told the GAP website. “LuLu has such a stout team. We thought overcoming 4.5 points was going to be extremely difficult. It’s a shocking result.”
   Reube, a 27-year-old trader for Corbin Capital Partners, lives and works in Manhattan, but is still a weekend warrior at Huntingdon Valley. Reube, a product of North Penn and Drexel, didn’t know it at the time, but his six-footer for par at  Overbrook’s 18th hole – he got it up and down from a bunker -- turned out to be the shot on which the outcome turned.
   That’s because LuLu’s Glenn Smeraglio, who swept both the GAP and Pennsylvania Golf Association (PAGA) Senior Amateur crowns two summers ago, got every one of the nine points he could in a sweep at Overbrook that nearly put LuLu over the top.
   Huntingdon Valley and LuLu both picked up 17 points apiece at Overbrook and the Cricket Club’s second team and home-standing Overbrook each ended up with 10 points.
   Isztwan, the former Penn Charter standout who capped a solid freshman season at Harvard by finishing in a tie for 26th in the Ivy League Championship at Hidden Creek Golf Club over the Easter weekend, came up big for Huntingdon Valley on the William Flynn-designed gem that is its home course.
   Isztwan picked up 7.5 of a possible nine points to spark the home team to the 6.5-point edge over LuLu that helped wipe out the big deficit it faced going into Saturday. Huntingdon Valley picked up 19 points,  LuLu and the Cricket Club’s second team each finished with 12.5 points and Overbrook had 10 points.
   Three weeks earlier the Huntingdon Valley trio of Pinciotti, Conor McGrath, coming off a solid freshman season at Temple, and Drew Taylor managed to stay within three points of LuLu at LuLu. The home team piled up 18.5 points, Huntingdon Valley was three points behind at 15.5 points, the Cricket Club’s second team had 14.5 points and Overbrook ended up with 5.5 points.
   LuLu was tough at the Cricket Club, but again the Huntingdon Valley trio of Vince Kwon, Andrew Mason, the runnerup at last summer’s BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship, and Liam McGrath, like his younger brother Conor a member of the Temple golf team, picked up enough points to keep LuLu from building an insurmountable lead.
   LuLu piled up 18.5 points at the Cricket Club, Huntingdon Valley earned 17 points, the home-standing Cricket Club’s second team ended up with 12.5 points and Overbrook had six points.
   By the way, Kwon, who occasionally loops at the Cricket Club, reached the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship along with his partner and fellow Marlton, N.J. resident Troy Vannucci last week at the Bandon Dunes Resort in Bandon, Ore. I did a pretty extensive post a couple of days ago recapping the run of Kwon and Vannucci and how the contingent of players with local ties fared at Bandon Dunes.
   Even though Overbrook finished fourth, it was an emotional return to the BMW GAP Team Matches Playoff for the perennial power. Overbook lost one its most dependable players with the sudden passing of Ray Thompson last November.
   But clearly going all out to honor the memory of one of the great players in the history of the Team Matches in Thompson, a guy who always went on the road and, more often than not, came home with points, Overbrook managed a 27-27 tie with a tough Llanerch Country Club side in its last match of the regular season to get into the Playoff.


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