A year ago, Drue Nicholas had just walked in his graduation at Drexel when he claimed the title in the BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship at Aronimink Golf Club.
It was just the beginning of one of the more dominant summers of golf on the Golf Association of Philadelphia circuit in recent memory. Nicholas added a victory in the Philadelphia Open at Bidermann Golf Course and nearly won the title in the Patterson Cup, falling in a playoff to Aronimink’s Hunter Stetson at Waynesborough Country Club.
Needless to say, GAP’s William Hyndman III Player of the Year award awaited at the end of the season.
Some things have changed since then. Nicholas is gainfully employed in the wealth management business and his home course has changed from Galloway National Golf Club at the Jersey Shore to Merion Golf Club.
What apparently has not changed is that Nicholas is still the best player in GAP. He didn’t play nearly as much golf this spring as he did a year ago when he was finishing up his college career at Drexel, but Nicholas is still playing at a high level.
Confronted by gusty winds and a field filled with talent, Nicholas claimed medalist honors in the 126th BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship Monday with a pair of 69s at Sunnybrook Golf Club and The 1912 Club for a 4-under-par 138 total.
The 6,991-yard, par-72 Sunnybrook layout will be the main site for the Philly Am matches for the first time since 1980. Caddied in qualifying that year on a very wet day at Sunnybrook and Whitemarsh Valley Country Club.
Opening-round matches will be teeing off as I’m finishing up this post. And only eight players will remain at the end of the day after the winners of those first-round matches square off Tuesday afternoon in the round of 16.
The finalists will be determined after quarterfinal and semifinal matches Wednesday. You get the picture, it is a lot of golf, a grueling test to win one of these.
There was a playoff among 10 players for the final nine spots in the 32-player match-play bracket Monday evening. As I’ve often written, you make the top 32 following 36 holes of qualifying at a Philly Am, you’re a player.
Cael Ropietski of Huntsville Golf Club finished a shot behind Nicholas in second place with a 3-under 139 total.
Ropietski, a junior at Marshall, capped an outstanding scholastic career at Lake Lehman by finishing in a tie for second place in the PIAA Class AA Championship in 2023.
Ropietski opened with a solid 1-under 69 at the 6,873-yard, par-70 1912 Club layout, like Sunnybrook, one of the many classic courses that dot the landscape in that area of Montgomery County. He added a 2-under 70 at Sunnybrook in the afternoon.
But nobody was better than Nicholas was.
Playing at Sunnybrook in the morning, Nicholas, who starred scholastically at St. Augustine Prep, got the two par-5s on Sunnybrook’s outgoing nine with birdies at the third and seventh holes. A bogey at the par-3 eighth hole dropped him back to 1-under for the round.
But Nicholas quickly got that shot back when he stuck a 9-iron from 145 yards away at the par-4 10th hole to a foot for a tap-in birdie. When he rolled in a six-foot birdie putt at the par-4 15th hole, Nicholas was able to wrap up his morning’s work at 3-under.
Nicholas got things started on the incoming nine at The 1912 Club – you might remember it as Plymouth Country Club – by reaching the green at the par-5 12th hole in two with a 4-iron and two-putting for birdie.
Nicholas got it to 2-under when his approach at the par-4 17th hole with a 7-iron from 160 yards away left him a five-footer for birdie that he converted.
Back-to-back bogeys at the first and second holes, dropped Nicholas back to even-par for the round, but he got it back in red figures when he finished out a long, long day by sticking a 56-degree wedge from 100 yards away to five feet at the par-4 ninth to five feet and made the birdie putt.
Only two other players besides Nicholas and Ropietski, a couple of GAP’s veteran mid-ams, Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Mark Miller and Scott McNeil, playing out of The 1912 Club these days, finished in red figures for the day as they ended up in a tie for third place with a 1-under 141 total.
Miller, who reached the second round of match play in the Philly Am at Aronimink a year ago, opened with a solid 2-under 70 at Sunnybrook before adding a 1-over 71 in the afternoon at The 1912 Club.
McNeil, a two-time GAP Middle-Amateur Championship winner, opened with a 1-over 71 on his home course before adding a 2-under 70 in the afternoon at Sunnybrook.
A couple of northeast Pennsylvania guys, John Barone, a standout at Temple as a college player and playing out of The 1912 Club, and the Country Club of Scranton’s David Mecca, the 2023 GAP Middle-Am champion, finished in a tie for fifth place, each ending up at even-par 142.
Barone opened with a 1-under 69 on his home course before adding a 1-over 73 in the afternoon at Sunnybrook. Mecca opened with a solid 3-under 69 at Sunnybrook before adding a 3-over 73 in the afternoon at The 1912 Club.
A couple of interesting names among the group of nine players who survived that 10-for-9 playoff for the final spots in the match-play bracket in Huntingdon Valley Country Club’s Patrick Isztwan and Manasquan River Golf Club’s Jeremy Wall.
You had to get it in 4-over for the two rounds just to earn a spot in that playoff.
Isztwan, who starred scholastically at Penn Charter and collegiately at Richmond, lost to Nicholas in the final a year ago in Aronimink, the second time Isztwan reached the final in three years.
Isztwan opened with a 3-over 76 at Sunnybrook and bounced back with a clutch even-par 70 at The 1912 Club in the afternoon.
When Wall captured the BMW Philadelphia Amateur title in 2019 at the Old Course at Stonewall, he became the first player to go back-to-back in the Philly Am since Overbrook Golf Club legend Chris Lange did it in the mid-1990s.
Wall, a college standout at Loyola of Maryland, opened with a 1-over 73 in the morning at Sunnybrook before adding a 3-over 73 in the afternoon at The 1912 Club.
Isztwan and Wall are proven match-play performers.
One more survivor of that playoff at 4-over was Nicholas’ coach at Drexel, Ben Feld, playing, as always, out of Green Valley Country Club.
Feld stepped down as the head coach for the Dragons following Nicholas’ senior season in the spring of 2025. After opening with a 3-over 73 at The 1912 Club, Feld added a solid 1-over 73 in the afternoon at Sunnybrook.
Feld drew Ropietski in the opening round of match play.
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