The good news from the U.S. Amateur
is that one member of the Philadelphia-area contingent, Amory Davis, from Chadds Ford, made it to match play.
The bad news is, in his first
round match this afternoon, Davis
will face Amateur medalist Jeff Wilson, 47, a car dealer from
Fairfield, Calif., who shot 62 on Monday.
Davis, a
senior at the University
of Virginia, won his berth into match play Wednesday morning, as one of 16
players in a playoff for six spots.
Their match is scheduled to
begin at 2:10 p.m. West Coast time.
In the locals watch of
Philadelphia-area golfers in the U.S. Amateur,after the first of two days of
stroke-play qualifying, two players – AmoryDavis from Chadds Ford and Brian
Belden from Emmaus – are in good position to be among the low 64 who
advance to match play.
Davis, a
senior at the University of Virginia, is the low local, having shot 2-under 70 on The
Home Course, tying him for 11th..Today, he’ll play Chambers
Bay, which will host the match play portion of the Amateur.
Belden, a senior at the University of Kentucky, is tied for 24th after shooting even par
72.He also plays Chambers Bay
today.
Michael Brown, 37, from Cheltenham, winner of the 2010 Philadelphia Open, shot 3-over 75 and
his tied for 97th, along with Brandon
Detweiler, from Akron, Pa., a senior at N.C. State,
who was medalist at local qualifying for the Amateur.
Robert Savarese, from Lafayette Hill, shot 4-over 76 and is tied for
123rd.Marc Mandel, from Conshohocken, shot 6-over
77 at Chambers Bay, leaving him tied for 164th.
Ballamor GC in Egg Harbor Township is
rightfully crowing that nine months after it went public, the course has been
ranked 4th
in New Jersey on Golf magazine’s latest list of Best
Places You Can Play.
The Top
100 nationally and the state-by-state
lists will be published in the September issue of the magazine; it’s already
available on the sister website, Golf.com.
"This comes as a pleasant
surprise," said Ballamor GM Mike Tucci."While we
knew Ballamor
was as good as or even better than some of the other NJ courses, we figured it
might take some time for the word to get out."
Opened in 2001 as a private
club, Ballamor
filed for bankruptcy last fall and reopened Jan. 1 2010 as an upscale daily
fee.
For fans of Pine Valley Golf Club, circle Sunday, Sept. 12 on your calendar.That’s the day of the finals of the 86th Crump Cup.
The George Arthur Crump Cup Memorial Tournament, named for the founder
and main architect of the club, is a four-day competition among a field of top
amateurs.The day of the finals is
the one day of the year that Pine Valley,
near Clementon, N.J., the No. 1
ranked course in the country, throws open its doors to any and all comers.
Here is the pertinent
information for this year’s Crump Cup.
-- Doors open at 1 p.m., Sept. 12.
-- Parking is at the Clementon Lake Amusement Park, 144
Berlin Road, Clementon.Signs will
be posted to direct you to the designated parking area.(Police will not allow parking o East
Atlantic Ave.)
-- Parking is $20 per car, which will include a
shuttle bus ride to the course.
-- The Clementon Youth Athletic Association will set up a refreshment
stand inside the front gate.
-- Video, photographs and cell
phones are not permitted.Do
not bring cameras.
-- In case of inclement
weather, call 856-783-3000, Option4.
For your reading enjoyment, here’s
a tour of the course from GolfClubAtlas.com.Here’s
a good magazine story on the Crump Cup.Photos from last year’s Crump Cup are under Photos on the MyPhillyGolf Home
page.
I don’t know about you but
in the span of about 15 minutes, I went from being totally outraged that Dustin Johnson was getting completely hosed
at the PGA Championship to thinking, in the words of Roberto de Vincenzo, "Whata stupid he is."
How can you come to any
other conclusion, once you’ve seen the CBS video
of Johnson’s tee shot flight path
into what is clearly a bunker?
That,
and the fact that he readily admitted afterward that he hadn’t bothered to read
the Local Rules sheet from the PGA pointing out that every single one
of Whistling Strait’s 1,000 bunkers
would be played as bunkers, not as waste areas, no matter how far off the
beaten path they were.
What happened to Johnson must be tough for him to
swallow but he’s got nobody to blame but himself.
I agree with you up to a point. If the PGA of America was going to declare all of the 1,000-plus bunkers in play, as they did, then they should have kept fans from walking in them. Unfortunately, because of where Pete Dye put so many of the bunkers at Whistling Straits, that’s not practical if you want to have spectators attend the tournament. They have nowhere else to walk.
However, what is inescapable is that the PGA gave a Local Rules sheet to every player declaring the bunkers in play. For competitors, reading that sheet, especially in a major, is Golf 101.
Wolfman Dan
[8/17/2010 7:26:59 AM]
The patrons should not be allowed to stand in the bunkers of the golf course. If so, it should be a waste bunker, and grounding is OK. Try having a patron stand in the bunker at Augusta, and see what happens. Terrible, with terrible outcome. The PGA should be embarrassed.
Three of the top sticks from
the ranks of the Philadelphia PGA
Section are in the field of this week’s final major of the year, the PGA Championship
at Whistling Straits.
They are: Rich
Steinmetz, 38, head from at Spring
Ford CC in Gilbertsville; Mark
Sheftic, 35, teaching pro at Merion
GC in Ardmore; and Stu
Ingraham, 50, teaching pro at M Golf
Range & Learning Center in Harrisburg.
All three are good enough
and sufficiently experienced that it’s not out of the question that any or all
could survive the cut, even if the odds are against it.Twenty club pros are in the field.
For Ingraham, a former PGA Tour player, this is his sixth trip to the PGA Championship; he made the cut in
his last two appearances, in 1993 and 1996.For Steinmetz and
Sheftic, this is their second trip
to the PGA.
Here’s
a story on Steinmetz; here’s
one on all three.