Youth is served at this year’s City
Rick Reinsberg brings so much history in the San Francisco City Championship, he remembers when it was a big deal for a high school player to advance to the match-play stage of the tournament.
Yeah, that was a long time ago.
Teenagers rule the landscape here in the 21st century, as evident in one of Saturday’s semifinals in this year’s City: Foothill High-Pleasanton junior Ryan Knop against Mitty High-San Jose senior Shintaro Ban.
Reinsberg, a onetime Cal player who turns 42 next week, will face USF alum Ryan Wilson, 34, in the other semifinal (adult division) at Presidio Golf Course. The winners will meet in Sunday’s 36-hole final, with a chance to join Ken Venturi, George Archer and Harvie Ward among the winners of this venerable tournament.
Reinsberg qualified for match play as a Miramonte-Orinda senior, back in the day. He’s played in the City between 10 and 15 times in all, giving him plenty of stories to tell about soggy fairways and trying to putt with a 7-iron on puddle-strewn greens.
He won the tournament in 2003, only to become a sporadic participant in the 11 years since then. Real life got in the way, and he entered this year’s City mostly because his son, now 9, decided not to play baseball this year.
Not surprisingly, he soon found himself wading through another sloppy tournament.
“I don’t care how much of a drought we’re in, the San Francisco City Championship always brings rain,” Reinsberg said. “I enjoy it because of the tradition, but you have to have a different mind-set knowing the conditions are probably going to be difficult — muddy, tricky lies, slow greens. I like the challenge.”
Reinsberg, who also has won the Alameda Commuters five times, will face another Commuters champ in Wilson, who took that title in 1998. Wilson was a college freshman at Nevada at the time; he later transferred to USF and now lives in San Francisco.
On the women’s side, 2013 champion Casie Cathrea of Livermore — who left Oklahoma State earlier this year and is expected to turn pro this summer — has a chance to win back-to-back titles. Cathrea will meet Elizabeth Schultz, a senior at Acalanes-Lafayette.
Amanjoty Sangha, a sophomore at San Mateo High, will collide with Gunn-Palo Alto junior Anna Zhou in the other semifinal match.