Matthew Kocent and Robbie Walizer know where they’ll be
spending Memorial Day weekend next May.
They’ll be teeing it up at their home course, Philadelphia
Cricket Club, in the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship. Pretty sure, both
courses at the Cricket Club, the Wissahickon Course, a classic A.W. Tillinghast
design, and the Militia Hill Course, will be utilized for qualifying for match
play with match play being contested on the Wissahickon Course.
And Kocent and Walizer are going to be there, playing in a
national championship on a couple of courses they know all too well. They
earned that coveted ticket to the U.S. Four-Ball by firing a better-ball
9-under-par 62 in a Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered qualifier at
Old York Road Country Club Tuesday.
The Cricket Club has the deepest stable of talent in GAP and
it has the BMW Team Matches and GAP Team Championship trophies to prove it. And
the 25-year-old Kocent and the 34-year-old Walizer are part of all that team
success.
“I can’t tell you how much it means to be able to play at
our home course,” Walizer told the GAP website. “We’re going to have quite the
gallery. For the last year, everybody at the club said that Matty and I had a
good shot at qualifying. We hit it straight, we hit our irons well and we get
hot with the putter.”
The U.S. Four-Ball has become a popular event on the USGA
schedule since it made its debut in 2015. And it has become a tough event to
get in. Only three teams got through at Old York Road.
Jon Rusk of Yardley and James Sullivan Jr. of Glenside,
co-owners of the course record at Old York Road in rounds shot a week apart in
1998, finished a shot behind Kocent and Walizer with a sparkling 8-under 63.
Andrew Wallace, a senior at Harriton and a PIAA Class AAA
qualifier last fall, and Brett Brenner of Villanova got the final ticket to the
Cricket Club with a 6-under 65 over the 6,554-yard, par-71 Old York Road
layout.
Another local duo, the Marlton, N.J. pair of Vince Kwon and
Troy Vannucci, had already earned their way to next spring’s U.S. Four-Ball
with a run to the semifinals in last spring’s U.S. Four-Ball at the Bandon
Dunes Resort’s Old Macdonald Course. Kwon, who plays out of Huntingdon Valley
Country Club, has been known to don a caddy bib and do a loop at the Cricket
Club and Vannucci plays out of Little Mill Country Club.
Kocent and Walizer started on the back nine at Old York Road
and had four 2s on their card, making birdies at four par-3s. Kocent’s tee shot
at the 180-yard 16th hole finished 15 feet from the hole and he
converted the birdie try. He drilled a 3-iron to nine feet at the 185-yard
third hole and made that putt.
Walizer knocked an 8-iron at the 150-yard 14th
hole to six feet and dropped the putt and got a 50-footer to fall at the 212-yard
fifth hole.
Walizer sent another birdie bomb to the bottom of the cup, a
35-footer at the par-5 fourth hole and hit a pitching wedge to seven feet at
the par-4 seventh hole before converting another birdie putt. When Walizer’s
approach at the 556-yard, par-5 ninth hole stopped at tap-in range, the Cricket
Club partners had medalist honors.
Rusk set the course record at Old York Road not long after
winning a PIAA championship as a senior at Council Rock and Sullivan quickly
matched Rusk’s 5-under 66. They were rivals then and now a team that will compete in the national Four-Ball
championship.
The 40-year-old Rusk had his amateur status reinstated
earlier this year. The Yardley resident was the head pro at LuLu Country Club.
He’s still playing out of LuLu as is the 44-year-old Sullivan, a Glenside
resident.
The 18-year-old Wallace, a talented left-hander who plans to
join Ben Feld’s Drexel program in a year, got his team in when he drilled a
5-iron at the 180-yard, par-3 16th hole to five feet and made the putt.
He followed that up with a clutch up-and-down at the 17th hole for a
par to keep him and the 28-year-old Benner at 6-under.
Speaking of Feld, he almost joined his recruit in the U.S.
Four-Ball field as he and Michael Carr were one of seven teams that finished a
shot behind Wallace and Benner at 5-under 66. The tandem of Carr and Feld is the
second alternate.
The first alternate is the pair of Kevin Busteed of
Charlotte, N.C. and Erick Plisko of Hanover Township as they prevailed in the
playoff for the alternate spots.
A couple of former Conestoga High standouts a generation or
so apart, Stephen Dressel and Brian Gillespie, also carded a 66, but couldn’t
snag one of the alternate spots.
La Salle High senior Steve Lorenzo, a PIAA Class AAA
qualifier last fall, and Matthew Lafond as well as the teams of Gregory Day and
Bryan Marvin and Maxwell Moldovan of Uniontown, Ohio and Jacob Tarkany of
Scottsdale, Ariz. were the other three pairs that came in a 5-under.
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