Lamenting a spring unlike any other

   I updated this with a couple of edits, plus I meant to mention what a great season 2018 PIAA Class AAA champion Palmer Jackson and Notre Dame were having when the college golf season came to a sudden end, so I went back and added a mention of the Fighting Irish. It's the beauty of a blog, you can go in and fix it.

   It’s been 10 days or so since the reality of the repercussions of the presence of the coronavirus among us really came crashing home.

   As a golf blogger, it suddenly meant no golf. This time of year, I would normally be trying to figure which of any number of college tournaments to report on in T Mac Tees Off. The Philadelphia Section PGA’s Junior Tour, on which this blog reports religiously, was supposed to start last weekend. It’s going to be a while before the Philadelphia area’s fledgling standouts can compete again.

   It was pretty obvious where everything was heading when I last posted. I had found one tournament I had missed in the flurry of events from March 6 to 10, the UNF Challenge, hosted by the North Florida women’s team at the Jacksonville Golf & Country Club.

   I used the opportunity to report on the event to also lament the premature end to the 2019-2020 college golf season. Seton Hall finished second in the UNF Challenge and I saluted the two seniors from Chester County, Maddie Sager, the 2015 PIAA Class AAA runnerup as a senior at Owen J. Roberts, and Sammie Staudt, a four-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier during an outstanding scholastic career at Coatesville, as well as their classmates, Lizzie Win of Sylvania, Ohio, and Carolina Ronchel Salas of Spain, who had been the building blocks for the Pirates’ resurgence under head coach Natalie Desjardins.

   But there were so many stories still to be told in the spring of 2020 that will never happen.

   I’ve been following Brynn Walker’s career since she showed up as a freshman at Radnor in the fall of 2012 and helped the Raiders capture the PIAA Class AAA girls team championship. It was Walker to whom Sager finished second three falls later when Walker won her second straight PIAA Class AAA individual crown and led Radnor to another PIAA Class AAA team crown, this time as a part of the boys team.

   The spring before that second PIAA individual title, I stood in the old newsroom at the Delaware County Daily Times and watched on the 1980s-era sports department TV set as Walker and her pal, Council Rock North product Madelein Herr, whose senior year at Penn State was also cut short this spring, played a quarterfinal match in the inaugural U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship with the breathtaking background of the Pacific Dunes Course at the Bandon Dunes Resort in the middle of nowhere in Oregon.

   Walker never quite emerged as a star at North Carolina, but consistency counts in golf and head coach Jan Mann wrote Walker’s name in the starting lineup for nearly every tournament of her nearly four-year career.

   North Carolina was ranked 30^th by Golfstat when the clock suddenly stopped on the 2019-’20 season. The Tar Heels were headed for an NCAA regional berth this spring as they had in each of Walker’s first three years in Chapel Hill.

   After earning a trip to the 2017 NCAA Championship at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, Ill. out of the Athens Regional in Walker’s freshman year – and just missing being one of the last eight teams standing for match play – North Carolina had failed to advance out of the regionals the last two springs.

   Walker was going to will this North Carolina team to Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. for the NCAA Championship this spring. I really believe that.

   It looks like the NCAA will look favorably on players who missed the final weeks of this 2019-’20 season who ask for an extra year of eligibility.

   Walker had earned some status on the Symetra Tour for 2020 by reaching Stage II of the LPGA Qualifying School last year. Whenever the Symetra Tour gets up and running again, it looks like Walker is going to give the professional game her best shot.

   Three springs ago, Ryan Davis of Berkeley Heights, N.J. and Alec Bard of New Hartford, N.Y., were freshmen on a Penn State men’s team that earned a trip to the NCAA Championship at Rich Harvest Farms, behind the individual title for Northwestern Lehigh product Cole Miller in the Washington Regional at Aldarra Golf Club in Sammamish, Wash.

   They were the old guard on this year’s team and the Nittany Lions had reached No. 62 in the final Golfstat rankings. They were the fourth highest-rated Big Ten team. The Big Ten Championship was scheduled to be played at Rich Harvest Farms. I’m sure Davis and Bard remember it well.

   A strong finish to the spring schedule and a solid showing at Rich Harvest Farms and who knows, maybe Davis and Bard help Penn State earn its first NCAA regional bid since their freshman year.

    Patrick Sheehan, whose scholastic career at Central Bucks East I had followed pretty closely, had just made it into the starting lineup in what turned out to be Penn State’s final tournament, the General Hackler Championship at The Dunes Golf & Beach Club in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

   Sheehan, the District One Class AAA champion as a senior at Central Bucks East in the fall of 2018, was part of a talented freshman class at Penn State. Head coach Greg Nye will be counting on that class to perhaps bring home the legacy of Davis and Bard in the next three springs.

   I mentioned that Herr’s senior season was cut short for Denise St. Pierre’s women’s team at Penn State. A four-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier at Council Rock North and Walker’s partner in runs to the U.S. Women’s Four-Ball semifinals in 2015 and the quarterfinals a year later at Streamsong, Herr was having a good spring.

   Her classmate, New Jersey native Megan McLean, also saw her career come to a sudden end. McLean has done nothing but get better in her four years in Happy Valley.

   I had watched Kaitlyn Lees become one of the top junior players in Pennsylvania, starting with the Agnes Irwin seventh-grader’s victory in the Inter-Ac League Championship at Radnor Valley Country Club about a month before the U.S. Open at Merion. I had watched Conestoga’s Samantha Yao battle Mia Kness, a junior on that solid Seton Hall team, and Freyvogel, a freshman at Penn State this season, right to the end in the respective 2016 and 2017 PIAA Class AAA Championships at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort. Kness was a senior at Peters Township and Freyvogel a junior at Pine Richland when they won their state titles.

   I was intrigued by the potential of the two of them, Lees a sophomore and Yao a freshman, teaming up at Dartmouth this spring. The Big Green had finished fourth in the FAU Winter Warmup last month. Dartmouth’s future remains bright with those two in the lineup.
   Palmer Jackson, winner of the 2018 PIAA Class AAA championship as a senior at Franklin Regional, joined the Notre Dame program last summer after a thrilling run to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur at the Pinehurst Resort in Pinhurst Village, N.C.
   And the Fighting Irish proceeded to take off. When they won their Fighting Irish Classic on Warren Golf Course, their home course, in October, it was their third tournament win in four starts. It wasn't just Jackson, although his summer roll continued throughout the fall portion of his freshman season.
   Notre Dame had risen to the top 10 in Golfstat rankings during the midseason break of the 2019-'20 season. The Fighting Irish, playing in the tough Atlantic Coast Conference, failed to get as bid to an NCAA regional a year ago.
   They were ranked 20th when the season came to an untimely end, still just the eighth highest-rated ACC team. But they were going to get an NCAA regional bid this spring and they were probably going to be seeded in the top five, meaning they would be expected to reach the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk.
   Jackson and his teammates are going to be a team on a mission in the 2020-'21 season.

   Brian Isztwan, the Inter-Ac’s top regular-season points leader in each of his last two seasons at Penn Charter, is a sophomore at Harvard. Isztwan had flashed his talent when he was the low amateur in last summer’s Pennsylvania Open at Waynesborough Country Club. His sophomore season will never be fully realized.

   I mention Isztwan for another reason. He had joined up with Harvard teammate Rij Patel, who saw his senior season and likely his college career come to a premature end, to claim medalist honors in a qualifier for the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship, scheduled to start the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend at the Philadelphia Cricket Club’s twin courses, the Wissahickon, an A.W. Tillinghast classic, and the Militia Hill.

   The men’s and women’s Four-Ball Championships became the first United States Golf Association casualties of the coronavirus last week as both the men’s event at the Cricket Club and the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship, scheduled to tee off April 25 at Quail Creek Country Club in Naples, Fla., were canceled.

   Isztwan, who plays out of Huntingdon Valley Country Club, and Patel took a day off from a busy fall schedule of golf and rigorous Harvard academics to fire a 6-under 66 at Foxborough Country Club in Foxborough, Mass. That memory will have to stand on its own for their U.S. Four-Ball experience for now.

   Isztwan’s Huntingdon Valley clubmate, Vince Kwon, and his fellow Marlton, N.J. resident Troy Vannucci,  who plays out of Little Mill Country Club, had made a stirring run to the semifinals of the U.S. Four-Ball a  year ago at Bandon Dunes’ Old Macdonald Course and were exempt into this year’s U.S. Four-Ball at the Cricket Club, where Kwon has occasionally been a looper.

   Two players from the seemingly endless supply of talent that calls the Cricket Club home these days, Matthew Kocent and Robbie Walizer, had punched their ticket to the U.S. Four-Ball on their home courses, winning medalist honors in a Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered qualifier at Old York Road Country Club.

   Heartbroken is probably not strong enough to describe the feelings the Kwon-Vannucci and Kocent-Walizer pairs experienced when the USGA was forced to bang the U.S. Four-Ball last week.

   Most of my 38-year journalism career was spent in sports. You almost can’t do that job without being something of a sports fan. This should be the day that the field of 64 becomes the Sweet 16 in that rite of March known as the NCAA Tournament.

   The first Saturday in September doesn’t quite have the same ring as the first Saturday in May for the Kentucky Derby. The home stretch of the NBA and NHL regular seasons on hold. Baseball can never get here soon enough and this year the wait will be even longer.

   The Masters, scheduled for an Easter Sunday finish this year, will be later, maybe not until October.

Jillian Burks of Paoli had earned a trip to the Drive, Chip & Putt National Finals and was to compete in the Girls 10-11 division the Sunday of Masters week at Augusta National. Hopefully, she still gets that opportunity at some point.

   The PGA Championship at Harding Park in San Francisco is looking for some later date in 2020.

The PGA Professional Championship, scheduled to tee off April 26 at the Omni Barton Creek Resort & Spa in Austin, Texas has also been postponed. Ryan Lagergren, the head pro at Stonewall, where I have been known to catch a loop now and again, had earned a trip to Barton Creek with a solid runnerup finish in last year’s Philadelphia PGA Professional Championship at The Union League Golf Club at Torresdale and at Riverton Country Club.

   The top 20 finishers in the PGA Professional Championship earn a ticket to the PGA Championship. Hopefully, Lagergren and the rest of the Philadelphia Section PGA contingent scheduled to compete at Barton Creek will still get that opportunity.

   Frank Fitzpatrick of The Philadelphia Inquirer found some hardy players last week teeing it up at a couple of the courses in a busy corridor of public golf in upper Montgomery County. Some were playing one player to a cart at places like Landis Creek, Gilbertsville, Raven’s Claw and Bella Vista.

So, even with social distancing you can still play the game. Not sure how long the carts will last, but it wouldn’t hurt to sling the Sunday bag over your shoulder and walk. The 19th hole, however, is closed.

   Caught a loop at Stonewall on a glorious March Saturday last weekend. By the time the round was over, the word was out. The course would be closed to caddies for a couple of weeks. As last week progressed, you couldn’t help but think it’s going to be longer than a couple of weeks.

   The fairways had popped green and the greens had been rolled and were in pretty darn good shape for mid-March. I suspect some of the Stonewall partners will still get out there in the coming weeks, caddies or no caddies. Can’t blame them.

   We will shake our heads at the memory some day about the year a virus threatened everything we take for granted. When next March arrives, I will savor every second of the NCAA Tournament, every spring training game, every game of the home stretch of the NBA and NHL regular seasons. And, of course, the opener of the spring portion of the wraparound 2020-2021 Junior Tour schedule.

Seton Hall finishes second at UNF Challenge and suddenly the college gofl season is over

   It was at the beginning of 2016 when my career as a professional journalist came to a crashing halt.

   I had started a blog as a supplement to my golf coverage in the Delaware County Daily Times. I figured I might as well try to keep it going, see if I could find enough stuff to fill a few posts here and there.

   Somehow there’s always been time, so I’m guessing some higher power wanted me to do this, perhaps the golf gods taking a break from making your birdie putt turn out of the cup on the last revolution.

   One of the things I figured I could do was follow some of the Delco kids and some other names from the District One and PIAA scenes I had covered at the Daily Times as they embarked on their college careers. And a funny thing happened. I got hooked on college golf.

   That’s why I was more than a little heartbroken as the dominoes started to fall these last couple of days. Conferences calling off spring sports. And then the killer Thursday, the NCAA cancelling all the spring championships.

   I was almost happy to see an event that I had missed in what had been a busy few days -- turned out it was the final few days of the wraparound 2019-2020 season -- when I checked in to see if Seton Hall had anything coming up that might or might not still be on.

   Turns out, the Hall teed it up in the UNF Challenge, hosted by North Florida, which wrapped up Tuesday at the Jacksonville Golf & Country Club in Jacksonville, Fla.

   As much as I got hooked on the big names in college golf, men and women, I thoroughly enjoyed following programs like Seton Hall.

   I was at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort in the fall of 2015, covering Radnor High’s Brynn Walker as she won her second straight PIAA Class AAA championship in what turned out to be the final days of my time at the Daily Times. The runnerup that day was Owen J. Roberts senior Maddie Sager, wrapping up a pretty strong scholastic career of her own.

   I was back at Heritage Hills a year later, this time as a blogger, watching Peters Township senior Mia Kness battle it out with Conestoga’s Samantha Yao, Central York’s Julianne Lee and Pine Richland’s Lauren Freyvogel and claim the PIAA Class AAA crown.

   Kness would join Sager and Coatesville’s Sammie Staudt, a four-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier herself, as the building blocks of the Seton Hall program. Somewhere along the line, Sager’s dad Ed, having found my blog, reached out to me to keep me updated on how the Pirates were doing.

   As much as college golf is about the future PGA and LPGA stars playing at the big programs, it is still very much about the Maddie Sagers, the Sammie Staudts, the Mia Knesses. Playing on the LPGA Tour might not be in their future, but they are good players, they have battled hard and it’s been fun to watch their progress these last four years.

   Kness, a junior, Caroline Ronchel Salas, a senior from Spain, and Ronchel Salas’ classmate Staudt, all fired a final round of 1-under-par 71 over the 5,926-yard, par-72 Jacksonville Golf & Country Club layout as Seton Hall posted the best team round of the tournament, an even-par 288, in Tuesday’s final round and surged to a second-place finish, just four shots behind host North Florida.

   They didn’t know it at the time, but it was the final round of the season for Seton Hall and for Ronchel Salas and Staudt, the final round of their college careers.

   For Lizzie Winn, a senior from Sylvania, Ohio, and Sager, the final round of the UNF Challenge was also the final round of their college careers.

   Win carded a solid 3-over 75 and finished in a tie for eighth place at 7-over 223. It was her 17^th career top-10 finish, tying the program record. It is a deadlock she won’t get a chance to break.

   Sager’s final-round 76 was a throw-out for Seton Hall, but she has been so solid in the Pirates’ lineup ever since she arrived in North Jersey in the fall of 2016.

   I’m certain head coach Natalie Desjardins, who took over the Seton Hall program a year after Staudt, Sager, Win and Ronchel Salas arrived on the scene, was happy to have to have this rock-solid class around for the last three years.

   North Florida, at No. 68 in the latest Golfstat rankings, the highest-ranked team in the field, took control of the tournament during Monday’s double-round, opening with a 10-over 298 and adding a solid 3-over 291 that gave the Ospreys a four-shot lead over Sam Houston State. North Florida closed with an 11-over 299 in Tuesday’s final round for a 24-over 888 total as the Ospreys won the team title in their home event for the second straight year.

   Seton Hall struggled a little in Monday’s double-round, registering rounds of 12-over 300 and 16-over 304 and trailed North Florida by 15 shots. But the Pirates’ final-round surge enabled them to finish second at 28-over 892.

   Sam Houston State posted rounds of 295 and 298 in Monday’s double-round before falling back a little in the final round with a 303 that left the Bearkats four shots behind Seton Hall in third place at 32-over 896.

   It was another 14 shots back to South Alabama in fourth place at 46-over 910. The Jaguars opened with a 301 and added a 305 in Monday afternoon’s second round before closing with a 304.

   Western Kentucky was three shots behind South Alabama in fifth place at 49-over 313, the Hilltoppers closing with a solid 298.

   Delaware, which finished in sixth place, a shot behind Western Kentucky at 50-over 914, is similar to Seton Hall. Seton Hall and Delaware aren’t going to win a national championship. But the Pirates and Blue Hens are very competitive in the Big East and Colonial Athletic Association, respectively, and winning a conference championship and earning an NCAA regional berth is the goal at the beginning of every season.

   Delaware opened with a 301 and added a 308 in Monday afternoon’s second round before closing with a 305.

   Leading the way for North Florida was Teresa Conway, a senior from Tallahassee, Fla. who finished alone in third place at 3-over 219, two shots behind Cal State-Fullerton’s Brittany Shin, a freshman from Cape Coral, Fla., and Delaware’s Ariane Klotz, a senior from New Caledonia, both of whom finished atop the leaderboard at 1-over 217, Shin being awarded the individual title on a scorecard  playoff.

   Conroy shared the individual lead with Klotz following Monday’s double-round after matching par in the opening round with a 72 and adding a 2-under 70 in the afternoon. She backed off in the final round with a 77. Pretty good effort for Conroy in what proved to be the final event of her college career.

   Backing up Conroy for the Ospreys was a pair of juniors, Mindy Herrick of Gainesville, Fla, and Sara McKevitt of Ponte Vedra, Fla., both of whom landed among a large group tied for 10^th place at 8-over 224. Herrick matched par in the final round with a 72. McKevitt was solid in Monday’s double-round with an opening-round 74 before matching par in the afternoon with a 72. She struggled to a 78 in the final round.

   Sydney Shrader, a senior from Naples, Fla., also closed strongly, matching par in the final round with a 72 to land among the group tied for 20^th place at 227. Rounding out the North Florida lineup was Liss Davalos, a sophomore from Mexico who closed with a 78 to end up in the group tied for 38^th place at 232.

   It was the premature end of a stellar career for Delaware’s Klotz, who carded a pair of 1-under 71s in Monday’s double-round to share the lead with North Florida’s Conroy at 2-under 142. Cal State-Fullerton’s Shin caught Klotz with a final round of 1-over 73 while Klotz carded a 75 as they both landed on 1-over 217.

   South Alabama’s Siti Shaari, a junior from Malaysia, and Sam Houston State’s Hanna Alberto, a senior from Kingwood, Texas, finished a shot behind North Florida’s Conroy in a tie for fourth place at 4-over 220.

   Shaari sandwiched a 76 in Monday afternoon’s second round with a pair of even-par 72s. Alberto was just two shots out of the individual lead after following up an opening round of 1-under 71 with a 73 in Monday’s double-round, but closed with a 76.

   Seton Hall’s Kness closed out her junior season by finishing in a tie for sixth place at 5-over 221 with Jessica Bailey, a sophomore from Finland at junior college power Daytona State College.

   Kness had opened with a 1-over 73, but struggled to a 77 in Monday afternoon’s second round. Her closing 1-under 71 gave Kness the ninth top-10 finish of her outstanding career at the Hall. Bailey added a final-round 73 to the pair of 2-over 74s she carded in Monday’s double-round.

   Win’s final-round 75 came on the heels of a pair of 2-over 74s in Monday’s double-round, the kind of consistent performance Seton Hall came to expect from her.

   Sharing eighth place with Win at 7-over 223 was Georgia Southern’s Ella Ofstedahl, a senior from England who closed with the best round of the day in Tuesday’s final round, a 2-under 70.

   Backing up Klotz for Delaware was Thitaree Sakulbunpanich, a junior from Thailand who finished among the group tied for 25^th place at 228. Sakulbunpanich opened with a 76 and added a 77 before finishing up with her best round of the tournament, a 3-over 75.

   Lene Sperling, a freshman from Germany, opened with a 76 and struggled to an 81 in Monday afternoon’s second round before closing with a 78 as she finished in the group tied for 44^th place at 235.

   Lexi Dart, a freshman from England, and Isabella Rimton, a senior from Sweden, both landed on 238 in the group tied for 55^th place.

   Dart had her best round of the tournament, a 5-over 77, in Tuesday’s final round. Rimton added a pair of 79s to her opening-round 80 to close out her career at Delaware.

   Seton Hall’s Big East rival Georgetown finished in 13^th place in the 16-team field at 945. The Hoyas’ best round was a 309 in Monday afternoon’s second round.

   Esther Park, Georgetown’s standout freshman out of the Charter School of Wilmington, and senior Kate Evanko, a contemporary of both Sager and Staudt as a scholastic standout at Unionville, both landed among the group tied for 68th place at 244.

   Park carded rounds of 80 and 81 in Monday’s double-round before closing with an 83. In what turned out to be the final round of her college career, Evanko carded a solid 4-over 76.

   I will actually miss trying to round up all the conference championships, men’s and women’s, that I’ve tried to get to these last few springs. I will miss trying to round up four women’s NCAA regionals one week and six men’s NCAA regionals the next week.

   And I will certainly miss watching it all come to a dramatic conclusion, first at the women’s NCAA Championship and then at the men’s NCAA Championship, scheduled to be held this spring at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.

   Two years ago, in Desjardins’ first year at the helm at Seton Hall, the Pirates finished 20 shots behind Georgetown in second place in the Big East Championship at the Callawassie Island Golf Club in Okatie, S.C.

   Seton Hall was 53 shots better than the Hoyas in Jacksonville. Just a measuring stick in how far the Pirates have come as their senior class kept working, kept getting better.

   They thought this was their year, but they won’t get that opportunity. And it’s a shame.