Last Saturday, I was up before 5 a.m. and on the road prior to 6 a.m. Just over two hours later, I was driving through the front gate at the Bidwell Park Golf Course in Chico, an old-time municipal facility that opened in 1934. That morning I would be competing in the 71st annual Chico City Amateur, a match play tournament that is one of 55 sanctioned point events on the Northern California Golf Association calendar.
From the spring of 1982 (post-knee surgery number three) through the autumn of 1999 (pre-knee surgery number four), I would spend 15-20 weekends on the road, playing in NCGA tournaments from Weed to Atascadero, from Eureka to Lake Tahoe.
Sometimes I”d commute reasonable distances to places such as Marysville, Bodega, Ukiah and Colusa. Other times I”d stay overnight in toddlin” towns such as Manteca, McCloud, Susanville and Stockton. And on some occasions, I”d grab a seat on Creecy Airlines and fly first class to Las Positas in Livermore, the only area course I know where you can park the plane closer to the first tee than you can park the car.
During the past seven years I have been strictly a local golfer, competing in two NCGA events per year, the Lake County Partners at Buckingham and the Hidden Valley Lake Amateur. Lake County Circuit events and club events at Adams Springs and Buckingham take up the remaining slots on a very limited schedule.
Teeing it up that morning in Chico, it all seemed the same to me as it once did in 1985 or 1995. Now, however, I was one of the really old guys in the field. In fact, except for Carl Selkirk of Chico, a 59-year-old former PGA Senior Tour pro who is best known locally for having lost to Gary Bagnani in a playoff at the NorCal Senior in 2002, I was the oldest guy there.
In the foursome just ahead of me was the familiar face of Jonathan Carlson, a former Kelseyville High and Point Loma University golfer as well as a three-time NCGA winner this summer. Carlson has 143 NCGA points at this moment and is ranked in the top 25.
My foursome included Brennan Ramey, a 17-year-old Tracey High School senior who qualified for the NCGA Junior this past summer; Jeff Fowler, a 20-year-old Chico State golf team member; and John Jaramello of Santa Rosa, a 40-something who has won the Chico City Amateur a record eight times.
Jaramello would play brilliantly on Saturday, carding a 1-under-par 70 to get the fourth seed in the match play portion of the tourney. Brennan would play erratically and shoot a 78, good enough for one of the final seeds in the 32-man field. Fowler would post an 80 and miss a playoff for the final two spots by one stroke. Carlson would shoot a safe, steady 74 and get himself the 12th seed.
As for me, I put together a pair of ugly 41s to put an 82 on the board, three beyond the cut line. Bidwell”s greens were victims of the summer heat and I struggled to excess on them. I had five three-putts and during a 10-hole stretch in the middle of my round, I hit all 10 greens in regulation and had a 3-over-par score to show for it. When you line up 10 birdie putts in a row, you expect to make at least two or three of them. Yet instead of gelling into red numbers over that stretch of holes, I was going in the wrong direction.
Nonetheless, I had a great time. It was fun watching the two kids bash 300-yard drives and then hit 60-yard wedges way over the green. Jaramello has always been a pleasure to play with and it was great to reconnect with him again.
My daughter Emily, a sophomore at nearby Butte College, surprised me by showing up to caddy for me. I was touched by her gesture as she looped for 18 holes over five hours for the first time in her life, claiming that the day seemed to fly by too fast. When I was missing all those putts, it seemed more like an eternity than just five hours.
As I headed back to Lake County that afternoon I had lots of thoughts and no real answers. I had had a great time. I really enjoy playing tournament golf, and even with all the rust from the past seven years, I”m not that far removed from hanging in there with all those scratch golfers and college kids.
Being less than two years removed from 55 years of age when I can play senior amateur golf, I want to try to be competitive on that level come 2008. Also, in the back of my mind is the United States Senior Amateur. Although qualifying for a national event is often a crap shoot, I want to put myself in position to try and get into that field. The 2008 Senior Am is at the Donald Ross-designed Beverly Country Club in Chicago, the golf course I worked at for seven years of my youth. My parents still live just two blocks away from Beverly, so my goal would be to walk to the Senior in 2008. That would certainly surprise the security guards at the very private course.
There are other forces tugging at me though. I”d rather watch my son play with the KHS jazz band at the Pear Festival next Saturday than play in the North Coast Amateur at Bodega. I”ll want to watch my daughter”s first basketball game for Butte in Sacramento this November instead of going to the Antioch Amateur. And I”ll barely think about tournament golf once I start coaching the boys” basketball team at Mountain Vista in a couple of months.
On top of that, what about local events? Do I start skipping the Lake County Match Play to go to the Sacramento City Amateur? Do I blow off the Buckingham Club Championship and instead commute daily to Rohnert Park for the Sonoma County Amateur? With the cost of gasoline, I”ll have to think that one through. And if I can”t dominate the golf scene locally, then why go elsewhere to tie for 44th place?
Yet I do want to try and pull all this off. I want to begin my two-year golfing quest for the Senior Am. I want to play in more NCGA events. If only I could make a few more putts …
