Applebrook's McNabb in the midst of some more major moments

    A lot of news out of the Philadelphia Section PGA to catch up with …

   Dave McNabb, the head pro at Applebrook Golf Club, might be 56 years old, but he remains one of the Philadelphia Section PGA’s best players of any age.

   McNabb got a chance to tee it up in one PGA Tour Champions major championship over the Memorial Day weekend and is preparing to compete in another later this month.

   McNabb, the reigning two-time Robert “Skee” Riegel Senior Player of the Year in the Philadelphia Section, had earned his place in the field for last weekend’s KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship at the Harbor Shores Resort in Benton Harbor, Mich. by finishing in 14^th place in last fall’s Senior PGA Professional Championship at the PGA Golf Club’s Wanamaker Course in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

   And there he was on the leaderboard in the early going at Harbor Shores as he offset bogeys at the first and eighth holes with birdies at three, four, five, seven and nine and was 3-under par when he made the turn for the back nine. McNabb struggled a little on his way to the clubhouse, making a triple bogey at the 13^th hole and bogeys at 15, 16 and 18 and finished with a 3-over 74.

   McNabb couldn’t get it going in Friday’s second round as he added an 81 to his solid opening round and missed the cut with a 13-over 155 total. The cut fell at 4-over 146.

   The low club pro was Tracy Phillips, the 59-year-old head of instruction at Cedar Ridge Country Club in Broken Arrow, Okla. whose final round of 1-over 72 was his worst round of the week as he finished in a tie for 17^th place with a 5-under 279 total. Seven of the 39 club pros in the field made the cut.

   A little more than a week before McNabb teed it up in the Senior PGA Championship, he secured himself a starting time for the U.S. Senior Open, which gets under way June 23 at Saucon Valley Country Club’s Old Course in Bethlehem, by carding a 1-under 70 in a qualifier administered by the Golf Association of Philadelphia May 19 at Doylestown Country Club.

   Medalist honors went to former PGA Tour performer Matt Gogel of Mission Hills, Kan. who went shopping for a qualifier, saw “classic William Flynn design” and signed up.

   The 51-year-old Gogel, a part-time PGA Tour Champions player, found Doylestown to his liking as he recorded a solid 2-under 69 over the 6,514-yard, par-71 layout.

   McNabb got the putter going, particularly during a stretch on the back nine when he rolled in a 20-footer for par on the 367-yard, par-4 12^th hole, a 30-footer for birdie at the 193-yard, par-3 13^th and a six-footer for birdie at the 499-yard, par-5 14^th.

   McNabb had started off the 10^th tee and was able to get it in under par by sinking a pair of eight-foot par putts on his last two holes, the 298-yard, par-4 eighth and the 531-yard, par-5 ninth.

   That last putt was followed by a bear hug for McNabb’s longtime caddy, Donny Wessner, who, I’m pretty sure, is the caddiemaster at Applebrook. Team McNabb will be together again in front of some of the home folk at Saucon Valley’s Old Course, which is hosting the U.S. Senior Open for a third time, but its first since 2000.

   “He’s been my guy for years,” McNabb told the GAP website in reference to his longtime looper, who clearly had a pretty green-reading day at Doylestown. “He’s as big a part of this as I am. That is going to be our ninth major championship together. I’m looking forward to it.

   “I’ve never played the Old Course. Obviously, Saucon Valley is a great spot. I’ve got a couple Applebrook members who I’m sure I could coerce into taking me up there. It being close to home, it will be nice to have my family there. It will be a special event.”

   McNabb played in the 2017 U.S. Senior Open at Salem Country Club in Salem, Mass. His appearance at Harbor Shores last week was his second straight in the Senior PGA Championship.

   Had a chance to chat up Mimi Griffin, the executive director of the U.S. Senior Open at Saucon Valley, in April for an article in Tri-State Golfer, which should be showing up in pro shops in the next week or so. Griffin and her company, MSG Promotions, Inc., have been promoting the U.S. Open for the USGA since 1995.

   Griffin has some really neat stuff planned at Saucon Valley for the U.S. Senior Open. It sounds like there’s a chance you’ll have more fun at a golf tournament than you ever possibly imagined if you take a run up the Northeast Extension to Bethlehem.

   Also punching his ticket to the U.S. Senior Open at Saucon Valley in the qualifier at Doylestown was Charlie Bolling, winner of the 1978 BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship at Philmont Country Club’s North Course back in his days as a member at Gulph Mills Golf Club.

   The 64-year-old Bolling, an instructor at Glen Cove Golf Course in Glen Cove, N.Y., matched par with a 71 at Doylestown.

   Surviving a 4-for-1 playoff for the final berth to the U.S. Senior Open out of Doylestown was Michael Muehr of McLean, Va. If you were hanging out at the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Stonewall, you might recall that Muehr was a co-medalist in qualifying for match play. Looks like he has since turned pro.

   A day earlier, another Philadelphia Section PGA pro, Mike Molino of the Country Club of Scranton, punched his ticket to Saucon Valley as he made a birdie on the third hole of a 3-for-1 playoff for the final berth in a qualifier at Indiana Country Club in western Pennsylvania. Molino registered a solid 3-under 68 to get into the playoff.

   McNabb had tuned up for the U.S. Senior Open qualifier by finishing in sixth place in the Senior division and in a tie for 14^th overall with a 3-over 74 in the Delaware Valley Open, held May 9 at another Flynn classic, Rolling Green Golf Club in Springfield, Delaware County.

   The victory in the Rolex/Haverford Trust Company points tournament on the Philadelphia Section circuit went to Terry Hertzog, the head of instruction at Merion Golf Club, as he prevailed on the third hole of a playoff with Alex Knoll, an instructor at Glen Brook Golf Club.

   Hertzog, another of the Philadelphia Section’s deep stable of senior standouts, birdied the third hole of the playoff to claim the victory after he made four birdies to offset a lone bogey in a 3-under 68 over the tough Rolling Green layout, site of the 2016 U.S. Women’s Amateur Championship.

   It was also the first in a series of qualifiers for the Silvercrest Cup, a new series for the Philadelphia Section pros that will culminate with a lucrative season-ending event at Gulph Mills Golf Club with a total purse of $30,000. The Silvercrest Asset Management Group is an investment adviser providing asset management and family office services to high net-worth individuals and select institutional investors.

   There are bonus payouts for wins in one of the qualifiers and Hertzog picked up an additional $3,000 from the Silvercrest Cup bonus pool for his Delaware Valley Open win.

   It appears Braden Shattuck, who starred scholastically at Sun Valley, has moved from Bidermann Golf Club to the pro shop at Rolling Green and Shattuck finished in third place on his new home course with a 2-under 69.

   Shattuck was the runnerup to his then fellow Bidermann instructor Zac Oakley in the Rolex/Haverford Trust Company points race in 2021.

   Another of the Philadelphia Section’s top senior players, Dave Quinn of Laurel Creek Country Club, took fourth place with a 1-under 70. Quinn matched McNabb’s feat a year ago as he represented the Philadelphia Section in both the Senior PGA Championship at Southern Hills Country Club and in the U.S. Senior Open at Omaha Country Club in Omaha, Neb.

   Joanna Coe, who has joined Hertzog as an instructor at Merion this year, matched par with a 71 to finish fifth overall and first in the Women’s division.

   Coe, a Mays Landing, N.J. native, was the top woman player in the Middle Atlantic Section while working as an instructor at Baltimore Country Club. She was the winner of the inaugural Women’s PGA Professional Player of the Year Award in 2019.

   Hertzog also topped the Senior division with his 68 with Quinn earning runnerup honors with his 70.

  Hugo Mazzalupi, who has moved to the pro shop at Linfield National Golf Club after selling Patriots Glen National Golf Club, and Bill Walker of Riverton Country Club shared third place in the Senior division, each matching par with a 71.

   John DiMarco of The Legacy Club at Woodcrest finished atop the Super Senior division with a 2-over 73. Greg Farrow, the veteran head pro at Deerfield Country Club, was the runnerup with a 5-over 76.

   Knoll captured top honors in the concurrent Philadelphia Assistants’ Organization (PAO) event at Rolling Green with his 68. Trevor Bensel of Sandy Run Country Club and Rusty Harbold of Philadelphia Cricket Club shared runnerup honors, each posting a 2-over 73.

   The Delaware Valley Open was supported by Jack Jolly and Son, Jani-King, Kevin McClellan Golf Sales, Mizuno, Ohana Farm, LLC and the PGA Tour.

   The second Silvercrest Cup qualifying event, the TaylorMade Classic, scheduled to be held May 16 at Cedarbrook Country Club, was washed out by some drenching thunderstorms.

   The TaylorMade Classic, sponsored by TaylorMade, was also supported by Jani-King, Kevin McClellan Golf Sales, Ohana Farm, LLC, the Silvercrest Asset Management Group, Fore2Feet, Import Powder and the PGA Tour.

   Tuesday, Mazzalupi had the hot hand as he made eight birdies on his way to a 5-under 66 at North Hills Country Club as he claimed a victory in the Connelly Cup Head Professional Championship.

   Mazzalupi made three straight birdies to jump-start his round at the second, third and fourth holes and the birdies kept coming at six, eight, 10, 12 and 15. The eight birdies offset bogeys at the seventh, 14^th and 17^th holes.

   McNabb, coming off his trip to Harbor Shores for the Senior PGA Championship, earned runnerup honors with a 3-under 68.

   Andrew Barbin, the head pro at the Chesapeake Bay Golf Club at Rising Sun, finished in third place with a 1-over 72.

   Rich Steinmetz of Spring Ford Country Club, John Cooper of Green Valley Country Club and George Forster of Radnor Valley Country Club shared fourth place, each landing on 2-over 73.

   The event, limited to the Philadelphia Section’s head professionals, is named for Jack Connelly, a past president of the PGA of America and the Philadelphia Section PGA. Connelly was on hand to present the trophy to Mazzalupi.

   The Senior division leaderboard nearly matched the overall outcome with Mazzalupi leading the way, McNabb finishing second and Steinmetz, Cooper and Forster sharing third place.

   The Connelly Cup head Professional Championship was supported by Earth Networks, Bushnell Golf and the PGA Tour.

 

 

Coody twins come through in Final Match as Texas edges Arizona State to claim national championship

    Texas’ Coody twins, Pierceson and Parker, were missing from the Longhorns’ lineup when the spring portion of the wraparound 2021-2022 season got started in February.

   Turned out the twins had each broken the same bone in their arm during a resistance training exercise during the midseason pause in December. In stories about the twin bad break for Texas, there were the predictable references that maybe they were taking the twin thing a little too far.

   The good news was that the twin grandsons of 1971 Masters champion Charles Coody from Plano, Texas were going to be able to recover in time to tee it up when the postseason got going in April.

   And there they were Wednesday, delivering two critical points as Texas, ranked seventh in the latest Golfstat rankings, edged No. 4 Arizona State, 3-2, in the NCAA Championship’s Final Match just miles from the Sun Devils’ campus at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.

   For the trio of the Coodys and fellow senior Cole Hammer, who dealt with a loss in the Final Match to Stanford in 2019 as freshmen, a global pandemic that shut down college golf in 2020, a disappointing 2021 season and the twin breaks suffered by the Coodys, playing in front of a partisan crowd was the least of their worries.

   Parker Coody put the first point on the board for the Longhorns Wednesday with a 6 and 5 victory over James Loew, a senior from Singapore. It capped a huge week for Parker Coody, who lost in a playoff for the individual title in stroke play and won two of his three matches in match play.

   That helped ease the sting a little when it became apparent that Hammer, a Houston native and No. 13 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), was coming up short in the leadoff match against Mason Andersen, a fifth-year player from Chandler, Ariz. and No. 61 in the WAGR, Anderson ultimately claiming a 3 and 2 victory that evened the overall tally at 1-1.

   Pierceson Coody, No. 4 in the WAGR, probably had the toughest assignment of the day in trying to cool off Preston Summerhays, a freshman from the golfing Summerhays family of Scottsdale and No. 86 in the WAGR.

   All Summerhays did in Tuesday’s quarterfinals and semifinals was to knock off two of the best players in college golf, Fred Haskins Award winner Chris Gotterup of Oklahoma and Joe Highsmith of Pepperdine.

   But Pierceson Coody, always the higher-ranked of the twins throughout his college career, gutted out a critical 2 and 1 victory.

   With Mason Nome, a junior from Houston, locked in a tight battle with Arizona State’s David Puig, a senior from Spain and No. 9 in the WAGR, the spotlight fell on Texas junior Travis Vick, another Houstonian and No. 27 in the WAGR, in the anchor match with the Sun Devils’ Cameron Sisk, a senior from Sam Diego and No. 42 in the WAGR.

   When Sisk left his birdie putt, a trickly downhill slider, half a roll short on the 17^th hole, it enabled Vick to take a 1-up lead to the 18^th hole.

   I’ve met golf people who watched Vick playing in the U.S. Junior Amateur in 2018 at Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J. and became instant fans of a kid who plays the game with an aggressive edge.

   When Vick bombed his approach shot from 190 yards away onto the green at the last at the 7,289-yard, par-70 Grayhawk layout and Sisk found a greenside bunker, victory was withing Texas’ grasp.

   Vick lagged his 25-foot birdie putt perfectly to gimme range and Texas had its fourth national championship and second under veteran head coach John Fields, who won a national title a decade ago in 2012 with Jordan Spieth.

   Puig would gain a second full point for Arizona State when his match with Nome was conceded on the 19^th hole after Vick clinched the win for the Longhorns.

   Fields was understandably happy for his trio of seniors, Hammer and the Coodys who had reached the Final Match in 2019 as freshmen at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark. and just kept battling to reach their ultimate goal.

   “They arrived with incredible enthusiasm, maybe not the experience that we needed that week, but they got there because of the enthusiasm that they had,” Fields told the Texas website, referring to the loss to Stanford at The Blessings. “Now, they’ve added the experience and they still have the enthusiasm. They’ve done the hard work, they’ve done the heavy lifting and now they’re national champions.”

 

Arizona State, Texas will meet in Final Match in NCAA Championship at Grayhawk

    They were third-place finishers in their respective conference championships last month, but nobody ever doubted that the Pac-12’s Arizona State and the Big 12’s Texas were national championship contenders.

   The Sun Devils, playing less than 10 miles from their campus, and the Longhorns were the last two teams standing Tuesday after a wildly entertaining quarterfinal-semifinal day in the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.

   Arizona State and Texas will meet in the Final Match Wednesday with the winner claiming an NCAA crown.

   Arizona State was pretty comfortable playing at home at Grayhawk a year ago before falling to Oklahoma in the semifinals. The Sun Devils had grabbed the top seed in match play by finishing at the top of the heap in stroke play a year ago.

   The Sun Devils, No. 4 in the latest Golfstat rankings, were able to avenge that loss in Tuesday morning’s quarterfinals with a 3-2 victory over the top-ranked Sooners, the Big 12 champions.

   In the afternoon semifinals, Arizona State knocked off defending national champion Pepperdine, the West Coast Conference champion that was ranked sixth, 4-1, to advance to the Final Match.

   The difference? It might very well have been Scottsdale’s own, Preston Summerhays of the golfing Summerhays family.

   The freshman, No. 84 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), began his day by dismantling Oklahoma’s Chris Gotterup, a redshirt senior from Little Silver, N.J. and No. 27 in the WAGR, 7 and 5. Gotterup had just found out that he had been named the winner of the Fred Haskins Award, presented by Stifel, that goes to the top player in Division I college golf.

   In the afternoon, Summerhays won five straight holes to put Pepperdine’s Joe Highsmith, a senior from Lakewood, Wash. and No. 19 in the WAGR, in a 5-down hole, watched Highsmith battle all the way back to tie the match at the 16^th and the kid was so rattled he won the last two holes to give Arizona State a critical point with a 2-up victory.

   If you watched Summerhays win the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship at The Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio in 2019, you saw this coming.

   Mason Andersen, a graduate student from Chandler, Ariz. and No. 61 in the WAGR, got another big point for Arizona State against Pepperdine as he made a birdie on the 19^th hole to edge Dylan Menante, a junior from Carlsbad, Calif. and No. 15 in the WAGR.

   Menante dropped in a birdie putt right on top of Andersen’s birdie on the 18^th hole to send the match to extra holes.

   David Puig, a senior from Spain and No. 9 in the WAGR, picked up another point for the Sun Devils in the semifinals as he edged Joey Vrzich, a redshirt senior from El Cajon, Calif. and No. 54 in the WAGR, 2 and 1.

   Cameron Sisk, a senior from San Diego and No. 40 in the WAGR, came up with his second big point of the day for the Sun Devils as he claimed a 2 and 1 decision over Derek Hitchner, a senior from Minneapolis, Minn. and No. 72 in the WAGR.

   Andersen, Puig and Sisk were all in the lineup for Arizona State in its 3-2 loss to Oklahoma in the semifinals a year ago.

   Pepperdine’s lone point in the semifinals came from William Mouw, a junior from Chino, Calif. and No. 70 in the WAGR, as he earned a 3 and 2 victory over James Loew, a senior from Singapore.

   Menante, Highsmith, Vrzich and Mouw were all in the lineup for the Waves’ 3-2 victory over Oklahoma in the Final Match a year ago at Grayhawk.

   It has been three years since a young Texas team took out powerful Oklahoma State, which was looking for a second straight NCAA crown, in the semifinals before falling to a veteran Stanford team in the Final Match at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark.

   Cole Hammer, a senior from Houston and No. 13 in the WAGR, and Pierceson Coody, a senior from Plano, Texas and No. 3 in the WAGR, were both members of that team and both picked up big points in the Longhorns’ 3.5-1.5 semifinal win over Southeastern Conference champion Vanderbilt Tuesday.

   It has been a long and winding road for Hammer since that NCAA postseason of three springs ago. He has twice represented the United States in the Walker Cup Match, both wins for the Red, White & Blue.

   Hammer and Pierceson Coody were both members of the U.S. team that defeated Great Britain & Ireland, 14-12, a year ago in the rare spring edition of the Walker Cup Match held at the iconic Seminole Golf Club, the Donald Ross masterpiece in Juno Beach, Fla.

   The timing might have hindered Texas’ postseason chances, although nobody was complaining about representing the U.S. in international competition. The Longhorns had their sights set on a long postseason run in the spring of 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic shut down the college golf season.

   Vanderbilt came to the semifinals on a roll. After winning the always contentious SEC Championship with its match-play format mimicking the NCAA Championship, the Commodores won the team title in the Palm Beach Regional.

   Vanderbilt’s Gordon Sargent, a freshman from Birmingham, Ala. and No. 14 in the WAGR, won the NCAA individual crown in a playoff Monday as the Commodores earned the top seed in a tiebreaker after sharing the top spot in the team competition with Oklahoma and North Carolina.

   Vanderbilt, with Sargent claiming a 3 and 1 victory over Baard Skogen, a sophomore from Norway, knocked off Texas’ Big 12 rival Texas Tech, 3-2 in Tuesday morning’s quarterfinals.

   But in seventh-ranked Texas, Vanderbilt might have run into the one team uniquely qualified to defeat the Commodores.

   Hammer, with a tremendous amount of match-play experience in the bank, got the first point for the Longhorns with a 4 and 3 victory over Sargent, the newly minted NCAA individual champion.

   Travis Vick, the tremendously talented junior from Houston and No. 26 in the WAGR, claimed a 4 and 3 victory over Reid Davenport, a senior from Austin, Texas and No. 41 in the WAGR.

   Moments later, Pierceson Coody finished the job by completing a 3 and 2 victory over Cole Sherwood, a sophomore and another Austin guy, who is No. 45 in the WAGR.

   Parker Coody, Pierceson’s twin brother, dropped a hard-fought 1-up decision to William Moll, a junior from Houston, to account for Vanderbilt’s full point. The Coody twins are the grandsons of 1971 Masters champion Charles Coody.

   Parker Coody, though, had been Texas’ best player at Grayhawk as he was one of the three players who lost in the playoff to Sargent for the individual title Monday.

   Texas’ Mason Nome, a junior from Houston, got a half-point for the Longhorns as he battled Harrison Ott, a fifth-year player from Brookfield, Wis., to a draw.

   It was hard to imagine a scenario in which neither of the Oklahoma teams, the No. 1 Sooners, nor No. 2 Oklahoma State, made the semifinals.

   While Arizona State was taking out Oklahoma in Tuesday morning’s quarterfinals, Texas was knocking off Oklahoma State, its ancient Big 12 rival, 3-2.

   Parker Coody picked up a huge point with his 3 and 2 victory over Bo Jin, a sophomore from China and No. 29 in the WAGR. Jin had been the runnerup in the individual chase a year ago at Grayhawk and was the runnerup to Summerhays in the 2019 U.S. Junior Amateur at Inverness.

   Hammer did his thing, claiming a 3 and 2 victory over another tough customer in the Cowboys’ Aman Gupta, a senior from Concord, N.C. and No. 58 in the WAGR.

   After Oklahoma State’s Eugenio Chacarra, a senior from Spain and No. 4 in the WAGR, pulled the Cowboys even at 2-2 with an emotional 1-up win over Pierceson Coody, it all came down to Nome and his match with Jonas Baumgartner, a sophomore from Germany.

   Nome had built a 4-up advantage only to see Baumgartner battle back to 1-down heading to the ninth tee in the match that started off the 10^th tee. A birdie at the ninth hole gave Baumgartner a 2-up win and sent the Longhorns to the semifinals.

   Much as it had been a week earlier with the women at Grayhawk, there is nothing quite like quarterfinal-semifinal day in the NCAA Championship with all kinds of matches pitting top-100 players in the WAGR.

   The final day of May Madness gives way to the first of June with what figures to be a fascinating match between Arizona State and Texas with an NCAA crown on the line.