Spurlock, 19, eyes 8-time champ, 47
The final round of the Fourth of July Classic at Little Rock’s War Memorial Golf Course is set and will feature a first-timer and an all-timer in the final group.
Maumelle’s Ryan Spurlock, 19, played the second round of his first Classic start on Sunday in 3-under 61 to pull into a tie with Chris Jenkins at 5-under 123.
Jenkins, 47 of Little Rock, has won a record eight Classic championships, including the past three. No player has won more than three consecutive Classics since the tournament began its 80-year run in 1937.
Spurlock and Jenkins are scheduled to tee off in the third round’s final group at 12:20 p.m. Tuesday with Josh Allen of Little Rock.
Allen is in a four-way tie for third at 1-under 127 with Kevin Walker, Nickolas Zimmerman, and Nick Crisco.
Spurlock, a sophomore at Arkansas Tech, said he has been fully aware since childhood of Jenkins’ status at the Classic and in Arkansas State Golf Association amateur play in general.
“I couldn’t ask for anything more than to be tied with Chris going into the final round,” Spurlock said.
Sunday was the first time Spurlock and Jenkins have played a competitive round together. They started in the final group with White Hall’s Wes McNulty, who won the Classic in 2006 and 2008. Jenkins said he was impressed by Spurlock’s play.
“Ryan has a lot of game,” he said. “He plays a lot of golf, and he is well honed. Come Tuesday he’s going to be very formidable. He has the ability to play low. You can tell that by playing with him.”
McNulty, burdened by a quadruple bogey, played the second round in 2-over 65 to fall from a five-way tie for third to a three-way tie for
seventh at 128 with Jay Lester of Conway and Tracy Harris of Little Rock.
Jenkins played the first six holes of the second round in 1-under to increase his lead to three strokes, but Spurlock played the final three holes of the front nine in 4-under, with birdies on Nos. 7 and 9 and an eagle on the 307-yard par-4 eighth hole when his 70-yard, 60-degree shot from the rough landed 6 inches from the cup and bounced in off the flagstick.
“I had a bad lie and I was just trying to hit it as high as I could and try to land it soft,” Spurlock said. “I wanted to get out of there with par, but right when I hit it, it looked perfect.”
Spurlock’s birdie on the ninth hole gave him a frontnine 29 and put him into a first-place tie with Jenkins.
McNulty played the front nine in 2 over to fall six strokes behind the leaders, but on the 154-yard par-3 11th hole, he met one of several War Memorial curses to have endured despite remarkable course improvements that have drawn raves from Classic
veterans.
His tee shot missed the green 30 feet right and landed in heavy rough and weeds no more than a foot from a chain-link fence that marks out of bounds and helps save traffic on I-630 from errant shots.
McNulty had perhaps eight inches of clearance between his ball and the fence. His only option other than to play the shot would have been to return to the tee lying two. He decided to play away and paid a price of two whiffs, a chunk that landed in more heavy rough a few feet away, a pitch to the green, and two putts for a quadruple 7.
“I thought maybe I could advance it far enough to where I can get it up and down for a 4, and then I missed it three times,” McNulty said. “I was frustrated, but today I played poorly, and I was frustrated before I even played that ball. But one thing, that’s part of the mystique of War Memorial. I’ve done something like that dozens of times on No. 11.”
“Golf is just hard,” Jenkins said. “It’s hard for good players
to play, and it’s hard for good players on a short golf course to play. It’s just a difficult sport to conquer.”
McNulty, however, spoke highly of the new greens and relatively plush fairways on a course once more notable for large patches barren of anything but dirt, rocks, and fallen branches.
“This golf course is wonderful,” he said. “They’ve really done a good job with the way they’ve redesigned the greens. Actually, the course is slightly easier than it used to be, but it’s because you get good fairway lies and there’s grass everywhere. You still have your iffy lies and your uneven stances and stuff. It’s still War Memorial, but that what makes it great. It means a whole lot to me and everybody else.”
Jenkins echoed McNulty’s praise.
“The golf course is dramatically better than it used to be,” he said. “But you still have to get around the course. You have to keep your brain from imploding at some point, because it can still be a frustrating place to play.”