Greg Pieczynski, director of instruction at Manor Country Club in Rockville, and amateur member Ben Warnquist combined for three back-nine birdies to help the team break away from a tightly bunched leaderboard and ensure the championship of the 62nd Maryland State Pro-Amateur championship at the Green Spring Valley Hunt Club in suburban Baltimore, July 16. They finished their bogey-free round with 31-34–65.
When Pieczynski birdied the 10th and 11th holes, it put the team in the lead at 6-under and Warnquist, a two-time MSGA Amateur champion, sealed the title with a birdie at the 15th. Playing in the next-to last group among 40 teams, their final score was two strokes clear of five teams who were sent down the road in search of a playoff that never happened.
“Perhaps ignorance is bliss,” said Pieczynski in citing the fact neither player had seen the tight, tree-lined course in Baltimore County, which was played at 6,550 yards to a par of 35-37–72. The pro set the stage when he birdied Nos. 4-5-6 from 15 feet, 40 feet and (after a green-side bunker shot) a foot, and Warnquist, an insurance agent, sent his side 4-up with a birdie from five feet at the eighth.
Pieczynski’s putts at Nos. 10-11 were from five feet and 10 feet. “I had just missed from five feet at 9, and I was determined to make the one at 10,” he said. “We didn’t know how we stood. but [playing partners] Steve (Delmar) and Marty (West) were starting to tear up the back and that pushed us to try and get as low as possible. . .and we hit a lot of good approach shots. There was no struggle, we both played solid.”
Delmar and West (the latter, who celebrated his 70th birthday last week, won this title with pro Joe Vincent in 1971), were 1 over on the front, but got to 5-under on the back, helped by an eagle-3 by West at the 509-yard 16th, where he hit his second shot to 18 feet. Their 68 left them in a six-way tie for seventh place.
The five teams at 67 were:
* Defending champions David Freiss, Musket Ridge GC-Chuck Thatcher, Beaver Creek CC, finished 31-36, as Thatcher birdied Nos. 6-7-8-9 and fell out of the lead with a bogey at No. 18.
* Jimmy Grem, Eagle’s Nest CC-Mike Hudak, Green Spring VHC, finished 32-35. They started par-eagle (Grem drove the green and made a 10-foot putt at the 344-yard second) -birdie-birdie before inserting a bogey at the fifth. They were -4 after 11, but produced only one bird the rest of the way.
* Teaching pro Parker Parsons-Will Shriver, from Green Spring, the 2003 champions, were 2-under at the turn, got to -5 through 16, but dropped back with a 17th-hole bogey before birdieing the 18th for 33-34.
* Dirk-Jaxson Schultz, Beaver Creek CC, 35-32, as Dirk, the 2008 titlist with Ken Lampard, had five birdies and a bogey in six holes on the back (including birdies at the two par-5’s — 16 and 17) but it was his 16-year-old son who got the team a tie with a 10-foot birdie putt at the par-3 last.
* Brian Meyer, Mount Pleasant GC-Ben Shields, Pine Ridge GC, 32-35. Shields had four birdies; Meyer, one, and it was the former’s birdies at 16-17 that got them a share of the lead at that point, followed by a par at the 18th.
In the field were four professionals (Parsons, Schultz, Bob Dolan, Columbia CC, and Dennis Satyshur, Caves Valley GC) and four amateurs (Thatcher, Shriver, West, and Henry Blue, Green Spring, who had won titles in this event in the past. Three teams have won three times — Baltimore CC’s Walter Romans-Jack Emich; amateur Ralph Bogart, Chevy Chase Club, with three different pros, and Satyshur, at Baltimore CC and Caves Valley, with three different amateurs, including Blue.
Reported by John Stewart
