Volunteering at US Senior Amateur in St. Louis

[WUTiger]

On Saturday morning, 156 players teed off in the first-round of 36-hole stroke-play qualifying portion of the US Senior Amateur in St. Louis. The second round is under way today, with the low 64 players going into match play Monday.

OWCC is playing to a 7,061 yard, Par 71. The players had a Thursday practice round, but then lost Friday on-course play to day-long heavy rains. The course was damp Saturday, but had drained really well and had no puddling - just damp rough in a lot of places, especially tracts under the trees.

At end of play Saturday, Joe Lewis of Sewell, NJ and Randal Lewis of Alma, MI were tied at 3-under 68. Six players total finished under par, with seven more at even-par 71. 

My Old Course

I'm a volunteer here for the second time, also having working the US Women's Amateur in 2009. It's the course I caddied from 1968 to 1974. The highlight was when I got to be forecaddie for the 1971 National Golf Day match between Jack Nicklaus and English star pro Tony Jacklin. Nicklaus won. In the women's match, Donna Caponi bested Shirley Englehorn.

I was scheduled to work a shift each on the practice range, and on the ice-and-beverage cart that runs around the course, fills up the drink chest and collects the trash. I also volunteered Saturday - short notice - to be a walking scorer.

Old Warson is hosting its fourth USGA event since 1995. The USGA SrAm site has excellent photographs of the course's holes.

Saturday as Walking Scorer

My wife Shirley and I went to see play on Saturday. I wasn't scheduled to work, but the organizers were short on walking scorers. I volunteered, and got a quick course in how to use the single-piece table with the wi-fi link back to central scoring. I had a check-off card for marking shots during each hole. The card has a space where you can write an identifier remark for the players in our group by their names. Mine was easy: one bright red shirt, one all in black with a TM hat, and one in royal blue striped shirt. After checking off shots on the card, I and then posted the scores on the tablet touchscreen after the hole was over.

The tablet came in a heavy-gauge clear plastic pouch, worn around the neck on a lanyard. The plastic was so thick, however, I had to remove it from the pouch and touch the screen directly. The tablet, as I had been warned, did not sync-up very quickly on the lower elevations of the course.

I'll give more posts as time permits.

[WUTiger]

Practice Range, 6 AM Monday

I arrived pre-dawn at the practice range, the hitting area lit by floodlamps in anticipation of a 7 AM playoff round resolving final slots for match play.

As it turns out, the 36-hole score of 151 (+9) broke right at the 64th player; no playoff was needed. So, my two co-workers and I really had no customers until 7:15 AM, when the sun was starting to overpower the floodlamps. Great community volunteer support. My two partners were both 30-somethings, and we had a varied mix of Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials helping out.

In the interim, we started sorting the player names among the practice-range placards and the caddie bib velcro appliques. We used the pairings sheet for the Monday round of 64 to sort out the match pairs from those who failed to make the cut.

The placard got slid into a triangle-shaped USGA stand at the player's warm-up station. Since the players had the option of walking or using carts, not all players needed the caddie bibs. We could have used a second table to make the sorting and staging easier on all the materials.

As an added service, I take cellphone souvenir photograph of several players as they hit balls next to their name-sake hitting station at the range.

The regular course crew ran the ball-picking cart out in the landing area, and we took turns pushing balls off the chipping green with rakes fashioned out of white PVC-pipe.

The shift ended at 10:30 AM. I ate a box lunch and met a couple of other senior golfers who were volunteering. One guy schedules rounds for a local group of Missouri-side seniors; I'll try to get them over to Stonewolf to play my crew once the scramble season settles down.

What's In the Senior Bags

As I did during the US Women's Amateur here in 2009, I scoped out the bags of early-round players. Here are some of the patterns:

• Irons: With the exception of a single set of TM PSi Tour irons, nothing from the 2016 year in any of the bags. TM claimed about seven sets from the last couple of years. For Ping, several G15, G20, G25, and one S56. For Callaway, three bags had the standard Apex (not Tour) from 2015. Mizuno MP4.. and several Titleist, either AP2 or AP1-2 mix.
• Wedges. The Titleist iron bags mostly had Vokey wedges with them. From there, it was a wide mix of different wedges.
• Drivers. Several MP1 and MP2 models. Callaway and Titleist the next big reps. One guy carried two vintage Cleveland drivers: a 400 (circa 2002) and what appeared to be a Launcher 460 (2005): one had a draw face the other a fade face.
• Fairway Woods: Talked about a mixed bag...
• Hybrids: A wide variety. Several carried Cobra offerings, both Bafflers and more recent models.

 

 

 

[David in FL]

Good stuff.  Thanks for sharing!

[WUTiger]

Note on Monday In the Bag comments:

Ping also well represented in drivers, although not 2016 models.

Fairway woods were often older. I saw Callaway X2Hot (orange) and RBZ Stage 2. For new, a few Calla XR series FWs.

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Monday results

Medalist and No. 1 seed Tim Jackson (Germantown, TN) defeated John Madden (Barrington, IL) 5-and-3.

One "marquee match" featured two past Senior Amateur champs. 2014 winner Patrick Tallent (Vienna, VA) downed 2008 winner George Marucci (Villanova, PA)  2-and-1.

The day was sunny with temperature around 87* F. The course had largely dried out Sunday after heavy rains on Friday. The rough was fairly thick in spots, but largely without the abundant water droplets of Saturday.

Here's the full USGA Monday story, with photos.

[WUTiger]

Tuesday shows double matches

For those who made it past Monday, Tuesday featured more single-elimination matches in the Round of 32 and the Round of 16.

This is 36 holes on the day for those who won in the morning.

And, Wednesday features the Round of 8 and the Semi-Finals, another chance for 36 holes.

[WUTiger]

 

 

'Trust Your Training' Day

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I had to work today, and caught most of the back 9 on an early lunch hour.
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For Dave Ryan and Matt Sughrue, nine rounds of U.S. Senior Amateur golf came down the the last three holes Thursday at Old Warson.

Ryan surged ahead 4-up after six holes, but Sughrue battled back to all square after 15. Ryan then took two of the last three for the win.

After a week of all that golf, saving energy was at a premium. Both switched from walking to carts as the two-match days began. Both had caddies throughout, but the caddies can't ride in the cart with the player without incurring penalty strokes.

And, practice swings became few. Mostly waggles and backswing shaping checks in the final round. Just line up the shot and hit it. Trust your training.

Sughrue took an early lead on the opening hole, and then lost the next five as Ryan took a 4-up lead. Sughrue played the holes in a respectable 1 over, but Ryan birdied four out of five.

The pair played par golf bridging the turn. Sughrue counterattacked on No. 11, winning three straight - including consecutive birdies - to only be 1 down.

Sughrue had a chance to go All Square at the short, waterbound Par 4 No. 14. With the tees set up at 271 yards, he drove the green some 55 feet past the pin, while Ryan pushed his drive into the right treeline. Sughrue (far right in picture above) put his eagle putt 3 feet past the cup, and lipped out the birdie putt. (Sughrue had three lipouts between No. 8 and No. 14.) Ryan wedged up and got a two-putt par for a halve.

Sughrue finally squared the match on No. 15, gaining par while Ryan failed to get up and down from a shaggy lie from a foot short of the green.

Ryan then took two of the last three holes to win the championship. Below is shown Sughrue on the far right, and Ryan in the orange shirt at the trophy ceremony.

[Natural Patrick]

Even though I don't know Dave Ryan, that is good Stuff, I live about 45 min from Taylorville and have played Lake Shore several times.