Reigning Metro champion knows course
The Metropolitan Championship will be played in Springboro for the first time next weekend when many of the Miami Valley’s best amateurs have a fourday duel at Heatherwoode Golf Club.
Heatherwoode is the home course of Josh Gilkison, the teenager who won the 2016 championship at Country Club of the North.
Only two players in the 21-year history of this event — Mike Suttman and Pete Samborsky — have won-back-to-back Metros.
Could the 19-year-old Gilkison’s course knowledge provide the edge he needs to be the third repeat winner? Stay tuned.
Sixteen men have won the 72-hole stroke play event. Fourteen have won it once, Suttman won it twice (2000 and 2001) and Samborsky has been champion five times — in 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2011.
Only a few of the past winners are likely to be in the field this time. They are Gilkison, Samborsky, Jeff Scohy (2010), Ryan Reichley (2012) and Pete Betzold (2015). Perhaps we’ll get another young champion like 22-year-old Austin Sipe, who played so well in winning the Ohio Am last week.
The 2017 Metropolitan will have a new look with a women’s division. The Dayton Women’s Stroke Play Championship has morphed into the Women’s Metropolitan.
Last year’s women’s amateur champion was Esha Kulkarni of Centerville, who shot 144 at Troy Country Club.
The women will play 18 holes each Thursday and Friday to determine flight and division champions, and those choosing to play for the overall championship will play a third round Saturday.
The men will play Thursday through Sunday, with the field reduced to the low 32 scores and ties after 36 holes. The tournament is presented by Dayton Freight.
The 97th Ohio Open Championship will be played this week at Medina on the courses at the Weymouth Club and the Fox Meadow Country Club. The 54-hole event begins Monday.
Tim Couch is the defending champion. Al Espinosa, Denny Shute, Billy Burke, Byron Nelson, Frank Stranahan, Bob Shave, Bobby Wynn, Bob Sowards and Rob Moss all have won it three times.
Only five amateurs have won it: Shave, Stranahan, Maurice McCarthy, Bob Lewis and Jack Nicklaus (at age 16 in 1956). Lewis, the 1978 champ, was the last amateur to take the title.
Amateurs from the Dayton area in this year’s field include Clark Engle, brothers Jake and Josh Gilkison, Tom Sellers and Cameron Willis.
A couple of years ago I decided that golf would be more fun if I played from the forward tees. But at Madden Golf Course they were difficult to identify. And when I found them, there was little evidence in the grass that anyone had used them.
I am pleased to report that Madden is in the process of getting some excellent tee boxes. Workers using surveying instruments and equipment never seen before on that course have built some beautiful tees and have leveled many of the old ones.
Nineteen tee boxes are being leveled and rebuilt. Nine are forward tees, at holes No. 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 14, 15 and 18. Ten are regulation tees, at holes 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 (blue and white), 14 and 15. Irrigation is being installed on eight tees that had none.
The only holes not affected are Nos. 3, 11, 13, 16 and 17.
The tee boxes won’t be in use until next year, but it’s easy to see they will enhance the course my golfing friends refer to as Country Club of the West.