It’s not in John Yerger’s nature to turn his back on a player searching for an opportunity in golf. It may be music to a college golfer’s ears that there’s still tournament golf to be played this summer. As co-chairman of the Sunnehanna Amateur, Yerger knows something of the demand.
Yerger could fill the 100-man Sunnehanna Amateur field five times over. Something says he would, too.
“They want to have a chance to do the thing they care about at this point in their life,” he said of players searching for playing opportunities.
Tournament sponsors and Sunnehanna Country Club members stood by the decades-old event, ultimately making it possible to play the Sunnehanna July 21-24, five weeks after its original June 17-20 spot. The tournament now falls directly before the Western Amateur and the U.S. Amateur, creating an intriguing end-of-summer gauntlet.
Players will have a two-and-a-half-day window to travel from the Sunnehanna in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Indiana, for the Western Amateur. They’re likely to do it in droves.
The summer amateur schedule is something of a living organism and has been for years. When one tournament changes its dates, it has a domino effect on every other tournament down the line. The strength of each field depends on which tournaments overlap. This summer has been about scrambling to keep events on the schedule, modifying them however necessary and stripping them down to the basics.
So far, the early-June events have taken the biggest hit. Among those canceled this year are the Dogwood Invitational, Monroe Invitational, Northeast Amateur, Sahalee Players Amateur, Trans-Mississippi Amateur and Eastern Amateur. The cancellation of the Pacific Coast Amateur freed up dates for the Sunnehanna’s move.
Certainly the summer amateur schedule will be back-loaded.
Under normal circumstances, a player could go a whole summer without ever sleeping in his own bed, teeing it up week after week, hopping from host house to host house. When a community hosts an amateur event, it typically rallies around that event.
In Johnstown, residents will still open their homes to players. That won’t be the case at many stops.
Yerger fielded more than 80 requests for host housing and so far is just six beds short of meeting that. The Sunnehanna will remain as normal as possible – and safe – with paper (scorecards, pin sheets) likely going out the window. Caddies are out too, with pushcarts being allowed for the first time. An extra food tent is likely to go up, as well.
Yerger has been involved with the Sunnehanna for 50 years, from playing (1978, ’80) to housing players to co-chairing. He knows the amateur landscape intimately. With the 2021 Walker Cup moved up to May 8-9 from its usual early September dates, this summer’s results are very much in play.
“There’s a lot of things that people aren’t thinking about,” Yerger said. “They didn’t realize it’s May of next year. … These tournaments have a big impact on Walker Cup and also on the World Amateur Golf Ranking.”
At the Western Golf Association, Steve Prioletti watches players move from the Western Junior on up to the Western Amateur and on from there. For Prioletti, the association’s director of amateur competitions, it’s hard not to become invested in this community of players.
“Watching that progression, how could you not care for these guys and want to provide them with opportunities to compete?” he said. “Being the third-oldest amateur event in the world, it’s our responsibility to exhaust all options to try to make this tournament happen.”
Prioletti & Co., have some time on their side. Though forced to cancel the Western Junior, scheduled for June 15-18 in Lake Worth, Illinois, plans remain to play the Western Amateur on its original date of July 27-Aug. 1. Crooked Stick hosted the Dye Junior Invitational at the end of May. It was a helpful test run – albeit on a much smaller scale – for competition.
Prioletti won’t be shy about asking other tournament directors how they’re managing COVID-19 challenges.
“Really getting granular with all those tournament details to make sure – obviously safety is the main priority – but you have to make sure it’s a good experience for all involved as well.”
Golf in its purest form
The desire to play is no less on the women’s side – and with the Curtis Cup having been pushed back to 2021, the high stakes are there, too. The major events matter very much.
More than any other event, perhaps, the Augusta National Women’s Amateur has female amateurs keeping an eagle eye on the World Amateur Golf Ranking to make sure they qualify for an invitation. Though canceled, the same field (or at least, the invitees who remained amateur) will be recycled for the 2021 event.
Even as women’s events were canceled – the Women’s Southern Amateur, Women’s Porter Cup and Women’s Eastern Amateur among them – new back-to-back events were added in June. The U.S. Women’s Elite Amateur Golf Championships will be played June 23-25 at Heron Creek and June 30-July 2 at Charlotte Harbor in North Port, Florida.
Steve Washburn put a new competitive women’s amateur event on the calendar last year with the inaugural Donna Andrews Invitational. The Donna remains firmly on schedule for June 28-30 at Boonsboro Golf Club in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Washburn, a golf dad who saw the need for a tournament that gave elite players the same opportunities that it gave mid-ams and mid-handicappers, pulled the event together last year. Organizers have talked through all aspects of the event’s second year, from food and beverage (all to go) to Andrews’ tournament-week clinic (nixed) to whether caddies would be allowed (greenlighted).
“It’s been a very interesting process,” Washburn said. “A lot of questions, a lot of debate within the group.”
For the first time in his 11 years as Pinehurst’s director of tournament operations, Brian Fahey will be able host a one-day qualifier to help fill the 120-woman North & South Women’s Amateur field. He received 231 applications for this year’s July 14-18 event, breaking the record of 220 set in 2015.
Last year, the North & South men’s field was something like a test run for a Pinehurst-hosted U.S. Amateur – and who wouldn’t want to put in for an advantage like that? – but organizers received nearly 100 more applications for the 2020 event (to be played June 30-July 4) than they did a year ago. That’s a big indicator of the interest level in amateur golf this summer.
Both fields will feature 120 players competing on Pinehurst Nos. 2 and 4. With such a backdrop, the other frills are hardly necessary.
“We may not be able to do a lot of the extras that players have become accustomed to over the years – in terms of receptions or dinners, lunches and breakfasts, social gatherings – those will be eliminated,” Fahey said. “This was our communication to the players: This is going to be golf almost in its purest form.”
It takes a village
All things being normal, the Dogwood Invitational would have gotten underway June 10 at Druid Hills Golf Club, a hilly little gem tucked into a neighborhood near downtown Atlanta. The Dogwood is a week-long, 72-hole tournament that includes events like a long-drive contest and the “Taste of The Dogwood” to showcase local fare.
Like many high-level amateur events staged at historic clubs, the membership breathes life into all aspects of tournament week from housing players to giving up their golf course to cultivating relationships with players who will come back over and over again through their amateur careers.
All of those aspects, plus how limited member play has been of late, figured into the Dogwood’s cancellation. It simply couldn’t be the same event this year.
“As we went through our scenarios of what we could do,” said Ed Toledano, tournament chairman emeritus, “we said, well can we have a tournament with no spectators. We could make it twosomes and put all the special rules and regulations in and things like that and then we fell back to, if we’re limiting member play, how can we feel comfortable doing this now?”
Shared responsibility
In the Dogwood’s absence, tournament director Bruce Fleming finds his own Rice Planters Amateur in the lead-off position. The June 23-25 event at Snee Farm Country Club, in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, will likely get more eyes because of that – and for two reasons.
“Coaches will want to see how their players had played or maybe perhaps they want to get a sense of what players have been doing out there in terms of practice and prep and that stuff,” Fleming said. “They’re going to look at us closely from that perspective. I can only assume they will look at us in terms of how we complete the event.”
Fleming looks at the latter as his own moral responsibility to do things right. The Rice Planters won’t feature any caddies, paper, social events or buffet meals. The field has been reduced from 99 players to roughly 65. The new guidelines were made very clear to invited players. A responsibility rests with them, too.
It’s not so much that Fleming was flooded with applications this year – he received about 220 when in past years he has received upward of 300 – but that more players in the tournament’s exemption categories accepted their invitation than ever before, from the defending champion Austin Fulton to Canon Claycomb, a top-50 player in the world. The number of acceptances from 34 exemption categories doubled this year.
“Our field – I don’t know how I quantify it – but it’s much better than in the past,” Fleming said.
If those players filter out again to other tournaments next summer when the schedule presumably goes back to normal, Fleming will understand.
“We want to run our tournament, we want to continue our history,” Fleming said. “… We have to do it in a manner that is appropriate and successful for what is going on.”
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