Westchester pro ready for ‘ultimate test’
Alex Beach knows exactly what approach he’ll take at the PGA Championship this week: the same one that led the Westchester Country Club pro to a win at the PGA Professional National Championship two weeks ago.
Beach led a five-man contingent from the Met Section of the 20 players who qualified from the PNC, outdueling Danny Balin, whom he replaced at Westchester when Balin took the head pro job at Fresh Meadow in March. They will join Jason Caron of Mill River, Brian Mackey of Hollow Brook and Rob Labritz of Glen Arbor. Tyler Hall, out of Upper Montclair in the New Jersey Section, won a six-man playoff for the last two qualifying spots. The local area will be well-represented on home turf.
Beach, however, will not have the benefit of any local knowledge. He played Bethpage Black for the first time ever in a practice round last Wednesday.
“It definitely is as advertised,” he said. “It’s a massive property. It’s a very long golf course. The rough is certainly pretty stout. They were rolling the greens with a steamroller, like something you’ve seen on a highway, which I’ve never seen. It’s going to be the ultimate test of golf.”
The West Course at Belfair in Bluffton, S.C., was no pushover for the PNC field either.
“I went in with the idea that Belfair is a challenging golf course and I figured that I would have a slight advantage on the field with distance and wedge play and that if I played patient golf and picked my spots to be aggressive, understanding that par is a great score on every hole out there, I’d be O.K. I just stuck to it. I really made committed golf swings, hit a lot of greens and outside of the third round, I really made a lot of good putts.”
Beach and Balin had separated themselves from the rest of the field through 36 holes so it was a veritable match-play situation over the last two rounds. Balin, who has played on the Web.Com Tour, was no easy mark. Tied, going into the final day, Beach won by two shots, buoyed by a birdie on the tough 15th hole.
“I’ve been watching him play for years now since I moved up to New Jersey and the Met Area. He’s a very accomplished player,” Beach said. “I think knowing Danny and knowing his game and how good he is, I knew he wasn’t going to give me much. There were definitely players in that field who would make mistakes in that scenario but it wasn’t going to be Danny. He’s been on the big stage and he’s a competitor. I have to give him credit because he pushed me harder and made me focus more than I may have otherwise.”