Nick Gabrelcik was six shots behind the leader when he began his final round Saturday morning. By day’s end, he was hoisting a trophy.
Gabrelcik, a rising senior at North Florida, was stellar Saturday in the final round of the 117th Southern Amateur at The Honors Course in Ooltewah, Tennessee. He shot 8-under 64, moving 23 spots up the leaderboard and capturing the title. His 64 was the best round of the week, helping him finish at 11 under par and beating North Carolina’s Dylan Menante by one shot.
“The whole week I was hitting the ball good but the first two days I just couldn’t put it all together with the putting and chipping.” Gabrelcik told Amateur Golf. “It all felt like it was coming together sooner than later. I didn’t wake up this morning thinking I was going to play how I did but it was nice it all came together now.
“I was putting the ball in play and giving myself opportunities with my iron shots and the putter was definitely the key today,” Gabrelcik added.
The tournament was shortened to 54 holes after heavy rains caused numerous delays during the first and second rounds.
The Southern Amateur is the fifth event of seven in the 2023 Elite Amateur Series. The player who earned the most points after seven events will earn a PGA Tour exemption to be announced, an exemption into the 2023 U.S. Amateur, one 2024 Korn Ferry Tour start and an exemption into final qualifying for the 2024 U.S. Open. Alabama sophomore Nick Dunlap held the top spot with 57.8349 points through the Trans-Mississippi Amateur.
Up next is the 56th Pacific Coast Amateur from July 25-28 at Capilano Golf and Country Club in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Seven of the top summer amateur tournaments in the nation have joined forces to form the Elite Amateur Golf Series, where top point earners from the events will earn exemptions into select USGA, PGA and Korn Ferry Tour events. Prior to the official …
Seven of the top summer amateur tournaments in the nation have joined forces to form the Elite Amateur Golf Series, where top point earners from the events will earn exemptions into select USGA, PGA and Korn Ferry Tour events.
Prior to the official announcement expected on Tuesday, the Elite Amateur Golf Series has been rolling out the names of the tournaments that will make up the coalition, adding, “The Best of the Best Amateur Golfers. Many will try, but only a few can truly be elite.”
The seven tournaments which will make up the Elite Amateur Golf Series include the Southern Amateur, Sunnehanna Amateur, Northeast Amateur, North and South Amateur, Trans-Miss Amateur, Pacific Coast Amateur and Western Amateur.
“These tournaments have a long history of hosting the best players at the best venues producing the best competition,” according to the EAGS promotional video.
Much like PGA TOUR University Global Rankings, the Elite Amateur Golf Series provides another path for top amateurs to gain exemptions into professional events based on season-long performance. The Elite Amateur Golf Series will combine the seven tournaments into a collective competition called the Elite Amateur Cup. The player with the highest amount of World Amateur Golf Ranking points earned from these events will be named the Elite Amateur Cup champion, earning exemptions into select professional tournaments.
For Maxwell Moldovan, the Southern Amateur title is a major breakthrough and the sign of a drought ending.
Justin Leonard, the 1997 British Open champion, has been a familiar presence on the Open broadcast all week. But Leonard’s name had another reason to enter the golf conversation this week. On Saturday, 19-year-old Maxwell Moldovan shattered the previous South Amateur scoring record that Leonard had held since 1993.
Moldovan won with a 72-hole total of 2-under 264 at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, Mississippi. Leonard’s winning Southern Am score in ’93 was 270.
For Moldovan, who is entering his sophomore year at Ohio State, it’s a major breakthrough and the sign of a drought ending.
“I haven’t won a major golf tournament in just over two years now,” Moldovan told the Southern Golf Association. “To put myself in a position to do that this week and to play the way I played yesterday and today, it feels incredible.”
Moldovan, from Uniontown, Ohio, was a highly touted junior. He was the AJGA’s Rolex Player of the Year in 2019 and was a two-time Ohio High School State Champion (2017, 2018) in addition to the 2019 Ohio Amateur champion. His freshman season with the Buckeyes was partially upended by COVID-19. Teams in the Big Ten didn’t compete until the spring season. Still, in eight starts this season, Moldovan averaged 71.5, the best on the team, and finished in the top 10 three times. That included a runner-up finish at the loaded Valspar Collegiate.
At Old Waverly, Moldovan strung together rounds of 64-68-65-67. He didn’t make a bogey in either of his final two rounds.
Our lead group has taken to the field this morning for one final round! Hit the link in our bio to view live scoring and follow these three players and more as they round out the final day of the 115th Southern Amateur Championship! pic.twitter.com/W4cmrujWMc
— Southern Golf Association (@sgagolf) July 17, 2021
Since Ohio State bowed out of the postseason in May by failing to advance through the NCAA Tallahassee Regional, Moldovan has been busy. The Southern Am marks his fifth competitive start this summer. It’s his best result since finishing 11th at the Dogwood Invitational to start the summer.
Maridoe Golf Club became a haven for competitive golf in 2020. Meet the man behind the movement, Maridoe owner Albert Huddleston.
The U.S. Golf Association will open its 2021 championship season at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas, this April with the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball. It marks Maridoe’s debut as a USGA championship site, though the Maridoe community is anything but new to hosting large-scale events.
Albert Huddleston’s Texas oasis, which opened in 2017, can tip out at nearly 8,000 yards. Every hole changes direction and Texas wind is a major factor. Those who have competed there talk of a golf course that takes practice to learn. Jordan Spieth, Will Zalatoris, Braden Thornberry and Lee Trevino are among the savvy membership of roughly 200.
Beginning in April 2020, Maridoe hosted the first of seven competitive events for every level of player. Six of those were inaugural events, with the 114th Southern Amateur rounding out the lineup.
Albert Huddleston, owner and founder of Maridoe Golf Club
At the end of the 2020 season, club owner and founder Huddleston, the chief executive officer and managing partner of Aethon Energy, sat down with Golfweek to discuss everything from his desire to host so many events to his background in golf to mastering the nuances of Maridoe (competitors: take note of the latter).
Here are excerpts from that conversation:
On why competitive opportunities mattered so much in 2020…
Golf has always, to me, been more than a special sport. It is really a vehicle or a catalyst to travel, meet great friends, be with friends. It’s one of the rare sports where you can play with someone who is not as accomplished as you or more accomplished and have a great time. Every golf course is different. The weather changes to make what was yesterday’s golf course feel like it had nothing to do with today’s golf course and contest. That’s how I think about golf. I’m very passionate about it, I think it’s an important sport, it’s an important socialization opportunity.
So when COVID-19 occurred, obviously it shut down everything and at Maridoe, we have junior players, we have amateurs, mid-ams, senior ams, we have all kinds of professional players – Korn Ferry, Latin America, Canadian, PGA. We have a few ladies as well. And so what happened is they were all off the clock and they were there and in fact, I remember very clearly that Jordan Spieth and Martin Flores were out back of the clubhouse and I was talking to them and I said, ‘By the way, is this the longest you’ve gone without playing in a golf contest?’ They looked at each other and they said they both agreed since they were six years old. I came back around the clubhouse and (managing member) Alison Morrison was there. I said, we need to create an opportunity for all these wonderful players who are now just sitting on their hands to have a contest. That’s how the Maridoe Samaritan (Fund Invitational) came about. It started by word of mouth.
As soon as that tournament was over, Scottie Scheffler won, and we all of a sudden had Viktor Hovland who got beat, on the way home said, ‘I want to do this again.’ I basically want to take Scottie down the next time. So in a couple weeks … we did the 2.0. We were the only ones out there, doing something like this. It was the right thing to do and we stepped forward and we made the decision that golf was the perfect sport as a complement to maintain the COVID-19 protocols. You could do both.
Scottie Scheffler won the Maridoe Samaritan Fund Invitational at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas, on April 30, 2020. (Photo by Maridoe Golf Club)
On the homogenized fields that came together at Maridoe – most notably for two Maridoe Samaritan Fund Invitationals in April and May…
I will dare say that never again in our lifetime, in my opinion, that you’ll have a tournament like we had our (Maridoe) Samaritan (Fund) tournaments in the spring. I dare say you’ll never ever have the best juniors, the best college amateurs, mid-ams, PGA Tour professionals, Canadian professionals, Latin American professionals, Korn Ferry professionals, all playing at the same time, the same tournament. There’s no ego in it, and everyone played together and were so grateful and had a great time. I don’t think these people will ever stand down in their golf employment to have that privilege and I’m not sure those on the PGA Tour would mentally be accustomed to playing with amateurs and so to me, it was one of those— talk about making the ambrosia of lemonade by virtue of having the COVID-19. It actually created an opportunity to homogenize all of the different aspects of amateur and professional golf, placed them into one cauldron and everybody had a brilliant time. And I’m probably as proud of that as anything.
On future hosting opportunities, including potential interest in a U.S. Open…
My instructions to (golf architect Steve Smyers) very clearly were I want to have Maridoe Golf Club never hear the terrible words, ‘Had you only done something different, you could have hosted a U.S. Open, a U.S. Amateur or the North Texas Championship,’ and so I do not want to hear those words.
So Maridoe was created to be able to host anything successfully. The design, thought process, time and motion, choreography of the property was delivered and exists today to host anything that is played anywhere at any time, with or without spectators. You talk about a U.S. Open in particular, I would never be so arrogant or brash or egocentric to say we deserve a U.S. Open or a U.S. Amateur. That’s for the USGA to decide and we’ll let the chips fall where they fall.
But Maridoe was designed to host the very best, the very best players, and is so strategic and so mentally taxing that it will separate the richest cream from cream and the champion will be clearly identified and I think that’s what the USGA tends to do with their championships in particular – the U.S. Amateur, U.S. Open. If we were ever blessed and honored with the opportunity to have, for example, a U.S. Open or anything of great significance, we would be honored and it would be a privilege. We wouldn’t be surprised because we prepared for it but we would not be so arrogant as to say that we have to have it because we deserve it. That’s for the USGA to decide.
Huddleston, left, with top finishers at the Maridoe Junior Invitational. (Photo submitted)
On where the difficulties lie at Maridoe, and what it takes to be successful there…
My philosophy on championship golf is that the individual who is a great player who cannot think his way around the course carefully should fail compared to those who are elite players who can manage themselves around the course strategically and thoughtfully. So Maridoe was created to make that separation. One of the things about elite golf today particularly at the young, collegiate level, is that the ability to work the ball and flight the ball is becoming a lost art because the technology – the ball and the equipment – has allowed these young athletes in great shape to swing as hard as they want to and technology keeps it pretty much on course. So they’re used to just hitting it hard and high and my goal was the person who comes there who’s mono-dimensional who leaves their brain in the trunk of their car in the parking lot has no chance against someone who can flight the ball, work the ball and strategically think his way around Maridoe.
On Huddleston’s start in golf…
We were always around golf and dad was fantastic and he was special. We just were raised since we were very young that golf was important. I will say that when my father said we couldn’t play football and there were sports where he said I will ask you not to play because you’ll wind up being arthritic, your knees will be injured, potentially. It’s not one of the 90-year-old sports. I said what’s a 90-year-old sport?
He says well golf, bird-hunting or trout fishing. I said what about tennis? He said, tennis is a nice sport but there aren’t too many people who come back from Hawaii and say you’ve gotta go play this tennis court on this promontory of crashing waves. So I probably emphasized golf over that. It was just our family, it’s what we did. Also being around the various golf associations and the USGA and my father had a tremendous respect for that.
Albert Huddleston (second from right) stands with (from left) Jackson Rivera, Tommy Morrison and Luke Potter near a body of water at Maridoe Golf Club, where bass fishing is a popular way to pass the time. (Photo submitted)
On the Maridoe name, how it came to be and what it represents…
My wife Mary, she does not play golf. She, when approached, supported me about wanting to do this golf club, which no wife should ever let a husband do realistically, which is an indication of how nice she really is. And she is.
But, when she was born, the doctors handed her to her father and he gazed down on her and looked at her and said my goodness, look at these beautiful brown eyes. They remind me of doe eyes. And they named her Mary. So he nicknamed her Marydoe. He’s now deceased. So myself and her brother, that is a nickname that we use. That’s what I’ve called her. So I said I think Mary Doe would be great. I was playing around with it, I said what about Maridoe so phonetically it would be Mary-Doe.
The way I do a capital M is essentially the logo. And after I said this story (to members of a hired branding agency), the three ladies and the gentleman there who owned the company, they were all going, ‘That’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever heard.’ They said, we need to do this. So that was how it was born. I will give them great credit, they came back because we have a 33-acre lake with bass fishing. They took my M and they put a reverse loop on the backside, that I don’t use when I sign a capital M, to be reminiscent of a fishing loop to designate that Maridoe Golf Club subconsciously has a fishing loop in it’s logo. So nobody knows that.
Mac Meissner, who is about to enter his senior season at SMU, was six shots back starting the day at Maridoe Golf Club but still won.
Sometimes you just need to see some putts go in. This played into McClure Meissner’s Southern Amateur victory on Saturday in a few ways.
Meissner, who is about to enter his senior season at SMU, was six shots back starting the day at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas. He birdied his first two holes to start cutting the deficit. At the first hole, it was a dead-center putt off a 9-iron approach to 18 feet. At No. 2, he hit a 3-hybrid into the back fringe from 275 yards out and two-putted.
The hot start showed Meissner there were birdies available at Maridoe, which is not always the case on this layout. The 21-year-old has played it a handful of times in competition recently and knows it’s tough to make up shots.
“I woke up today and I didn’t think that I really had a chance, honestly,” Meissner said. “The guys at the top were phenomenal players and I knew that I needed something extremely low to have a chance.”
Cole Hammer, the No. 9-ranked player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking was 7 under through 54 holes and at the top of the leaderboard. Meissner stood at 1 under and teed off four groups ahead on Saturday.
Meissner’s final day kept progressing, though, with two more birdies at Nos. 6 and 8. His lone bogey came at No. 10, but he followed it with three consecutive birdies from Nos. 12-14. He calls the best shot of the day the 7-iron approach he hit to inside 5 feet at No. 12
“To get the bogey back I made on 10 that quickly,” he said. “I think at that point I saw that I was maybe one back or two back.”
As Meissner was climbing the leaderboard, so was Illinois State’s David Perkins. Meissner shot a final-round 66 but Perkins closed with a 70. It left them both at 7 under, but Meissner won on the first extra hole.
As for Hammer, the Texas junior closed with a pair of double-bogeys for a final-round 79 that dropped him to a tie for 13th.
Quade Cummins finished strong to stand third place with a low score of 70 (-2) to wrap up the final round with a total gross of 283 (-5). . . . Marcus Jones was our Mid-Amateur Champion shooting 76 today for his final round with a total gross of 298 (+10). pic.twitter.com/kAvEd0q8AH
Despite more than four months having passed since he came in fourth at the Southern Highlands Intercollegiate, annually one of the best fields in college golf, it doesn’t seem like Meissner has lost much. The coronavirus pandemic ended all NCAA athletics prematurely on March 12. Meissner finished his classes online and took it easy on the golf.
The San Antonio native spent some time in Dallas with friends, hanging around the lake, not thinking about golf.
That kind of downtime doesn’t happen in a normal year. If you’re a top player, as Meissner is at No. 35 in the world, you go from one college season to the summer amateur circuit to the next season. Many play a handful of tournaments over the winter breaks. There is no off-season.
“As much as it stung for the year to end, I was able to get fresh and take a little time off and focus on other things,” he said.
By mid-May, he was ready to work hard on his golf again. He buckled down with instructor Bryan Gathright to work his swing into a place it felt comfortable.
And he holed a lot of putts. Meissner devoted time to his stroke and his setup, his lag putting and just logged repetition. Before, he’d felt like he was a streaky putter – he’d make everything one day and nothing the next.
“Seeing a lot of putts go in during the time off, it helped me a lot,” he said. Meissner also switched out his putter since he last played in the spring.
Courtesy of his Southern Am win, Meissner earns a spot in U.S. Amateur. Perkins also earns one as the runner-up. Both players were already in the field, however.
Almost exactly a year ago, Meissner finished third at the Maridoe-hosted Trans Miss Amateur, a tournament that was canceled this year because of the pandemic. All that experience carried forward this week.
“It’s a really visually intimidating course and to be able to play it a couple times, it just gives you a lot of confidence,” he said. “… The more I play it, the more I feel comfortable and the more I love it. It’s a great place and it tests every aspect of your game.”
Thursday was cut day at the Southern Amateur, and Cole Hammer isn’t going anywhere.
Thursday was cut day at the Southern Amateur, and Cole Hammer isn’t going anywhere. He played as well as anyone did in the second round at Maridoe Golf Club in Carollton, Texas, and a 5-under 67 left him within five shots of the top of the leaderboard.
Maridoe can tip out over 8,000 yards, but it’s not playing anywhere near that this week. It’s still a ballstriker’s golf course, and if you’re not hitting the ball well, forget about scoring.
“It’s north of Dallas and the wind really gets up and makes it hard,” Hammer explained. “The fairways are tight and firm and the rough is really thick and then the greens are small.”
Hammer had five birdies and an eagle on his card. So far, he has walked and carried his own bag at Maridoe, even though it’s “like 100 degrees and feels like 130.” He may convince a buddy to carry his bag for the second half of the event.
The Southern Amateur, despite being in his native Texas, was a bit of a late add for Hammer. This global pandemic changed everything on his schedule, from up-ending the spring college season to knocking out the Northeast Amateur last month, a tournament he always looks forward to playing (and one in which he finished fourth last summer).
After Maridoe, he plans to play the Sunnehanna, the Western Amateur and the U.S. Amateur. Technically, there will be a few extra days off between the latter two events. Two weeks on and one week off is more his style but these days, when you can play, you play.
Two weeks ago at Pinehurst, Hammer found himself one shot out of the North & South Amateur match-play bracket. He had visions of missing last summer’s U.S. Amateur match play by cut by one shot, too.
“I feel like Pinehurst is a good course for me,” Hammer said. “I just somehow managed to miss the cut by one both times.”
After Hammer won the 2018 Western Amateur, he had an explosive freshman year for the Longhorns. His last tournament title was at the 2019 NCAA Austin Regional. When quarantine started, Hammer admitted he wasn’t hitting the ball all that great. Many players have been able to find a silver lining in the unexpected events of 2020, and for Hammer, that was having a bit of breathing room to straighten things out.
“It was kind of everything honestly. I just wasn’t hitting it very solid. I was not in the best position on my downswing,” he said. “I just had a couple things to iron out. It really wasn’t that big of a deal. I just didn’t feel comfortable over the ball and that’s changed, thankfully.”
His performance so far at Maridoe may suggest that things are trending in the right direction.
At the top of the leaderboard through two rounds, Pepperdine sophomore William Mouw has built a one-shot cushion on David Perkins. Both men fired a second-round 67. Mouw is at 8 under after his opening 69.
Maridoe member Pierceson Coody is 6 under. Coody is tournament-tested at his home course, having won the Trans-Miss Amateur here a year ago this week.
A strong Texas presence at the top of the leaderboard also includes teammate Travis Vick, a Houston native, at 4 under. Hammer is tied with Texas commit Tommy Morrison, a 15-year-old who also is a member here and is making his fourth competitive start at Maridoe in the past three months.
The cut fell at 5 over, with SMU’s Noah Norton, Oklahoma head coach Ryan Hybl and North & South runner-up Will Holcomb among those on the wrong side.
Maridoe Golf Club is hosting a field of high-level amateurs at the Southern Amateur this week.
Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas, has become something of a golf oasis in the midst of this pandemic. The club took it upon itself to demonstrate how golf could safely be played and proceeded to stage two fundraising events with a stout field of amateurs and pros – dubbed the Maridoe Samaritan Fund Invitational (and MSFI2.0) – then created the Maridoe Junior Invitational for the nation’s top up-and-coming players.
As a result, the field of 156 players includes some of the best college players and juniors in the nation. The 54-hole event begins Wednesday with a cut to the top 66 players and ties after the first two rounds.
PGA Tour events are the only tournaments with featured pairings. We present the four most stacked groups at the outset of the Southern:
12:50 p.m., No. 1: Quade Cummins, Cooper Dossey, Austin Eckroat
Impressive resumes here for some of the Big 12’s best. Oklahoma’s Cummins is the reigning Pacific Coast Amateur champ, and remains so for another year after that tournament was canceled for the summer. Baylor’s Dossey won the North & South Amateur in 2019, but came up two match-play victories short of a title defense earlier this month at Pinehurst. Eckroat, finished T-4 at the first MSFI event and finished as the low amateur that week.
Three USGA champs with a unique bond make up this group. Barbaree, an LSU senior; Goodwin, an SMU junior and Summerhays, a high school senior committed to Arizona State, are all past champions of the U.S. Junior, with Summerhays being the defending champ. Goodwin won in 2017 and Barbaree in 2015.
All have been busy this summer but particularly Barbaree, who teed it up on the amateur circuit two of the past three weeks.
1:20 p.m., No. 1: John Pak, John Augenstein, Pierceson Coody
John Pak played perhaps the craziest schedule of all last summer, teeing it up six times in a 10-week stretch. More than perhaps any other player, he truly played his way onto the U.S. Walker Cup team with his summer performance. Pak is toning it down this summer, playing only the Southern, the Western Amateur and the U.S. Amateur and otherwise camping out in Tallahassee, Florida, where he attends Florida State.
Walker Cup teammate Augenstein won his last college start (the Desert Mountain Intercollegiate in March) on the strength of an opening 63 and also won the G-Rock Open (something like a rogue state open) at the start of June.
As for Coody, a member here, he’s already won a major amateur event at this venue. The Texas junior defeated Paul Gonzalez (also in the Southern field) by two shots almost exactly a year ago to win the Trans-Miss Amateur.
2:30 p.m., No. 1: Trent Phillips, Cole Hammer, Joe Highsmith
All three of these men land among the top 100 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, with Hammer at No. 8, Phillips checking in at No. 36 and Highsmith at No. 92.
Hammer is a native Texan, and comes off a disappointing missed cut at the North & South. Highsmith beat his Pepperdine teammate Dylan Menante in the second round of the North & South, only to fall in the quarterfinals to eventual champion Tyler Strafaci. Phillips, a Georgia junior, is making his first major start since the Southern Highlands Collegiate. He won the Ka’anapli Collegiate Classic last fall.
