DePriest emerges from 4-man finale

The final round of the 47th Maumelle Classic golf tournament turned into a heated Sunday afternoon scramble at Maumelle Country Club.

Just the way Thomas DePriest likes it.

“Tough conditions, the final round, everything on the line,” DePriest said. “The course was playing very firm, very fast. I love that. It makes you hit golf shots. You just don’t throw darts at the flag.”

DePriest, who will be a junior at the University of Central Arkansas in the fall, ended a four-man playoff

with a 20-foot bull’s-eye of a birdie putt on the first extra hole to score his first significant victory since winning the Arkansas Junior Amateur in 2016.

“Straight downhill,” DePriest said of the putt. “My spot was about halfway

between me and the hole. And I was like, ‘If you hit that spot with dying speed, you’re not leaving it short, and it should go straight into the hole. After about halfway, it straightened out and it looked good for a long time.”

DePriest pumped his fist but said he knew the tourna- ment was not over. Former University of Arkansas at Little Rock players Nickolas Zimmerman and Tyler Reynolds had makeable birdie looks. Logan Pate, the fourth man in the playoff, left his second shot short of the green and could do no better than par.

“Even after I made the putt, I still didn’t think I’d won the tournament,” said DePriest, who started the day four shots behind second-round leader Reynolds. “In my mind, I kept myself in it. That’s how I was approaching it.

“I was more nervous when they were over their putts than I was over my own. I had several putts coming down the stretch to finish the tournament, and I didn’t do it.” He wasn’t alone.

Five different players — Reynolds, Cabot’s Connor Gaunt, Pate, Zimmerman and DePriest, either held the lead or were tied for it in Sunday’s final round.

Players especially struggled on the back nine of a 7,093yard, par-72 layout that was as unforgiving as the 95-degree heat and as threatening as the thunder that rumbled in the background.

“It played tough today,” said Reynolds, who has now led this tournament going into the final round three times without a victory. “I think most of it was the pressure.”

That DePriest was seemingly oblivious to it all had something to do with the way he started play Friday. A 3-over 75 left him seven shots behind co-leaders Pate and Cameron McRae.

DePriest rallied Saturday with a 4-under 68 to put him at 1 under, four strokes behind Reynolds.

That’s when DePriest, a psychology major, played some mind games.

“Going into today, I just knew if I wanted to have any chance of winning I was going

to have to shoot 3 under on the front,” DePriest said. “Even if it didn’t get me in the lead, it would get me closer, because everybody plays the back nine so good out here. Usually.”

DePriest posted 3 birdies on the front nine, and he made the turn at 4 under, 1 shot behind Reynolds, Gaunt and Pate, who each made the turn at 5 under.

DePriest pulled into a tie for the lead with a birdie on the 11th, and was either tied or alone on the lead the rest of the way.

Bogeys on the par-5 15th and the par-3 17th knocked him back into a four-way tie.

DePriest said he knew he had a one-shot lead when he approached the par-3 17th, a 201-yard hole that always has caused him problems.

“It don’t matter if they move the tees to the women’s tee box, I’m still going to miss it short,” DePriest said.

DePriest bogeyed to fall back into a four-way tie. He said he just wanted to par the 18th and take part in a playoff, if it came to that.

He was the shortest of the four off the tee in the playoff, played at No. 18, but he said he had the angle he wanted.

“It was 182,” he said. “I knew the pin was 16 paces on. I needed to carry it 15 feet short of that, so I was thinking let’s hit a wedge. We’ve got adrenaline and a flier lie. I was saying, ‘Don’t go long, don’t go long.’ And I hit it long, but I gave myself a look.

“So, I said, ‘You already messed it up being nervous, let’s try not being.’ And it’s one of those deals.

“After I made the putt, I really didn’t want to watch. I’m glad I won, but like I said I thought I made the putt to keep myself in the tournament.”

DePriest was cheered on by several of his former teammates at Henderson State University, where he played before transferring to UCA.

At Henderson, DePriest possessed long, scraggly hair, which earned him the nickname Mutt.

Sunday he was clean cut. “Up until about a week ago, I’ve always had long hair, real long hair,” DePriest said. “And they always tell me, ‘You need to get that cut, you look like a mutt.’ I’ve always owned it. The uglier the hair the better I guess.”