Earlier this week I made the journey to San Francisco”s Olympic Club to take in the stroke play rounds of the 107th annual United States Amateur Golf Championship. My spectator friends included my son Nick, who brought along his upscale camera gear, and longtime Middletown High School golf coach Bob Norris.
A week-long event, the Amateur started out on Monday and Tuesday with 312 golfers playing in a 36-hole stroke play tournament. The contestants alternated those days between the Olympic Club”s famous Lake Course, the site of four U.S. Opens, and its Ocean Course, an outstanding layout in its own right. Following play on Monday and Tuesday, the field was cut to 64 golfers and the remainder of the tournament was played at match play, with the final two golfers playing for the title this Sunday.
I had been to previous U.S. Amateurs at Cog Hill in Chicago and at the Pebble Beach Golf Links and I always contend that the best time to be a spectator at the Amateur is when the entire field is there. True, getting 312 very talented golfers around two courses in one day is a logistical nightmare, especially when you have fog delays like the ones they had in San Francisco on both Monday and Tuesday. But it”s a lot of fun to check out the best of amateur golf. There are a lot of interesting stories at the Amateur and this year was no exception when you consider that the youngest golfer in the field was 14-year-old Anthony Paolucci of Dallas, and the oldest person teeing it up was 60-year-old Mike Bell of Indianapolis.
In early August, 7,398 scratch amateur golfers competed in 36-hole qualifiers throughout the 50 states at 96 sites to get into the U.S. Amateur field. Some of the contestants had to travel a long way as well as go low on the scoreboard to get to San Francisco. A good case in point was Cheng Tsung Pan of Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), who traveled to the qualifier in Warner Springs (CA) and shot 133 (67-66) to make it into the field by two shots. Others, such as the aforementioned Paolucci and Bell, were two of the 30 or so golfers who are exempt into the field, Paolucci as the runner-up in this year”s U.S. Junior, and Bell, as the reigning U.S. Senior Amateur champion.
With the fog delay on Monday morning lasting four hours, the place to be was on the driving range and the practice putting green. The most obvious thought on the range was that the field was heavily weighted with college golfers as evidenced by all the bags that said Vanderbilt, Michigan, SMU and Florida. In fact, it”s interesting that I bring up the University of Florida, because their golf team seems to be following in the same tradition as their national championship football and men”s basketball teams. Five members of the Florida golf team were in the field, including Tyson Alexander, Chappell Brown, Andres Eschavarria, Billy Horschel and Manuel Villegas. Alexander”s dad, Buddy, is also the coach of UF and won the U.S. Amateur in 1986, and Villegas” brother is PGA Tour member Camillo Villegas.
While college golfers carried the day at the Amateur, their little brothers made a noticeable impact upon the field. A total of 49 golfers at the Olympic Club were high-schoolers. And speaking of age, for 28 golfers in the field, the journey to San Francisco was not a new experience. They were in town three years ago when the Olympic Club hosted the 2004 United States Junior.
While the week was all about amateur golf, not everyone in the field has had a lifetime of playing golf for no pay. There were 24 reinstated amateurs in the field, including Jeff Wilson of Suisun, a former PGA Tour professional in the 1980s who played in the Lake County Partners at Buckingham several years ago. Another reinstated amateur at the Olympic Club was Raymond Floyd Jr., the son of the four-time major winner.
With all the talk about kids and college stars, there were a handful of talented linksters who are well within the realm of middle age. The first from this group was S.F. local Randy Haag, a four-time club champion at Olympic. A multiple-time NCGA golfer of the year, Haag and I have played a handful of times at such places as Bodega Harbour and Plumas Lake in Marysville. 2007 marked the seventh time that the 48-year-old Haag has made it into the Amateur field. Haag is also one of four Olympic Club members in the Amateur.
East Coast golfers are very familiar with the golfing skills of George Zahringer of New York City. A stockbroker, the 54-year-old Zahringer has won a handful of national amateur tournaments, including the U.S. Mid Amateur and the Metropolitan. Zahringer was the low amateur in the field this year at the U.S. Senior Open at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin.
Genetics played a bit of a role in this year”s Amateur, with three sets of brothers playing at the Olympic Club. The pair I found most impressive were identical twins Derek and Darryl Fathauer of Jensen Beach, Florida. They were two out of three total golfers who got through the qualifier at Palm City, Florida. Both are entering their senior year at Louisville. Both have played in the 2005 and 2006 Amateur. Both were eliminated after two rounds in 2005 and both got into match play in 2006, only to lose in the first round. This time around, Derek made it into match play and defeated Randy Haag in the first round.
All in all, it was a great golfing road trip for Nick, Bob and me. We saw great shot making. After all, these guys are good, too. We got to walk the fairways at the Olympic Club and failed in our quest to find any clover or weeds on the Lake Course. The interesting theme is that we saw 312 really, really good amateur golfers play at one of America”s most famous courses. For some, it was the highlight of their golfing career and for others it was merely a stepping stone prior to becoming an impact player on the PGA Tour, like past Amateur champions named Palmer, Nicklaus, Mickelson and Woods. And it was a whole lot less crazy than it will be in 2012 when the USGA returns to the Olympic Club for the playing of the United States Open.
