Greaser the area’s latest teen golfing standout
The more I see of Austin Greaser’s golfing success, the more I think the Vandalia teenager is among the best young players ever produced in the Dayton area.
His performance in the recent U.S. Junior Amateur championship at the Inverness Club in Toledo where he won three matches and was one of the final eight survivors was a rare accomplishment if not an unprecedented one for someone from the Miami Valley.
Which is not to imply that we haven’t had some amazing young teen-age players.
We only have to go back nine years to see that Michael Bernard of Huber Heights won the Miami Valley Metropolitan Championship when he was 15 and was the youngest to win the Ohio Amateur Championship in 2010, when he was 16.
Bobby Zimmerman, who eventually played on the PGA Tour, won the 1957 City Amateur Championship at 16.
Randy Leen was an outstanding amateur who won the Ohio Junior World when he was 17 and qualified for the U.S. Amateur the same year.
Some of you out there who are longer in the tooth than I might remember other young phenoms from the past who haven’t been mentioned.
But none traveled as far and wide to play in junior competition as Greaser has. Last year he won an American Junior Golf Association tournament in Lompoc, California one weekend and an AJGA event in Goshen, Kentucky the following week.
Twice he has made it through the local qualifier for the U.S. Open.
Next month he will be playing in the U.S. Amateur Championship at the Pinehurst (N.C.) Resort because he earned one of the two spots in a qualifier at Moraine Country Club on July 22.
Greaser will no doubt have some fans at Pinehurst because he will be playing golf for the University of North Carolina beginning this fall. Perhaps he will come home next summer and play in a local event like the Metropolitan Championship so we in the Miami Valley can see him perform.
I should mention that Greaser is still many birdies away from putting together the best amateur career by a player from the Miami Valley. That distinction clearly belongs to Leen, the Alter High School product who was low amateur in the 1996 U.S. Open, a semifinalist in the 1997 U.S. Amateur, a member of the victorious U.S. Walker Cup team in 1997 and a three-time player of the year in the Big Ten Conference.
Metro golfers take
new DCC route
Weather permitting, the Metropolitan Championship will finish today at Dayton Country Club but not on DCC’s 18th hole.
The final round, like the first three, will finish near the clubhouse on what normally is DCC’s ninth hole.
The routing for the event was changed so the tournament will end near the clubhouse instead of at DCC’s 18th hole, which is a par 3 that is not located where spectators have easy access.
To accomplish that, golfers will play DCC’s first two holes as usual but will jump from No. 2 to hole No. 12 and finish the front nine at hole No. 18.
Then they will begin their back nine at holes No. 10 and 11 before moving to the usual No. 3 and finishing at the par 4 No. 9 where the green is near the clubhouse and accessible for spectators.
This routing has been chosen for other tournaments in the past, but Dayton Country Club officials have always been reluctant to make the change permanent because the normal route allows for a convenient stop at the clubhouse after playing No. 9 for refreshments before continuing to the nearby 10th tee.
Chip shot
If you need an illustration as to how far today’s golfers hit a golf ball and how it can affect the integrity of our golf courses, consider what Connor Quigley did at Dayton Country Club on Thursday in the first round of the Metropolitan Championship.
The ninth hole (being played as No. 18 this week) is a 350-yard dogleg right par 4 where low handicap golfers drive the ball with an iron and then have a downhill second shot to the green. A grove of trees near the dogleg has always prevented players from taking a short cut to the putting surface.
On Thursday, Quigley ignored the fairway and walloped a drive directly toward a green that he could not see. I don’t know whether the drive went through the trees or over them, but the ball somehow settled on the green, allowing Quigley to sink the putt for an eagle two on his way to a 69.
An Oakwood High School graduate, Quigley is a 20-year-old rising junior on the University of Dayton golf team.