History of excellence

Western Am glimpse into golf’s future

You’re going to know many of the golfers who will be competing at the Western Amateur Championship beginning Tuesday at The Alotian Club in Roland.

You just don’t know them yet.

For more than a century the Western Amateur has served as amateur golf’s most grueling test, and for much of that time its competitors have gone on to become the sport’s top professionals.

The tournament’s winners list reads like a who’s who of golf: Francis Ouimet, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Weiskopf, Ben Crenshaw, Hal Sutton, Phil Mickelson, Justin Leonard and Tiger Woods, just to name a few.

“Each year we crown a new champion, and it’s always a thrill to know that we may be launching the career of one of golf’s next legends,” said Vince Pellegrino, the Western Golf Association’s vice president of tournaments. “From Jack Nicklaus in 1961 to Phil Mickelson in 1991 and Tiger Woods in 1994, we’ve seen the best golfers in the world excel at the Western Amateur.

“Many of the competitors at The Alotian Club this week will end up playing on the PGA Tour. We just don’t know who, so it’s fun to watch these young players evolve and grow into accomplished professionals.”

The tournament begins with an 18-hole round of stroke-play qualifying on Tuesday and another Wednesday, when the field will be be cut to the top 44 players and ties. After two more stroke-play rounds Thursday and Friday, the top 16 players will move on to the weekend’s match play competition. The championship round is scheduled for next Sunday.

The Western Amateur has attracted golf’s top amateur players since its inaugural tournament in 1899, but the top of the leaderboard may never have been more star-studded than it was during a period in the early 1990s.

“There was a four-year run, 1991 to 1994, that was pretty impressive,” said Tim Cronin, the WGA’s records and statistics keeper who is also the author of A Century of Golf: The History of the Western Golf Association. “Phil Mickelson defeated Justin Leonard in the 1991 final, and Leonard came back to win the next two years. Then a kid named Tiger Woods won it in 1994.”

Woods’ title came after one of the tournament’s most dramatic matches ever.

He arrived at Point O’Wood Golf and Country Club in Benton Harbor, Mich., as a gangly 18 year old, a couple weeks before he enrolled at Stanford and about a month before he won his first of three U.S. Amateur titles.

Woods faced Chris Tidland, who was entering his senior season at Oklahoma State, in the quarterfinals. Woods was 4-up through 12 holes, but Tidland stormed back by making six consecutive birdies - including a chip-in from 60 feet on the 18th hole - to force a sudden-death playoff.

Tidland made birdie on the second extra hole, but Woods sank a breaking, downhill putt from 20 feet for eagle to win the match.

“It was dramatic stuff,” Cronin said. “That second extra hole was a par-5 with a big chasm in front of the green. Tiger was able to clear it, Chris wasn’t, and that was it.

“There were great crowds for that tournament, 3,000 or 4,000 people following that group. There were even two local radio stations on the course covering the play live. It was amazing.”

It wasn’t Woods’ final trip to the Western Amateur, but it was his final time to hoist the George R. Thorne championship trophy - a testament to the tournament’s strength. In 1995, Woods lost 2-up in the semifinals to Miami’s Robert Floyd. Floyd went on to lose in the final to Centerton’s Patrick Lee, who is entered in this year’s event. In 1996, Woods lost in the round of 16 to Terry Noe of Fullerton, Calif., on the second extra hole.

Woods and many other Western Amateur champions have gone on to bigger things, but as impressive as the champions’ list is, the credentials of the players who took part in the event without winning are no less striking. Tom Watson, Tom Kite, Fred Couples, David Duval, Davis Love III, Mark O’Meara, Corey Pavin, Craig Stadler, Bob Tway and Fuzzy Zoeller are just some of the 29 players who advanced to the Western Amateur match play rounds since 1956 who went on to win major championships as professionals despite falling short at the Western Amateur.

It was a difficult tournament from the beginning, when amateur golf was king.

Cousins H.C. Egan (1902, 1904-1905, 1907) and Walter Egan (1903) combined to win five times, twice facing each other in the final. Chick Evans Jr. established himself as one of the amateur greats of all time by winning a record eight Western Amateur titles between 1909 and 1923, including four in a row in 1920-1923.

Bobby Jones dominated amateur golf worldwide during the early part of the 20th century, but he never won the Western Amateur. In 1919, at age 17, he lost in the first round to Ned Sawyer at Sunset Hill Country Club in St. Louis. He was the stroke play medalist in 1920 at Memphis Country Club, defeating his closest competitor by eight strokes and setting a course record with a 69 in the first round. But he was beaten in the semifinals by Evans, his chief amateur rival, 1-up in a 36-hole match.

The Western Amateur is nation’s second-oldest amateur tournament, trailing only the U.S. Amateur. But unlike the U.S. Amateur, for which players have to qualify, the Western Amateur is an invitational.

“It’s always a real diverse field with all of the college players, the foreign guys, the full-time amateurs,” Cronin said. “The WGA watches the rankings and they have their own rankings.”

And like the U.S. Amateur, the Western Amateur still determines its champion by the oldest form of golf - match play. After the final 16 players are set after four rounds of stroke play, it is still a wide-open tournament.

But, Cronin said, the best players tend to rise to the top, as they have for more than 100 years.

“It is and always has been a great proving ground in golf,” Cronin said. “It’s a long, arduous test. If you can contend at the Western Amateur, chances are you are going to keep performing well in golf.”

Sports, Pages 25 on 07/28/2013

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