Records fall at Rich Harvest

    Writing from Sugar Grove
    Wednesday, August 5, 2015

    Going into the first round of the Western Amateur, the men’s course record at Rich Harvest Farms was 5-under-par 67.
    Two players, Dawson Armstrong and Jose Mendez, matched that in Tuesday’s opening round of the 113th Western Amateur. Wednesday, it was obliterated. In the morning wave, David Cooke and Harrison Endycott, playing in the same group, fired 6-under-par 66s.
    They shared the course record for about 10 minutes, for Aaron Wise, in the next threesome, was so inspired he fired an 8-under-par 64 to grab the mark.
    It lasted the rest of the day, though Charlie Danielson gave it a scare in the afternoon with a 7-under 65 to roar into a tie for second place. Thursday, when the final two rounds of stroke play qualifying are played, there’s no guarantee it will stand.
    Cooke, the Illinois Open champion, won’t have a chance to better his 66. His opening-round 80 added up to 2-over-par 146, two strokes over the strict cut line. The Western Amateur takes only the low 44 and ties – 45 in this case, at even par or better – for the 36-hole shootout to determine the Sweet Sixteen for match play.
    Wise scored his 64 the old-fashioned way. He birdied everything in sight. Nine birdies, offset by a bogey, added up to equal nines of 32 and a score never before seen on Jerry Rich’s backyard playground. He’d scored 4-over 76 on Tuesday, and said the difference was positioning off the tee.
    “In the fairways you can attack the pins here,” said Wise, a 19-year-old from Lake Elsinore, Calif., who’ll be a sophomore at Oregon in the fall. “Yesterday, I was hacking out of the trees and bushes. That was the difference.”
    For his fine effort, Wise is still only in a tie for seventh entering the final 36. The leader is Dawson Armstrong, whose 66 on top of an opening 67 earned him a total of 11-under 133 and a two-stroke lead over Taylor Funk and Danielson.
    Armstrong, a 19-year-old from Brentwood, Tenn., whose greatest feat so far is capturing this year’s dogwood Invitational, fell hard for Rich Harvest when he arrived, and the affair is blossoming.
    “What I like best about this course is that it gets my mind off playing golf and gets me thinking about just how beautiful it is out here,” said Armstrong, who has 12 birdies and only one bogey across 36 holes. “At the beginning of the week, I told myself that I would have fun first and if I played well then that’s awesome.”
    So far, so awesome.
    Even Rich, the owner and designer – with Greg Martin – of the layout, thought so.
    “A 64 on Rich Harvest Farms is phenomenal,” Rich said. “Over 20 years of hosting amateur players, these are the best we’ve ever seen.”
    Danielson, from Osceola, Wis., and a senior on the Illinois golf team, birdied seven of his first 10 holes and closed with a brace of birdies, matching 20-footers on the eighth and ninth holes, for a 30-35 excursion.
    “I learned you’ve got to get the ball in the fairway, for sure, and then you can kind of be aggressive with the pins today,” Danielson said.
    At 135, he’s two strokes ahead of pal Jordan Niebrugge, from down the road in Mequon, whose low amateur placing in the British Open is still the talk of Wsiconsin.
    “I want to keep that going into here,” Niebrugge said. “I got off to a good start yesterday. I just hit a lot of really good shots.”
    Funk, the son of PGA Tour veteran Fred Funk, says he doesn’t have the same swing as his father, but he gets similar sparkling results. Wednesday, he opened birdie-eagle, then closed with four birdies on his last seven holes for his 67 and 36-hole aggregate of 9-under 135.
    “It could have easily been 8- or 9- or even 10-(under),” Funk said. “I gave a few away on the back nine, which was my front nine.”
    Funk failed to qualify for the U.S. Amateur, but bounced back with a victory at the Southern Amateur (at Old Waverly).
    Daniel Stringfellow was the only Illinoisan to make the cut. He’s at 1-under 143 entering the final 36 of stroke play.
    Among those missing the cut: defending champion Beau Hossler, two strokes too high at 2-over 146.
    “I drove it badly, chipped bad and putted bad,” Hossler said. “That usually leads to missed cuts.”
    A host of local notables, including Illinois Amateur champion Tim “Tee-K” Kelly, also hit the road after 36 holes. So did 2014 U.S. Amateur winner Gunn Yang, who at least gets to defend at Olympia Fields in a fortnight.
    Match play begins with the round of 16 on Friday morning, with the championship match slated for Saturday afternoon. Admission is free.
    – Tim Cronin