Big difference between D1, D2 golfers

Early professional instruction makes a huge difference

We're at the midpoint of the 104th running of the PGA Championship at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Southern Hills is a beast of a course that requires long and accurate driving off the tee, precision iron play and nerves of steel to putt on golf's most diabolical greens this side of Augusta National.

Lately there has been a lot of non-golf talk throughout the world of golf. Southern Hills is the site of the PGA because Trump Bedminster in New Jersey is not. Greg Norman and his Saudi Arabian pals are attempting to put together a professional golf tour to rival the PGA Tour and the European Tour with no-cut tournaments, offers of guaranteed money well north of nine figures, and glib political commentary about murderous “mistakes.” Meanwhile the defending champion, Phil Mickelson, has withdrawn from the PGA Championship, with controversy surrounding him about $40 million in gambling losses and on-course betting.

With all this in mind, it's time to take a step back and observe the relative wholesomeness of high school golf in the North Coast Section. If you want to become the champion high school golfer of California, it's a fourweek process to achieve success. If you want to play on the best high school golf team in our state, it will take three weeks of great success to do so.

Two Mondays ago I served as tournament director for the Division II NCS playoffs at the Valley of the Moon Golf Course in Santa Rosa. The VOM used to be called Oakmont West. It's a good test of golf for kids and is a relatively easy walk from one green to the next tee. Sad to say, the Valley of the Moon played a lot tougher than one might expect because of two separate rainstorms and a hailstorm that hit the golfers that day. Because they are kids who are resilient and also know what it is expected of them, there were no rain delays and no one withdrew, regardless of the difficulty of playing that day. A field of 140 student athletes (35 foursomes) was able to get around VOM from just about five hours, 20 minutes to just under six hours.

Division II includes schools with under 1,000 enrollment. The field included 13 teams of five golfers as well as five individuals from all 15 leagues, large and small, in the North Coast Section. As an aside, the section's northernmost school is Del Norte High School in Crescent City while its southernmost schools are in the Fremont School District in the southern portion of the East Bay. Division II schools play with five golfers, counting the low four scores, while Division I includes the low five scores among six golfers.

When the umbrellas were finally put away and the scores were posted, Branson High

School of Marin County posted a team score of 311, good enough to win by eight strokes. The 311 total pencils out to an average score of 77.75. That's a decent score for a small school, especially when you consider the weather. Tied for second place was St. Mary's Catholic High School of Albany and Miramonte High School or Orinda. Both schools came in at 319.

The low 18 individuals advanced to the next week at Lone Tree Golf Course in Antioch. A score of 4-overpar 76 was good enough to advance and Will Hoff of Windsor High School was atop the leader board with a 1-under-par total of 71.

This past Monday, those 18 high school golfers joined 21 large school teams in what used to be called the Tournament of Champions and is now called the NCS Division I playoffs. I went to Lone Tree to serve as the rules official on the back nine. There is almost as much difference in Division I and Division II golf as there is in high school football and small school eight-man football. The talent level is deeper on the D1 level. The golfers seem to carry themselves differently than their small school counterparts with less talking, less emotion and more steely-eyed concentration. There were several hundred parents walking in the rain that Monday at VOM. There were very few spectators at Lone Tree. Maybe the D1 kids play in so many tournaments that last Monday was just another day for their kids.

A lot of the good large high school teams are located in the East Bay along the I-680 corridor. There are a number of high end private golf clubs in that area and many of the high schoolers belong to such established country clubs as Castlewood, Round Hill, Diablo, Contra Costa, and others. I think a lot more of the D1 kids have had professional instruction from a young age onward as evidenced by the number of PGA club pros who were on site in Antioch.

While they are historically known as a football powerhouse, DeLaSalle High School in Concord was the class of the Division I playoffs Monday. Had it been a high school football game, they would have won by a 39-7 margin of victory. Led by Joey Hayden, who shot a 7-under-par 65, the DeLaSalle team had a 14-under-par team total of 346 to win by a most impressive 32 strokes.

Hayden was not alone with his dynamic play as Jack Jerge carded a 68, Jaden Dumbumaya shot a 69, Joshua Kim came in with a 71, and Colin Keith finished with a 73. For anyone with dreams of playing college golf, one better have the sort of game that the DeLaSalle kids do.

Dougherty Valley of San Ramon finished second with a team total of 378 while Foothill High School of Pleasanton came in third with a 382. DeLaSalle's team average that day was a most gaudy 69.2, which pencils out to 3-under-par per golfer. There's a good reason why Division I and Division II high school golf are canyons apart. It's all about the numbers.

The low three teams and the low four individuals advance to Berkeley Country Club (formerly known as Mira Vista CC) on Monday. The low four individuals included Ben Ragland of California High School with a 68, Matthew Alamjano of Mission San Jose who shot 69, Seth Suffell of Castro Valley who carded a 70, and Austin Wang of Athenian (a small school in Danville), who won a twohole playoff after shooting even par 72. They'll run into the top teams from the North, Sac Joaquin, Central Coast, San Francisco, and Oakland sections with the chance to move on to the CIF State Championship at San Gabriel Country Club on June 1.

Congrats are due to the Middletown High School team for a rock-solid season. The Mustangs were an at-large team at the NCS D2 playoffs two weeks ago and should be the team to beat in the Coastal Mountain Conference South Division next year. Simply said, there's a lot of talent out there. While getting lessons from age 6 onward helps, it's really about the kid and his efforts.