Billy Peel, IV of Columbia Country Club celebrated his second consecutive state amateur title on Sunday, August 16 at Green Spring Valley Hunt Club in Owings Mills, after closing out his opponent, Rij Patel, 3 & 2 in the final of the 99th MSGA Men’s Amateur Championship.
A half inch of rain early Sunday morning and scattered thunderstorms throughout the week contributed to wet conditions for the Sunday morning final. The conditions likely added some length to a relatively short course by modern standards that measured 6571 yards and par 71 for the Championship.
Peel struck first in the 18-hole final, when his par at the 448-yard, par 4 fourth was enough to win the hole and go 1 up. After they tied the par 3 fifth with pars, Patel fought back to tie the match with a birdie at the 539-yard, par 5 sixth and won the seventh hole with a conceded birdie to go 1 up; however, Patel did not sustain his narrow lead. After tying the eighth hole with pars, Peel leveled the match up at the ninth with a conceded birdie of his own.
For the semifinals and finals, the tees were moved up at the short par 4 tenth from 336 to 287 yards, and both players made three to remain tied. Aside from his match against Vance Welch in the quarterfinals, Peel never trailed in any other matches, including against Patel. A conceded birdie at the eleventh gave Peel a lead that he never let go. Patel bogeyed holes twelve and fourteen down the stretch, allowing Peel to increase his lead with pars, the last of which came at the 460-yard, par 4 sixteenth, when Peel struck his approach shot on the green and two-putted from 25 feet to close out the match.
Peel was exempt from stroke play qualifying and earned the top seed in the match play draw as defending champion. Patel, a Hayfields CC member and recent Harvard University graduate, earned the medal in stroke play qualifying at Green Spring earlier in the week with a 6-under 65 that included nine birdies.
With his victory, Peel added his name to a short list that includes some of Maryland’s elite amateurs who won the event in back to back years. In the event’s history spanning nearly a century, it was the seventh time that the state Amateur champion successfully defended his title. Current PGA tour professional, Denny McCarthy (Argyle CC), accomplished the feat as an amateur most recently in 2013 (Woodmore) and 2014 (Baltimore CC).
A name that stands out on the list of back-to-back winners is another Columbia member, Marty West, who won this Championship an astounding nine times over nearly a quarter of a century. His first win was at Woodmont in 1973, and the last came in 1997 at Columbia. West successfully defended his title on four separate occasions in 1974, 1979, 1982, and 1983. He won the event at seven different sites and holds an undefeated record in Amateur finals matches of 9-0. Only Chevy Chase Club member and MSGA Past President (1961), Ralph Bogart, won more more Maryland Amateurs than West, with ten credited to his resumé at a total of six different sites.
Peel will have an opportunity to join these two distinguished amateurs in the local golf scene’s history and become the third player to defend his title twice as state Amateur champion, by winning the event in three consecutive years. The MSGA will conduct the 100th edition of the Maryland Amateur Championship in 2021 at a club that recently celebrated its own centennial last year, Rolling Road Golf Club in Catonsville.
Match Play Notes:
Several players overcame deficits in earlier rounds of match play to come back in exciting fashion and advance. Green Spring member, Arthur Worthington, was 6 down through 6 holes against Don Phattiyakul, Musket Ridge. But Worthington gained his composure and chipped away at Phattiyakul’s seemingly insurmountable lead, winning six holes between holes 7-15 to tie the match, and eventually winning the final 2 holes for a 2 up victory. Worthington handled his next opponent with relative ease, defeating Burt Gesner 6 & 5.
Fellow Green Spring Member, Chris Rockwell, also displayed some heroics at his home club. Rockwell faced Nicholas Infanti, MSGA eClub, in the quarterfinals. Infanti birdied the first hole to take a 1 up lead that he held for most of the match. But Rockwell hung around and was never more than 2 holes down throughout the match. Rockwell’s birdie at the par 5 seventeenth squared up the match. Then he sealed the deal with a hole-out birdie from a greenside bunker at the 136-yard, par 3 eighteenth for a dramatic conclusion.
Evan Santa, Crofton CC, took Rij Patel to the brink during a match in the round of 16 that needed eight extra holes. Patel held a narrow lead throughout most of the match, but his double bogey at the par 5 seventeenth opened the door for Santa. A clutch birdie by Santa at the eighteenth sent the match to extra holes, and the two nearly played an emergency nine, before Patel defeated Santa with a par at the par 4 eighth on the match’s 26th hole.
Arthur Worthington eventually ran into Patel in the quarterfinals. The two battled back and forth and were tied after ten holes, when Patel made back-to-back bogeys at 10 and 11 to fall 2 down. Patel birdied the 275-yard, par 4 fourteenth and parred the sixteenth, both wins, and closed out the match on the 20th hole when Worthington couldn’t muster a par at the 344-yard, second hole to keep the match going.
Michael Mulieri, Baltimore CC, and Timothy Kane, Columbia CC, staged impressive comebacks of their own. Mulieri was tied with or trailed his opponent, Will Koras, throughout the entire match before winning holes 16 and 17 to tie the match. Then he stuffed his tee shot on the par 3 eighteenth inside of five feet while Koras flew the green, earning Mulieri with a 1 up victory.
Kane and Ryan Kelly were the final match on in Friday morning’s first round. Their play was sloppy throughout most of the match, with most holes being won with par. Kane might have thought he gave the match away when he made double bogey on sixteen and allowed Kelly to win the hole and tie up the match with a bogey. But Kelly made a costly bogey at the last, and Kane advanced with a 1 up victory after securing his par on the final hole.
Stroke Play Qualifying Notes:
Rij Patel got off to a steady start with three pars and a birdie in the opening four holes at Green Spring Valley Hunt Club before going on a stretch consecutive birdies on holes 4-9, turning at a sizzling 29, and continued the birdie fest at the tenth for a total of six in a row.
“I kept the ball in front of me off of the tee and hit solid approach shots,” Patel said. “[I] rolled the ball well all day and kept my head in it.”
He was 8-under through fifteen holes but bogeyed the challenging sixteenth. After watching his second shot on the reachable par 5 seventeenth sail long beyond the green and out of bounds across the road, he limited the damage with a great up-and-down for bogey. Despite two untimely, back nine bogeys, Patel carded 29-36–65 (-6) to finish two shots clear of the field in qualifying and earn medalist honors.
Format
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the MSGA Tournament & Competitions Committee decided to cancel or postpone all events that were scheduled in May and June, including the cancellation of the four (4) Amateur/Open qualifiers. The Men’s Amateur Championship, originally scheduled for June 11-14, was moved to August 12-16.
Adding Mount Pleasant Golf Course as an additional site for stroke play qualifying allowed a greater number of competitors to compete in the championship in the absence of the qualifying sites. An additional 18 holes was scheduled for the stroke play qualifying portion of the Championship on August 12-13, for a total of 36 holes with one round Green Spring and one round at Mount Pleasant.
Summer days in the mid-Atlantic are often accompanied by afternoon thunderstorms, and this proved to be true again during stroke playing qualifying. Only one third of the field at each site was able to complete 18 holes on Wednesday, August 12. The thunderstorms and heavy rain led to suspensions of play on Wednesday afternoon, leaving the remaining players to return to the same course on August 13 to complete their rounds. Qualifying for the Championship was ultimately reduced to 18 holes, and the following inclement weather policy was established prior to the championship.
If the second 18 holes of stroke play qualifying is not able to conclude due to inclement weather, the top 31 match play spots will be filled as follows:
- 16 spots will be allocated to the 18-Hole qualifier at Green Spring Valley Hunt Club.
- 15 spots will be allocated to the 18-Hole qualifier at Mount Pleasant Golf Course.
The play-off hole and schedule will be announced when available.
*The seed draw will be determined by lot for players that finish with the same score during qualifying*
Reported by MSGA Staff
