Lorne Rubenstein | |
Amateurs With More Than Hope
January 19, 2006
The best field this week isn't out in the California desert playing the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. Nope. The best field is playing the Southern International Four-Ball Championship at the Mayacoo Lakes Country Club near Palm Beach.
Sure, it's an amateur tournament. But check out the field. The first round was played on Tuesday.
U.S. Amateur champion Vinny Giles, now a player agent, and his partner Barry Van Gerbig, a major figure down the road at the Seminole Golf Club, took the lead. Well, they took the lead in the senior division anyway.
The team shot five-under 66 on an old-school course with narrow, tree-lined fairways and tiny, pop-up greens. The round was impressive, given the 25 miles per hour wind.
Meanwhile, Rocky Costa of Alpharetta, Georgia and Robbie Dew, formerly of Toronto and now of Atlanta and Jupiter, were co-leaders in the Mid-Am division, from a few hundreds yards back of where the seniors were playing. They shot 68 to tie Iowan Gene Elliott and fellow midwesterner Robert Gerwin, from Cincinnati.
Now, some of these names might not be familiar to you, but you'll know more than a few I'll soon mention.
Photo © Al Messerschmidt/Wire Image | |
Vinny Giles still show the same intensity he used to show when he would occasionally compete against the top pros. |
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First I'd like to say this: Just about everybody in the tournament seems to be deeply hooked into golf. Dew, for example, is a part-owner of the enjoyable and always well-maintained Abacoa Golf Club in Jupiter. Then there's Doc, yes, Dr. Bob Rotella, sports psychologist to many tour golfers and author of a variety of best-selling books, such as Golf is Not a Game of Perfect, Golf is a Game of Confidence, and his latest, The Golfer's Mind: Play to Play Great.
Trip Kuehne's been great, and he knows about confidence. He's one of the world's best amateurs. Kuehne, 33, chose to stay an amateur and he's in the investment business in Dallas. Kuehne, of course, was beaten by none other than Tiger Woods in the finals of the 1994 U.S. Amateur at the Tournament Players Club in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
Photo © Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images | |
Trip Kuehne has had plenty of success as an amateur since losing to Tiger woods in the 1994 U.S. Amateur finals. |
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Then there's Buddy Marucci. Woods beat Marucci, who owns a few car dealerships around Philadelphia, in the finals of the 1995 U.S. Amateur in Newport, Rhode Island. Marucci's a member at Seminole, Pine Valley and Merion, and these are but three of the many fine clubs to which he belongs.
The list goes on in this top-flight field at a tournament that the Southern Golf Association conducts.
By the way, the 100th Southern Amateur will take place this summer. I learned that when I ran into Larry Guest, a former writer in Orlando who does some media work with the Southern Golf Association. Guest is proud of the SGA.
Back to the field.
Hey, there's Allan Strange, the identical twin of that two-time U.S. Open champion Curtis Strange. Danny Green, Kuehne's partner, is over there. Green's a Tennessean who finished second in the 1998 U.S. Amateur and won the 1999 U.S. Mid-Amateur. In the tradition of first-rate amateurs who have lost to top players who went on to become successful tour pros, Green lost to Sergio Garcia in the third round of that 1998 U.S. Amateur.
Photo © J.D. Cuban/Getty Images | |
Buddy Marucci is also best known for his loss to Tiger Woods in an Amateur final, but has had a great amateur career since then. |
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Down the list of players we continue. Downing Gray is an SGA director who has been a tremendous amateur competitor for probably more years than he cares to remember. He captained the winning 1999 U.S. Walker Cup team.
John Harris was a tour pro during the mid to late 1970s who got his amateur status back in 1983. Good choice. The Minnesotan won the 1993 U.S. Amateur and has played in at least a couple of U.S. Opens.
David Abell can also play. He was one of the top juniors in the world many moons ago, and now he plies his amateur golf skills as a member at Seminole and the Macarthur Golf Club up the road in Hobe Sound, Florida, which Tom Fazio designed with input from Nick Price. Abell is Price's business manager. You look at him over the ball and you figure he can't miss a shot, his posture is so solid and his swing so sound.
In the field, too, is Ken Bowden. Bowden's been Jack Nicklaus's amanuensis for years. He worked with Nicklaus on many of his books, including his recent autobiography My Story. Bowden plays much of his golf at the Loxahatchee Golf Club in Jupiter, which Nicklaus designed and recently reworked. Bowden's partner at Mayacoo is Pandel Savic, who lives at Loxahatchee and is one of Nicklaus's closest pals.
Photo © Craig Jones/Getty Images | |
Danny Green is Trip Kuehne's partner this week. |
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Alan Fadel is also at Mayacoo. Fadel's been trying to get a tournament off the ground in his home state of Ohio where all players would use the same ball. He's passionate that no matter a player's clubhead speed, he shouldn't get more relative distance out of a ball than any other player. That is, Fadel believes the incremental distance gained should be the same across the range of swing speeds. Fadel, by the way, is a member at the Inverness Club in Toledo, where he runs the popular Inverness Four-Ball tournament.
We come to Fadel's partner, Eoghan O'Connell. Here's a former Walker Cupper for Great Britain and Ireland who plays to something like a plus-four handicap. O'Connell is the managing partner at The Fox Club in Palm City, Florida, which Darren Clarke had a hand in improving recently; as mentioned, the players in the Southern International Four-Ball are connected. How about Tim Jackson, the winner of the 1994 U.S. Mid-Amateur and the 1998 North and South at Pinehurst #2? Do you think he has trouble finding a game at any of the must-play courses in the U.S., or anywhere?
Let's keep going. Here's Paul Quigley, PGA Tour pro Brett's father. Here's Jack Vardaman, a 65-year-old lawyer from Washington who belongs to Congressional. Vardaman was the USGA's senior counsel from 1998 until 2004, which seems right for a graduate of Harvard Law School who is also a keen and accomplished golfer.
Photo © Steve Grayson/Wire Image | |
If it is an important amateur event you can count on John Harris being in the field. |
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We shouldn't forget, oh, Steve Nicklaus, Jack's son. He's here as well. So is Jerry Greenbaum, an Atlantan who plays amateur tournament after amateur tournament. If you want to find golfers, check out some of his restaurants, including The Tavern at Jupiter and New York Prime in Boca Raton.
Personally, I can't forget Ned Steiner. Ned's one of my closest pals, and I met him, of course, at a tournament in Florida years ago. He put me up at his place during the 1993 PGA Championship at Baltusrol Golf Club and we've been pals since. Ned's on the Round Table at Redtail Golf Course in St. Thomas, Ontario, as is Fadel. He belongs to the very cool and very good Mountain Ridge club in West Caldwell, New Jersey, which Donald Ross designed.
I wandered out to the course to find Ned. He and his partner Mike Thorp were on the 16th green, at one-under par in the high winds. Ned had a putt from 30' for birdie while Thorp, no doubt still beaming from having just been admitted as a Seminole member, watched from the back of the green. Ned two-putted, they parred the 17th, and then Ned was on his own on 18 after Thorp, who had played beautifully for the first 15 holes, was in his pocket after an errant drive.
The 18th at Mayacoo was playing 407 yards dead into the wind. Ned had 165 to the green for his second shot, over water to a front pin. The shot was playing about 185 yards. Just before he set up, Ned said, "I'd better hit a good one here or else we're going down the tubes."
Photo © Andrew Redington/Getty Images | |
Steve Nicklaus has picked up a thing or two about competition from his dad. |
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We both chuckled at his thought. "Tiger wouldn't be thinking that, would he?" Ned, who has played in four U.S. Amateurs and with Nicklaus and Tom Kite holds the back nine tournament record of 29 at Baltusrol's South course, said. "Maybe I should see Rotella." Ned's 4-iron ballooned a bit, and plopped into the water. He did make the double-bogey, though. He and Thorp were in at one-over par, still a decent score given the conditions.
Another day, another tournament round. Some of these guys were in a tournament at the Dye Preserve not far away last week. They were in a one-day tournament on Jan. 15th at the new Old Palm course just up the road that Ray Floyd designed. Now it's the Southern International Four-Ball. They'll play the Coleman at Seminole, the Crump Cup at Pine Valley, the U.S. Amateur, Mid-Amateur, and Senior Amateur. Some will qualify for the U.S. Open and Senior Open. They'll play in the R&A championships.
Some group, some field. You take the Hope. I'll take the hope the amateurs cling to, and their commitment to golf the way it was long before there were pro tours. The show's at Mayacoo this week, and it's a good one.
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