Shaw Pritchett leads Alabama-Georgia team to U.S. Senior Challenge win
Shaw Pritchett leads Alabama-Georgia team to U.S. Senior Challenge win
Shaw Pritchett recognizes that his U.S. Senior Challenge-winning foursome may look, on the outside, like a bit of a mishmash. The team, captained by Pritchett's good golf buddy Michael Arasin, from Auburn, Alabama, included players from both sides of the Georgia-Alabama line. Montgomery, Alabama, resident Pritchett hadn't even met one of them, Georgian Danny Nelson, until the practice round at Hobe Sound (Florida) Golf Club this week.
'Maybe it was a little bit of a hodgepodge of putting a team together,' said the newly-55 Pritchett, 'but it was nice that it worked out.'
Three of the four members roomed together in an Airbnb for the week and generally enjoyed the rare team event in senior amateur golf. And that produced good results for all.
Pritchett, who has won the Alabama Senior Amateur the past two years, got the recruiting call from Arasin early in the season to play the national senior team event that rotates to venues around the country. And Pritchett turned out to be a good recruit: He contributed a score each round in the play-four-count-three format.
In fact, Pritchett very nearly locked up individual honors in the Senior division. With consistent rounds of 73-75-74, Pritchett finished just one shot behind winner Charlie Stevens of Wichita, Kansas.
Pritchett stayed in the game even as winds picked up in the final two rounds and wreaked havoc on a difficult Hobe Sound layout that features several sandy, native areas.
'I think each day the pin positions got a lot harder,' Pritchett said. 'Today they were really, really hard and then the other thing, probably the second and third day, the wind blew about 15 mph consistently, the whole time. It was a grind out there the last two days, just to get the ball in the hole. You hit one in the middle of the fairway and normally you say I've got this, this should be an easy par, let me go find a birdie. That was just not happening on this golf course.'
One key indicator of strength of venue stands out on the U.S. Senior Challenge leaderboard: The amount of scoring fluctuation among the top players in the field.
Arasin, a talented player who perennially contends in senior amateur tournaments, backed up opening rounds of 72-73 with a final-round 80 and finished T-5 in the Senior division. Stan Humphries, who had been a key player on the Louisiana team that had a six-shot second-round lead, logged rounds of 71-74-83 and was T-11.
Hobe Sound is a private course that doesn't often open its doors to national events, and Pritchett found the conditioning excellent though the challenge constant.
'I cannot say enough about the conditioning,' he said. 'The holes were really challenging, pretty much every hole was a challenge. You didn't really have a breather on the entire course.'
Thanks in part to Pritchett's consistent play, the Alabama-Georgia team finished at 25 over and just one shot ahead of the Louisiana team captained by Grady Brame, who posted a final-round 73 that was one of the best rounds of the day. It just wasn't quite enough to keep his team in the lead spot, though it did secure Brame a top-5 finish in the Senior division.
Team Michigan finished third two shots behind Louisiana and the Florida team captained by William Boockford, which had led after the first round, finished fourth, 10 shots behind that.
Led by Charlie Stevens, the Senior division medalist, Team Kansas rounded out the top 5.
Donny Phillips of Suwanee, Georgia, claimed the Super Senior division title in a playoff with Memphis resident David Apperson after both finished at 14 over. Chris Hall of Acworth, Georgia, the final member of the winning Georgia-Alabama team, was fourth in that division.
Lee Sandlin of Dallas won the Legend division title at 4 over, which was three shots better than Boockford, of nearby Tequesta, Florida.
Gary Jeffreys, of El Paso, Texas, was the top Super Legend player at 14 over. That was five shots better than Skip Tellefsen of Jupiter, Florida.
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