The final results for the season-long On the Links Golfer of the Year race are in and for the second year in a row Paul Moore of Ukiah is the overall points leader following seven tournaments on the Lake County Amateur Golf Circuit.
Moore, a four-time club champion at Ukiah Municipal Golf Course and a qualifier for the 2006 California State Amateur, won this year”s title by an unheard of 240 points. The distant runner-up just so happened to be this columnist.
Moore opened the 2007 circuit by pairing up with Brian Bechtol of Ukiah to place second in the Lake County Two Man in March. He came in fifth in the Lake County Open against arguably the strongest field of the year. In May, he and the Bechtol brothers finished second at the Lake County Three Man. In early June, Moore teamed up with Joey Fowler of Ukiah to come in second at the NCGA Lake County Partners.
Moore won his first and only circuit event of the year in late June, defeating Mike Griggs of Willits in the finals of the Lake County Match Play. He came in second to Jonathan Carlson in the Lake County Amateur on Cobb Mountain in October, and he recorded his fifth runner-up finish of the year at the season-ending Tournament of Champions. Moore entered all seven circuit events, one of only three golfers in the scratch flight to do so this year.
Strange to say, but your faithful golf columnist was the runner-up this year in the race for Golfer of the Year. The reason I put so much doubt into that last phrase is that it”s hard for me to believe with any amount of accuracy that I am the second-best golfer in all of Lake County. It would be somewhat valid to contend that I might be the 22nd-best golfer in the area. In the world of amateur golf, I”m not Avis or, for that matter, the Colorado Rockies, losers of four straight in the World Series. I”m more like the Florida Marlins.
Fact be known, there was nothing special about my year on the Lake County circuit. I played in all seven events and recorded a pair of thirds, a couple of fourths, a pair of fifths, and a 10th-place finish. I played well enough to have won the Lake County Open, the Lake County Amateur and the TOC had I chosen to play in the senior division. Instead, I spent my year competing against the likes of Moore, Griggs, Juan Lopez of Finley, John Seed of Gualala, Craig Kinser of Lakeport and the rest of the championship flight linksters of note. I was an also-ran, a mere afterthought. Still, I ended up second best.
What happened to the championship flight of the Lake County Amateur Golf Circuit, the place where Gary Bagnani, Charles Creecy, Mike Lemmon and Brels Solomon were the featured performers in previous years? In a nutshell, some very good golfers play in a couple of tournaments annually and then spend the rest of their competitive year playing in the NCGA and USGA events. Jonathan Carlson of Buckingham and Ryan Sperry of Ukiah come immediately to mind. Carlson played in the State Am and U.S. Mid-Amateur. When he teed it up in the Lake County Amateur, he crushed the opposition. Sperry, a student on the golf team at Grand Canyon University, played in the U.S. Amateur and ran away from the rest of the field at the Lake County Partners.
J.J. McMillen, the North Bay League golfer of the year out of Ukiah High School, won the Lake County Open and the Partners with Sperry. He spent the remainder of his year competing in junior tourneys throughout the state. Doug Quinones of Middletown and Fowler did the same.
Outside of Moore, Berry and the No. 3 players on the points list, Kelseyville High School all-conference golfer Nick Schaefer, no one locally played in more than five circuit events in 2007. Whether it was family commitments, the demands of the job or in a couple of obvious cases, a mental block about competition, there is not a solid contingent of local golfers who consistently play in scratch flight events. It is true of the Lake County Golf Circuit and it was sadly evident at this year”s NCGA Hidden Valley Lake Amateur when only seven golfers entered the scratch flight.
That is not to infer that there aren”t good golfers locally. The NCGA also came out with its rankings for amateur golf in 2007 and a contingent of Lake County and Mendocino County golfers made the list.
Carlson made the best showing, winning three times and coming in 55th; Sperry was 231st; Lopez finished 243rd; McMillen 283rd and Jack Streeter of Hidden Valley was 309th; Moore and Fowler were 357th; Quinones was 411th; and Schaefer and yours truly were 609th. At least I got a free year of USGA membership for playing 36 holes in one day in 105-degree heat at the USGA Public Links Qualifier. Finally, Craig Kinser was ranked 146th on the senior list.
Now that the 2007 season has come to a close, the final top-10 listing on the county circuit includes Moore, Berry, Schaefer, Lopez, Griggs, McMillen, Kinser, Seed, Fowler and Carlson. Of interest is that Griggs, McMillen and Fowler played just two events, and Carlson entered but one.
The most obvious fact of the matter is that while the Lake County Amateur Golf Circuit strongly appeals to net golfers, seniors and kids, there is very little competition of note in the championship flight, the area where the single-digit handicappers compete. Moore is a very talented golfer and is very deserving of Golfer of the Year honors for 2007, but in comparison and contrast, his player-performance point total is the lowest first-place total since the circuit expanded to seven events in 1997.
Then again, it”s not Moore”s fault that he played in smaller-than-usual fields this year. After all, he had a pretty easy time beating all those golfers who failed to enter.
