Recent Conestoga High graduate Morgan Lofland emerged from the six weeks or so of lockdowns when the coronavirus pandemic was in its early days in the spring of 2020 like he was shot from a gun.
Allowed to compete again in May, Lofland was showing up on leaderboards all over the place, particularly on the Philadelphia Section PGA Junior Tour. Lofland capped that run by firing a scintillating 6-under-par 64 at The 1912 Club that gave him medalist honors in qualifying for match play in the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Junior Boys’ Championship.
He would fall to Jake Maddaloni of The Haverford School and Aronimink Golf Club, in match play, but Lofland certainly left his mark on GAP’s premier junior event.
Well, Monday at Overbrook Golf Club, Lofland, who plays out of Phoenixville Country Club, did it again as he fired a 2-under 68 to repeat as the qualifying medalist. Junior eligibility doesn’t last long, so repeating as the medalist in qualifying doesn’t happen often. Lofland became the first repeat medalist since Lehigh Country Club’s Carl Greener did it in 1993 and 1994.
Lofland, who will join head coach Greg Nye’s Penn State program at the end of the summer, didn’t have much of a senior season at Conestoga. The combination of the confusion created by the pandemic and Lofland contracting a mononucleosis-type virus that kept him off the golf course for most of the fall made for a fairly miserable senior campaign, although he did recover in time to help the Pioneers knock off arch-rival Radnor and claim the Central League’s dual-match championship.
He showed in last week’s BMW Philadelphia Amateur at Cedarbrook Country Club that the spring is Lofland’s time to shine. He won three matches before falling to eventual champion Conor McGrath, 3 and 2, in the semifinals.
It also showed that Lofland has a better handle on the tricky challenge that match play presents to even the best of golfers.
“I was trying to think one shot better than my opponent,” Lofland, recalling his approach to match play a year ago, told the GAP website. “I fixed it up for the (Philadelphia) Amateur. It’s really one shot at a time, one hole at a time. You can’t think about your opponent. It’s only what you bring to the table. I was focusing on myself and not worrying about my opponent.”
Lofland opened his bid to repeat as medalist with a birdie at the first hole of the underrated 6,299-yard, par-70 Overbrook layout. After bombing a drive on the 361-yard, par-4 opener, Lofland hit a wedge from 40 yards to 12 feet and converted the birdie try.
He struggled with his swing the rest of the outgoing nine, but was saving pars before a bogey at the 430-yard, par-4 ninth hole left him at even-par heading to the back nine.
Lofland reached the 507-yard, par-5 12th hole in two shots, drilling a 5-iron onto the putting surface from 195 yards away and two-putted for a birdie. He was left with only 83 yards into the 295-yard, par-4 14th hole, hit a wedge to six feet and made the birdie putt.
Lofland drove it into a bunker just 39 yards from the hole at the 386-yard, par-4 17th hole and knocked his approach to seven feet. When he made that putt, he was 3-under for the round.
Lofland yanked his drive into the fescue on the 389-yard, par-4 finishing hole and couldn’t get a 15-footer for par to fall, settling for a closing bogey that left him at 2-under.
Lofland will be seeded second in the match-play bracket. Returning champion Josh Ryan gets the top seed for match play, but did not tee it up at Overbrook Monday.
Ryan, who was home-schooled by Commonwealth Connections Academy, had been a three-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier while representing Norristown High on the golf course. But Norristown would not let its athletes compete in any sports last fall, thus derailing Ryan’s bid to become a four-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier.
Ryan displayed some pretty serious match-play chops last summer when he followed up his victory in the GAP Junior Boys by winning the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s R. Jay Sigel Match Play Championship at the Country Club of York.
Ryan is coming off a solid tie for 12th place earlier this month in The Dye Junior Invitational at Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind.
West Chester Rustin senior Ryan D’Ariano, playing out of Penn Oaks Golf Club, and Louis Giovi of Mercer Lakes Golf Course shared second place in qualifying, each landing on 1-under 69, a shot behind Lofland. D’Ariano finished in a tie for 14th place in the PIAA Class AAA Championship last fall, which was shortened from two rounds to one round because of the pandemic.
Elmhurst Country Club’s Bill Pabst, who finished in a tie for sixth place in the PIAA Class AAA Championship as a junior at North Pocono, headed a group of four players tied for fourth place at 1-over 71, two shots behind D’Ariano and Giovi.
Recent Strath Haven graduate Jackson Debusschere was also in the group tied for fourth place at 1-over. The confusion in the Central League, due to the various pandemic protocols, denied Debusschere a chance to compete in the PIAA postseason last fall, although he did finish in a tie for fifth place in a Central League Championship that was staged the week after the state tournament.
Rounding out the foursome tied for fourth place were Tatnall School junior Jeffrey Homer, who was playing out of Wilmington Country Club, and Christopher Dorey of Metedeconk National Golf Club. Dorey, who, I’m pretty sure, graduated from the Peddie School this month, reached the semifinals of the GAP Junior Boys a year ago at The 1912 Club.
Cedarbrook’s Christian Matt, who finished in a tie for 23rd place in the PIAA Class AAA Championship as a junior at Wissahickon last fall, shared eighth place with Penn Oaks Golf Club’s Eli Shah, each landing on 2-over 72. Shah, a junior at Penncrest, was the Philly Junior Tour’s 13-to-15 Player of the Year in the wraparound 2018-’19 season.
Eight players carded a 3-over 73 to finish in a tie for 10th place and had to engage in a playoff for the final six spots in the championship flight’s match-play bracket.
Another member of Wilmington’s Team Homer, Matthew Homer, Jeffrey Homer's twin brother, headed the group of six players who survived the playoff and earned a spot in the match-play bracket.
Also in the group of survivors were Aiden Farkas of Llanerch Country Club, Scott Hughes, another Cedarbrook entry, Michael Lynch of the Country Club of Scranton, Jack Tarzy of Medford Lakes Country Club and Matthew Zerfass, who plays out of Brookside Country Club of Allentown.
Zerfass, a PIAA Class AAA qualifier in 2019 as a sophomore at Emmaus, will get a shot at Lofland in the opening round of match play Tuesday.
A couple of Aronmink Golf Club players, Nick Ciocca, a sophomore at Devon Prep, and Maddaloni, whose senior season at The Haverford School was a casualty of the pandemic, were the two players who posted a 73, but failed to survive the playoff and did not advance to the championship flight. They’ll play in the first flight.
Ciocca, a PIAA Class AA qualifier as a freshman last fall, captured the Philadelphia Boys Junior PGA Championship title for the second straight year last week at Valley Country Club and will represent the Philadelphia Section PGA in the Boys Junior PGA Championship, one of the top national junior events which tees off July 12th at the Kearney Hill Golf Links in Lexington, Ky.
Maddaloni, who contributed to Inter-Ac League crowns for The Haverford School in 2018 and 2019, reached the semifinals of the GAP Junior Boys Championship a year ago before falling to Ryan, the eventual champion.
Wilmington Country Club, comprised of members of the Tatnall School team, captured the GAP Junior Team Championship with an 8-over 218 total.
In addition to the 71 registered by Jeffrey Homer and the 73 posted by Matthew Homer, Wilmington got a 4-over 74 from Anthony Ciconte in the four-score-three format. The youngest of the Homer boys, Jack, who will be a freshman at Tatnall in the fall, carded a 79 that Wilmington had the luxury of throwing out.
The Country Club of Scranton was three shots behind Wilmington in second place with a 221 total and Cedarbrook finished third with a 222 total.
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