McGuckin, Storck team up to punch their ticket to U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship

    Marty McGuckin was the senior leader on a 2015 Malvern Prep team that was a runaway winner of the Inter-Ac League championship. He added a victory in the Bert Linton Inter-Ac individual championship on a very rainy day on Merion Golf Club’s storied East Course.

   Malvern Prep played a lot of golf at Applebrook Golf Club, the early Gil Hanse design in East Goshen, a few miles down Paoli Pike from the Malvern Prep campus, during McGuckin’s time with the Friars.

   Tuesday the 22-year-old McGuckin, a Valley Forge resident, teamed with fellow Philadelphia Cricket Club standout Scott Storck to earn medalist honors in a Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered qualifier for next spring’s U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship.

   Turned out the 50-year-old Storck of Blue Bell had a little history at Applebrook as well, earning a trip to the 2015 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at the John’s Island Club in Vero Beach, Fla. in a qualifier at Applebrook.

   The good vibes at the 6,703-yard, par-71 Applebrook layout for McGuckin and Storck continued Tuesday as they fired a better-ball total of 6-under 65 to earn a trip to Chambers Bay in University Place, Wash., site of the 2015 U.S. Open, next May.

   Hopefully we’ll have enough of a handle on the coronavirus pandemic by then to allow the tournament to be played. This year’s U.S. Amateur Four-Ball was scheduled to be played at the Cricket Club and several local pairs were excitedly looking forward to playing in a national championship in front of friends and family and, in the case of Cricket Club members Matthew Kocent and Robbie Walizer, clubmates.

   The USGA, however, was forced to cancel the U.S. Four-Ball with all the uncertainty brought on by the onset of the pandemic.

   “Yeah, we both know this place pretty well,” McGuckin told the GAP website. “Well, I played the front nine in high school about 50 times and the back nine probably about twice.”

   McGuckin and Storck could do no better than a bogey on Applebrook’s opening hole, a 520-yard, par-5. They got that shot back at the 310-yard, par-4 third hole, McGuckin nearly driving the green with a 3-wood, chipping it to five feet and holing the birdie try.

   Both players were in tight for birdie at the 575-yard, par-5 eighth hole and that enabled them to make the turn at 1-under.

   The pair heated up on the incoming nine. After making a birdie at the 11^th hole, McGuckin stiffed his approach at the 450-yard, par-4 13^th hole with a 9-iron to get the team to 3-under. Back-to-back birdies by Storck at the 14^th and 15^th holes got the pair to 5-under for the round.

   Storck then delivered the biggest putt of the day at the 178-yard, par-3 17^th hole, dropping in a 35-foot bomb that gave them a one-shot edge on the rest of the field. Storck got it up and down from just short at the 18^th hole for par to keep him and McGuckin at 6-under.

   McGuckin wasn’t the only Inter-Ac standout of recent vintage to have a good day at Applebrook Tuesday. Cole Berman, who won the Bert Linton Inter-Ac individual championship twice while at The Haverford School, and Michael Davis, the Bert Linton winner as a freshman at Malvern Prep, grabbed the other berth available for the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball, winning a playoff after posting a 5-under 66.

   Berman, coming off a solid freshman season at Georgetown, defeated his friend and rival Davis, coming off a solid freshman season at Princeton, 6 and 4, in the 2015 BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship final at Llanerch Country Club.

   Tuesday at Applebrook, they were partners, not adversaries and Davis, playing, as he always has, out of Aronimink Golf Club, was clutch. He birdied the 440-yard, par-4 18^th hole in regulation to force a playoff with the tandem of Kevin Dillard of McLean, Va. and Daniel Stanford of Vienna, Va. for the final assured berth to Chambers Bay.

   Davis then repeated his heroics at the end of regulation in the playoff, again making birdie on the 18^th hole by rolling in a 10-foot right-to-left breaker in the cup for a birdie to assure himself and Berman, playing out of Merion Golf Club after a long run at the Cricket Club, a trip to the U.S. Four-Ball.

   Davis qualified for the 2016 U.S. Amateur and was a U.S. Junior Amateur qualifier in 2011 and 2013 during his outstanding junior career. Berman joined Davis in that 2013 U.S. Junior Amateur field at the Martis Camp Club in Truckee, Calif.

   I was fortunate to be covering a lot of high school golf for the Delaware County Daily Times in the first half of the last decade. I was there when a young Davis won the last Bert Linton played in the spring in 2011 at White Manor Country Club and I watched Berman take the first of his two Bert Linton victories the following fall at the Cricket Club’s Militia Hill Course. And I was at Merion, mostly just trying to stay dry, and talked to McGuckin after his 2015 Bert Linton victory. There was just a ton of talent in the Inter-Ac during that stretch.

   Dillard and Stanford settled for first-alternate status after losing out in the playoff with Berman and Davis.

   The second alternate went to the Llanerch Country Club pair of Eddie Johnson and Stephen Seiden, one of six teams that signed for a 4-under 67. Seiden, a high school standout at Strath Haven and a pharmacist by trade, always used to like to remind me that he works for a living and is mostly a weekend golfer. Earning a trip to a national championship is something special for Seiden.

   A couple of GAP veterans, St. Davids Golf Club’s Stephen Dressel and Brian Gillespie, also landed at 4-under 67.

   Another pair of GAP mid-am heavyweights, Peter Barron III of Mays Landing, N.J. and Michael R. Brown Jr. of Maple Shade, N.J. were in the group at 4-under. Brown has been on a roll since capturing the Pennsylvania Amateur at Lookaway Golf Club in the summer, adding wins in the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s Art Wall Jr. Memorial at Moselem Springs Golf Club and the New Jersey State Golf Association’s Mid-Amateur Championship at North Jersey Country Club.

   Michael Cook, who starred scholastically at Conestoga and collegiately at Drexel, and William Howard of West Chester also put together at 67 on Cook’s home course at Applebrook.

   Nick Vicellio, the recent Delaware graduate who finished in a tie for fifth place in GAP’s Elite Series No. 1 at North Hills Country Club a day earlier, teamed up with Zach Juhasz of Bethlehem for a 67. Rounding out the large group of duos tied for fourth place at 4-under was John Lalley of Philadelphia and Mike O’Neil of Baltimore.

   Rounding out the top 10 were two groups—Brendan Papariello, another former Malvern Prep standout who resides in Villanova, and Regan Papariello of Philadelphia and Matthew Loeslein of Philadelphia and Robert Robertson of Flourtown -- tied for 10^th place at 3-under 68.