This would normally be the week that the U.S. Open is
contested, but hardly anything about 2020 has been normal since the coronavirus
arrived on our shores early in the year.
The National Open, originally scheduled to be played at
Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y., will now be played in September,
still at Winged Foot, but with no open qualifying.
The BMW Philadelphia Amateur would normally be contested the
same week as the U.S. Open, with the notable exceptions of 1981 and 2013 when
the Golf Association of Philadelphia was helping out with a U.S. Open at Merion
Golf Club’s historic East Course.
And guess what, the 120th Philadelphia Amateur
will indeed be contested this week, just like normal, well almost. It is the
most normal thing that will happen in 2020 since the middle of March when it
started to become increasingly apparent that we were in for a rough ride.
The 36 holes of qualifying for the Philadelphia Amateur, one
of my favorite days on the golf calendar in these parts each year, will be
reduced to 18 holes when the battle for the J. Wood Platt Trophy begins Monday
at Lancaster Country Club, a William Flynn gem that took a true star turn when
it hosted the 2015 U.S. Women’s Open.
There were no qualifiers for this year’s Philadelphia
Amateur. The field of 80 players consists of 75 percent exempt players and 25
percent of GAP players with a handicap index of plus-3.3 or better.
A look at the long and storied list of 119 Philadelphia
Amateurs -- the event was first contested in 1897 – reveals only four gaps, all
for World Wars. The Philadelphia Amateur was canceled in 1918 because of World
War I and in 1942, ’43 and ’44 because of World War II.
A lot of golf events have been rescheduled or just canceled
in 2020, but the show will go on at Lancaster and that’s a good thing. As I’ve
mentioned in a couple of posts concerning the resumption of the Philadelphia
Section PGA Junior Tour schedule, with some of the big national events going by
the wayside, the spotlight will shine a little brighter on some of the local
events and, in this area, there is no bigger pure amateur event than the
Philadelphia Amateur.
And as pure an amateur as you’ll find, 24-year-old Jeremy
Wall, will try to do something that nobody in the whole goldarn 120-year
history of the Philadelphia Amateur has ever done, win it three straight times.
Wall, who plays out of Manasquan River Golf Club at the
Jersey Shore, became just the 10th player to repeat as the
Philadelphia Amateur champion when he downed 2014 champion and reigning William
Hyndman III Player of the Year Jeff Osberg, 3 and 2, in a scheduled 36-hole
final at Stonewall’s Old Course, Tom Doak’s rugged design on an old dairy farm
in northwest Chester County, a year ago.
He was the first repeat champion since Overbrook Golf Club
stalwart Chris Lange did it in 1993 and ’94, 25 years earlier.
Wall had just completed a standout college career at Loyola
of Maryland when he defeated Huntingdon Valley Country Club’s Andrew Mason, a
former Temple standout and a reinstated amateur, in the final two years ago at
Whitemarsh Valley Country Club.
Players can utilize single-rider carts and no caddies will
be allowed at Lancaster, but it sounds like Wall plans to carry his own clubs
as he did two years ago and again last year at Stonewall, through 36 holes of
qualifying, two double rounds of match play and a 36-hole final.
So, he gets a little bit of a break with qualifying reduced
to 18 holes, but nobody knows the survival test that is the BMW Philadelphia
Amateur Championship better than Jeremy Wall does.
“I’m excited to defend obviously,” Wall told the GAP
website. “I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit because I haven’t even been
playing too much golf. I’m starting to play on Sundays, desperately trying to
find a little game like everyone else.
“Hopefully, it’s a nice, long week in Lancaster. To win the
Amateur twice was neat and to have the opportunity to win it a third straight
time is pretty neat. Not a lot of guys could say they had a chance to win a
third straight Philadelphia Amateur. It’s very exciting.”
Wall’s bid to repeat at Stonewall was nearly derailed by an
overturned dump truck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that forced him to arrive
late for his tee time for his quarterfinal match with Andrew Cornish of the
RiverCrest Golf Club & Preserve.
Wall was able to get his golf shoes on and get on the golf
course in time so that he only had to forfeit the first hole of the match.
Still rattled, Wall dropped the second, third and fourth holes to fall 4-down
after four holes.
Cornish never won another hole as Wall rallied furiously and
claimed a 3 and 2 victory.
Younger brother Jack Wall, who had left a little earlier for
his quarterfinal match with Osberg, was not so lucky. Jack Wall was hopelessly
trapped in the Turnpike backup and was forced to forfeit the match to Osberg.
Jeremy Wall matter-of-factly stated that his younger brother
is a better player than he is and I guess big brother would know. Jack Wall had
worked his way into the starting lineup at South Carolina in his freshman year
when the coronavirus pandemic halted the college golf season.
Jack Wall is in the field this year and I wouldn’t be the
least big shocked if he made a run at the title again. I suspect he’ll be
paying close attention to the “traffic-on-the-twos” reports on KYW.
As I mentioned before, there is something special about
qualifying day in a Philadelphia Amateur. I got a chance to experience it up
close a year ago when I was on the bag for Noah Schwartz, a former Penn Charter
standout who had just completed his freshman season at Cornell.
Schwartz struggled in the morning as blustery winds buffeted
the North Course and he carded an 81. But he was really solid in a sparkling
2-over 72 on the Old Course in the afternoon, his 153 total leaving him three shots
out a playoff among six players for the final two spots in the match-play
bracket.
It was just as cool to be a looper on Philadelphia Amateur
qualifying day in 2019 as it had been 39 years earlier in drenching rains at
Sunnybrook Golf Club and Whitemarsh Valley.
Only 32 players make it into match play and that alone is a
pretty nice accomplishment.
Jeremy Wall is one of eight former champions in the field,
led by Osberg, who plays out of Pine Valley Golf Club, and his buddy Michael
McDermott, a Merion Golf Club member who claimed the last of his three Philly
Amateur titles in an epic 36-hole final against Osberg at the famed East
Course, site of five U.S. Opens, in 2016.
Three members from the talented stable of players that call
Philadelphia Cricket Club home these days are also on that former champions
list, including Gregor Orlando, who captured the Philly Amateur crown on his
home course, the Cricket Club’s Wissahickon Course, an A.W. Tillinghast
masterpiece, in 2017.
The Cricket Club’s Conrad Von Borsig was the 2009 champion
at Stonewall and made a run to the semifinals before falling to Jeremy Wall a
year ago on an Old Course layout Von Borsig clearly relishes. The Cricket Club’s Paul
Bartholomew was the Philly Amateur champion in 2007.
Rounding out the list of former champions in the field are
Waynesborough Country Club’s Scott Ehrlich, the 2004 winner, and St. Davids
Golf Club’s Brian Gillespie, the 2001 winner.
As Jeremy Wall alluded to, there haven’t been a lot of
opportunities to play golf, certainly not competitively, this spring. Many golf
courses were shut down for six weeks from mid-March through April.
The college kids often have an edge in the Philadelphia
Amateur because they’ve been playing high-level competitive golf since
February. Not this year.
Many members at GAP clubs compete in the BMW Team Matches,
but they didn’t happen this spring either.
Once it became apparent that golf was about as safe an
activity as you could pursue in our pandemic bubble, players flocked to the
golf courses just to get out of the house. But a weekend round at the club
isn’t the same as an opening-round match in the Philadelphia Amateur.
So yeah, it’s going to be interesting to see how all of this
affects the competitors at Lancaster this week. By this point, we’re all used
to things not being quite what we’re used to.
But the Philadelphia Amateur is happening this week, just
like normal, and who would have thought that a little bit of normal would feel
so welcome.
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