Much like Day 2 of the BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship was a year ago at Lancaster Country Club, it was the day of the Hawk in the first two rounds of match play of the 121st edition of the Philly Am Tuesday at Cedarbrook Country Club.
Of the eight players who will tee it up in Wednesday morning’s quarterfinals, two of them, Ross Pilliod, playing out of LedgeRock Golf Club, and J.T. Spina, playing out of Philadelphia Cricket Club, have ties to Saint Joseph’s.
Pilliod, who starred scholastically at Berks Catholic, finished his career at St. Joe’s two springs ago. He stormed into the quarterfinals with a 4 and 2 victory over the Cricket Club’s Michael Carr in Tuesday morning’s opening round before rolling to a 6 and 5 verdict over Connor Bennink of Kennett Square Golf & Country Club in a second-round match Tuesday afternoon.
Never underestimate the son of a club pro and Spina’s dad, John, is an instructor at the Cricket Club. A two-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier at Pope John Paul II, Spina’s junior season with St. Joe’s was mysteriously cut short this spring.
But after surviving on the 19th hole in his opening-round match with Matt Dolinsky of Honeybrook Golf Club, all Spina did was take out qualifying medalist Peter Bradbeer of Merion Golf Club with a hard-fought 1-up decision in the second round.
And it was very nearly three Hawks soaring into the quarterfinals as Michael O’Brien, who was part of the day of the Hawk at Lancaster a year ago along with Richard Riva, suffered a 1-up loss to fellow LuLu Country Club representative Michael R. Brown Jr., the reigning Pennsylvania Amateur champion, in Tuesday afternoon’s second round.
O’Brien reached the final a year ago at Lancaster before falling to Zach Barbin. O’Brien’s senior season at St. Joe’s had been cut short by the coronavirus pandemic. He chose to take the extra year of eligibility offered by the NCAA to make up for the spring of 2020 lost to the pandemic at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, Fla., an understandable call.
O’Brien was back for the Philly Am, though. O’Brien, Pilliod and Spina were three of the five starters in the St. Joe’s lineup in the 2019 Atlantic Ten Championship at the Grand Cypress Golf Club in Orlando, Fla.
Spina’s victory over Bradbeer, a former Bucknell standout who edged the Cricket Club’s Marty McGuckin, 1-up, in the opening round, was probably the biggest upset of the day, although former Haverford School standout David Hurly of Aronimink Golf Club taking out Matt Mattare of Saucon Valley Country Club, 1-up, in the opening round was quite a surprise.
The Spina-Bradbeer match went off the 10th tee and Spina grabbed a 2-up lead with back-to-back wins at the 13th and 14th holes. Bradbeer, winner of the 2017 Joseph H. Patterson Cup at Wilmington Country Club’s South Course, got one back by taking the 15th hole, Spina restored his 2-up advantage by winning the 16th, but wins by Bradbeer at the 18th hole and at the fifth evened the match with four holes to play.
But Spina again put a nose in front by taking the sixth hole and then grinded out three halves on the final three holes to preserve his 1-up advantage.
Only one player represented St. Joe’s in this spring’s Atlantic Ten Championship and I’m not exactly sure why, although most of those kinds of situations in 2021 seem to be pandemic-related. Still, Spina is clearly playing some good golf.
Some people might be surprised to find that Spina’s quarterfinal opponent will be Phoenixville Country Club’s Morgan Lofland, but I’m not. Lofland will graduate from Conestoga this month if he hasn’t already. His senior season was a disaster with the Central League going back-and-forth on whether to allow its kids to play and then Lofland came down with a mononucleosis-type virus that kept him off the golf course anyway.
Lofland, who had shared the Central League individual title as a sophomore and a junior and was the Class AAA East Regional champion at Golden Oaks Golf Club in the fall of 2019 as a junior, got back in time to help the Pioneers beat arch-rival Radnor and win the Central’s dual-match championship last fall. He will join Greg Nye’s Penn State program later this summer.
Lofland outlasted former North Penn standout Ron Robinson, who completed his college career at Monmouth this spring, in 20 holes in the opening round. Robinson was one of the many players affiliated with LuLu in the match-play bracket at Cedarbrook.
Lofland then cruised to a 4 and 2 decision over Riverton Country Club’s Zach Arsenault in the round of 16 Tuesday afternoon. Arsenault, a Shawnee product, played collegiately at Alvernia and Rutgers-Camden.
It will be a good, old-fashioned City 6 St. Joe’s-Temple battle as Pilliod will square off with the Owls’ Connor McGrath, who plays out of Huntingdon Valley Country Club, in Wednesday morning’s quarterfinals.
Coming off a solid junior season for Brian Quinn’s Temple team, McGrath knocked off 2015 Philly Am runnerup Michael Davis of Merion, 5 and 4, in the opening round. He then edged the stubborn Hurly, 1-up, in Tuesday afternoon’s second round.
Hurly was easy to overlook on a loaded Haverford School team that completed a perfect 30-0 run through the Inter-Ac League’s six invitationals in 2018, but he was a solid, consistent player. He completed his sophomore season at Lehigh this spring. His victory over Mattare, who won both the Philadelphia Open and the Met Amateur Championship in 2017, in the opening round Tuesday certainly shook up the Philly Am bracket.
The favorite might very well emerge from the quarterfinal showdown between the defending champion, Zach Barbin, again playing out of Loch Nairn Golf Club, and LuLu’s Brown.
Barbin backed up his BMW Philadelphia Amateur victory at Lancaster last summer with another GAP major success in the Patterson Cup at The 1912 Club. He’s coming off his junior season at Liberty as he helped the Flames reach the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Barbin began his day with a 3 and 2 victory over Merion’s Patrick Knott and then reached the quarterfinals with a 1-up victory over a stubborn John Peters, the 2020 Pennsylvania Junior Boys’ champion who plays out of Carlisle Country Club. Peters will graduate from Carlisle High this month, if he hasn’t already.
Brown, who owns a couple of GAP major victories in addition to the state amateur crown he claimed at Lookaway Golf Club last summer, cruised to a 5 and 4 victory over Kyle Vance, a two-time District One Class AAA champion at Methacton, in the opening round before holding off fellow LuLu entry O’Brien in Tuesday afternoon’s round of 16.
The final quarterfinal will pit a couple of Little Mill Country Club entries in Jack Irons and Troy Vannucci.
Irons should be graduating from high school this year, but he’s always been tough to keep track of. I’m pretty sure he goes to school in Naples, Fla., but has always come north in the summer and played junior events in this region. Pretty sure he has grandparents in South Jersey.
Irons edged Huntingdon Valley’s Brian Isztwan, whose college career at Harvard has been put on hold for more than a year, 1-up, in the opening round before getting past Nick Fioravante, another LedgeRock entry, in 20 holes in the quarterfinals.
Fioravante, a Berks Catholic product coming off a solid sophomore season at Division III York, knocked off Zach Barbin’s younger brother, Austin Barbin, a junior at Maryland, 1-up in the opening round. Austin Barbin won the GAP Junior Boys’ Championship in 2019.
Vannucci, who teamed with fellow Marlton, N.J. resident Vince Kwon to reach the semifinals of the 2019 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at the Bandon Dunes Resort in Oregon, claimed a 5 and 3 victory over Huntsville Golf Club’s Logan Paczewski, a three-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier who will be a senior at Dallas this fall, in the opening round before claiming a 3 and 1 decision over Huntingdon Valley’s Ben Cooley to reach the quarterfinals.
The quarterfinal winners will square off in the semifinals Wednesday afternoon. The scheduled 36-hole final will be played Saturday.
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