The Lake County Amateur Golf Championship played out last Saturday and Sunday at Adams Springs Golf Course. The Amateur is the granddaddy of local golf tourneys, having first been contested in 1975 when George Hoberg Jr. won the inaugural version against a strong local field at Hidden Valley Lake. There was a special flavor to the Amateur in those days as it rotated back every third year, being played at Hidden Valley Lake, then Buckingham and Clear Lake Riviera, and then Hobergs and Adams Springs.
When I moved to Lake County way back in 1980, I became a semi-regular contestant during the next few years. It”s not that I was skipping the Amateur to play in the Oakland City Amateur or the San Joaquin County Am. Instead, the Lake County Amateur fell upon inconsistent times. It wasn”t played in 1982 and 1983 and then from 1986-1992 it became an increasingly distant memory as none of the area”s five golf courses seemed to want to take it on.
During that time, I was often beating the drums for the return of the Amateur. I could never understand why the Amateur was such a hot potato. It had historically been contested in October, a good-weather month with a limited tourist base. Instead of having 10-20 golfers play on a beautiful autumn weekend, a golf course operator could have a full-field tournament and make a nice profit based upon entry fees, cart rentals and food sales. Nonetheless, no one was willing to host a Lake County Amateur some 25 years ago.
By the time 1992 rolled around, I was an established entity in Lake County golf circles, known as the local high school coach as well as a golfer who wandered far and wide during the summer months. With encouragement from Duke Doucette, the owner of Adams Springs, and Roy Dufrain Sr. of the Lake County Record-Bee, I took the plunge and decided to run the Amateur myself. It was played in late October of 1992 during a beautiful weekend at Adams Springs and Hobergs. An amazing full field of 110 golfers entered, half of them playing one site while the other 55 played at the other course. That order was reversed the following day. The only demand I had as a tournament director was that I made sure that $10 of every entry fee went to junior golf.
Last weekend I served as the tournament director of the Lake County Amateur for the 22nd year in a row. The field was limited to 36 golfers although I”m not complaining as last year we had just 28 contestants. The Great Recession has not been kind to Lake County golfers or to Lake County golf courses, for that matter. Nonetheless, we made some money for junior golf, mainly because most of the flight winners donated their money back to junior golf. Even in tough economic times, local golfers have been very generous to those kids just starting out in the game.
Yet lots of other things have changed in the local golf scene during the past 22 years. Most noticeable is the demise of the scratch or championship flight. Some years there were as many as 40 single-digit handicap golfers in the Amateur field. Some of them have passed on, others have moved away, and still others have distanced themselves from the world of local competitive amateur golf. Of the seven golfers in the scratch flight in this year”s Amateur, three were senior-aged golfers and another is very close. The local golf circuit is populated with senior and net golfers, but very few single-digit amateurs of note.
Winning locally on the scratch level has been difficult for your typical 5-handicap golfer during the Jonathan Carlson-Brad Pendleton decade. During the past eight years, Carlson and Pendleton have been the only ones to have their names engraved on the Amateur”s perpetual trophy. Carlson has recently turned professional after getting into national fields at the U.S. Amateur and a pair of Mid-Amateurs. Pendleton is a former pro who shoots under par on a most consistent basis.
Slow play seems to be more of an issue nowadays on the local amateur golf scene. I remain perplexed by the fact that you can send 36 golfers out in a simultaneous shotgun start and after four hours and 15 minutes, 32 of them are back at the clubhouse. Yet after five hours, there is a sloth-like foursome out on the golf course oblivious to the time or in total denial. When have you ever heard of a slow player who is able to acknowledge that he is slow?
As can be expected, there were a few complaints at this year”s Amateur. While I usually don”t care who wins any of the flights or divisions, I was secretly happy for Jerry Tilton, the senior net champ this weekend. He works hard on his game, he played several practice rounds at Adams Springs prior to the tournament, he has been taking lessons, and he practices daily. I don”t recall him ever winning his flight in a big county tournament. Yet, as one can easily imagine, three golfers came up to me on Sunday, complaining that Tilton was a sandbagger with an inflated handicap. Of course, the whining trio is among Lake County”s bigger sandbaggers of note. I always thought that golfers who live in glass houses shouldn”t throw Top Flites.
The most out-of-bounds complaint was from a golfer who decided to channel his inner Donald Ross and negatively critique the Jack Fleming design of Adams Springs. He thought that all of the crossing creeks at Adams Springs should be covered up, feeling it was wrong to have to hit your ball over water to get to the green. I”m guessing that his ball found the creeks a few times this past weekend. Perhaps they should cover up the Pacific Ocean at Cypress Point”s famed 16th hole or, better yet, fill in the pond surrounding the island green at the 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass. Right now C.B. Macdonald is rolling over in his grave.
The 2013 Lake County Amateur is now in the record books. Brad Pendleton is the overall champ for the fourth straight year. Leonard Lea is the senior winner, Jim DeCristofaro is the net champion and, as earlier stated, Jerry Tilton is the senior net winner. As for me, I”m already planning for next year, hoping for a few more entries, a few less complaints, and a faster pace of play.
