Crawford keeps grinding to get a share of the Pennsylvania Open lead after two rounds at Oakmont

    With golf courses shut down all over the region at the end of March and into April this spring, the Golf Association of Philadelphia asked the public on Twitter to pick the greatest feat in the last decade or so on the GAP scene.

   And the winner was former Holy Ghost Prep and Drexel standout Chris Crawford making it to the U.S. Open two years in a row in 2016 and 2017 out of local and sectional qualifiers. I think the voters got it right.

   That 2016 U.S. Open was at Oakmont Country Club, the last of the nine Opens the iconic Henry Fownes design in suburban Pittsburg has hosted. Crawford shot a pair of 76s and missed the cut, but he was there playing in arguably the premier golf tournament in the world on one of America’s most demanding golf courses.

   Flash forward to Tuesday and there was Crawford, a pro these days, grinding out a second straight even-par 71 at the 6,835-yard, par-71 Oakmont layout to get a share of the lead at even-par 142 through 36 holes of the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s 104^th Open Championship.

   Oakmont wasn’t giving up much to an elite field of Pennsylvania’s top pros and amateurs in Tuesday’s second round.

   The top eight includes Crawford and seven amateurs, so he’ll take a three-shot lead in the race for the prize that goes to the low pro. Last year at Waynesborough Country Club that check was for $8 grand.

   Sharing the top spot with Crawford were Malvern’s Cole Willcox, playing in his first tournament since having his amateur status reinstated, and Venetia’s Jimmy Ellis, a western Pennsylvania mid-am who grabbed low-amateur honors in the 2016 Pennsylvania Open at The Club at Nevillewood.

   Going off the 10^th tee, Crawford had an up-and-down round that included five birdies and five bogeys. He birdied the 11^th and 12^th holes and bogeyed 15 and 16. He got a birdie at the first hole, bogeyed the fourth, birdied the fifth, bogeyed the sixth and eighth and got the gettable par-5 ninth hole for a closing birdie.

   Slowly but surely, all the red figures disappeared from the leaderboard. Turned out even-par for 36 holes at Oakmont was, at it always has been, pretty good playing.

   “I really don’t know what it’s going to take to win (Wednesday),” Crawford told the PAGA website. “The course is so difficult that I only … I don’t even think it’s worth thinking about at this point and I’ll just try and play my own game to hopefully win.

   “It’s been a weird year, obviously, so I’ve been playing in a bunch of mini-tour events. But to be (low professional) this week, at this place? Yeah, that’d be amazing.”

   It looks like Crawford might have some PGA Tour Latinoamerica status this year, but all of the tour’s development circuits below the Korn Ferry Tour have been shut down by the coronavirus pandemic since March.

   Some of the amateurs who have been at home have probably had more competitive opportunities than some of the pros have, which might explain all the amateurs in the top 10 going into Wednesday’s final round.

   Willcox was a few weeks away from starting his senior year at Malvern Prep when he qualified for the 2005 U.S. Amateur at Merion Golf Club’s East Course, the other qualifying site that year was Willcox’s home course at Philadelphia Country Club.

   It probably seems like a different lifetime to him, but after a bumpy pro career, the guy is proving he can still play a little. Willcox was in limbo, no longer a pro, but not quite an amateur yet, when he grabbed the lead after the opening round of last year’s Pennsylvania Open at Waynesborough Country Club.

   He was one of the early starters Tuesday and after a bogey at the first he got Oakmont to yield birdies at the sixth, 11^th and 12^th holes to get it to 2-under for the round. Willcox made a bogey at the 13^th hole, birdied the 14^th to get back to 2-under, but made bogeys at the 15^th and 18^th holes on his way in to land at even-par.

   Ellis started on the back nine and after making a birdie at the 12^th hole, he rattled off eight straight pars before suffering a double bogey at the third hole. Ellis birdied the fifth hole, bogeyed the eighth and closed with a birdie at the par-5 ninth to get his piece of the 36-hole lead.

   Crawford isn’t the only Holy Ghost Firebird in the top five. Calen Sanderson, a junior at Holy Ghost who has been playing some excellent golf in some big events this summer, was one of the very few players who bettered par Tuesday with a 1-under 70 that landed him in a group of five players tied for  fourth place at 1-over 143, a shot behind the leaders.

   Nor is Crawford the only Drexel Dragon in the top five. It looks like former Peters Township standout Connor Schmidt will accept the NCAA’s offer for an extra year of eligibility and will take a fifth year at Drexel. Like Sanderson, Schmidt was 1-under Tuesday after opening with a 73 and was also in the group tied for fourth place at 1-over 143.

   Schmidt was really solid in the fall of what he thought was his final year of golf at Drexel, capping the first half of the season by taking the individual title in the City 6 Championship at Huntingdon Valley Country Club.

   Rounding out the quintet at 1-over 143 were Whitemarsh Valley Country Club’s Will Davenport, Little Mill Country Club’s Troy Vannucci and Greensburg’s Mark Goetz, a redshirt junior at West Virginia.

   Davenport, GAP’s 2019 Middle-Amateur champion, added a 2-over 73 to his opening-round 70. Vannucci, who teamed with Vince Kwon to reach the semifinals of the 2019 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Bandon Dunes, matched par with a 71 Tuesday after opening with a 72.

   Like Davenport, Goetz, who starred scholastically at The Kiski School, added a 73 to his opening-round 70.

   The runnerup to Crawford’s feat of qualifying for the U.S. Open two years in a row in that GAP Twitter poll in the spring was the epic 2016 BMW Philadelphia Amateur final in which Michael McDermott defeated his friend and rival Jeff Osberg, 1-up, on the 36^th hole at McDermott’s home course at Merion.

   Osberg is the only amateur in a group of five more players tied for ninth place at 3-over 145. The 34-year-old Bryn Mawr resident plays out of Pine Valley Golf Club. The tougher the golf course, the more Osberg likes it, a point he is proving again at Oakmont as he added a 3-over 74 to his opening-round 71.

   Crawford isn’t the only alumni of that 2016 Open at Oakmont in the hunt this week, either. One of the four pros chasing Crawford for that top prize is Mike Van Sickle, who had to play the waiting game of an alternate, but made the field for the National Open in 2016, shooting rounds of 76 and 80.

   Van Sickle, who played scholastically at Penn-Trafford and collegiately at Marquette, has the kind of reverence for Oakmont that all Pittsburgh-area golfers do. Van Sickle, who has been banging around in golf’s minor leagues for a while, matched par with a 71 in the second round after opening with a 74.

   The other pros in the group at 145 included J.D. Dornes, a former Penn State standout who starred scholastically at Manheim Township, Anthony Sebastianelli, a former Central Connecticut State standout who starred scholastically at Abington Heights, and Daniel Obremski, another veteran western Pennsylvanian.

   Dornes added a 1-over 72 to his opening-round 73, Sebastianelli matched par with a 71 Tuesday after opening with a 74 and Obremski, like Dornes, carded a 1-over 72 Tuesday after opening with a 73.

   Carey Bina, one of my favorite guys at Radnor High when I was covering high school golf at the Delaware County Daily Times, was just a shot out of the lead after opening with a 3-under 68. And he was still 3-under turning for home after making a birdie at the ninth hole Tuesday.

   But Oakmont’s incoming nine got him, lowlighted with a quadruple bogey 8, the dreaded snowman, on the seemingly benign little 302-yard, par-4 17^th hole. Bina signed for a 78 that left him in the group tied for 15^th place at 4-over 146.

   Still only four back, but Bina will have to put the memory of that 17^th hole behind him.

   Bina was joined at 4-over by Travis Howe, a pro from Bellefonte, and Berks County mid-am Nathan Sutherland, who was a scholastic standout at the extinct Holy Name. Howe and Sutherland each carded a 4-over 75 after opening with a 71.

   The cut fell at 8-over 150 and it’s been quite a last week for one of the eight players who made the cut on the number.

   Last week, Alex Knoll, an instructor at Glen Brook Golf Club, was competing at the game’s highest level, teeing it up in the PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco.

   Knoll’s rounds of 77 and 80 weren’t good enough to make the cut at TPC Harding Park. But he grinded out a 3-over 74 at Oakmont Tuesday after opening with a 76 and will play the final round of the Pennsylvania Open to complete what can only be described as an excellent golf adventure. He’ll have some stories to tell when he gets back home to Jim Thorpe.