By The Numbers

Maga Staff

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Curt Rohe - curt@metga.org

DIRECTOR, MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS

Caroline Buchan - caroline@metga.org

2023 PJ BOATWRIGHT INTERNS

Anna Marriott, Communications

Josh Plohr, Operations

Amari Sewer, Operations

EXECUTIVE BOARD Officers

Scott Engelbrecht, President/Treasurer

Mike Marquart, Secretary

At Large Members

John Bugh

Stan Grossman

Kelli Kirchoff

Mike Marquart

Rick Meyer, Jr

John Moore

Mick Wellington

Advisory Committee

Scott Thomas, Chairman

Tom Barry

Skip Berkmeyer

Chris Kovach

Ryan Eckelcamp

Tom Portner

Curt Rohe

The Metropolitan Contributing Writers

Dan O’Neill

MVGCSAA

Dr. Zach Cutler

Curt Rohe - Executive Director

Members, welcome to May! We are full speed ahead into the tournament season at the publishing of this edition of The Metropolitan kicking off with the Old Warson Cup. May is going to be an extremely busy month with several championships and USGA qualifiers to start the year.

The Old Warson Cup proved to be a battle with unseasonably windy conditions at Old Warson CC. Congratulations to Max Kreikemeier for his victory and surviving one of the toughest Old Warson Cups I can remember. Aside from the blustery conditions, Old Warson was playing about as firm and fast as we have ever seen it and the players loved it. The week started with a great dinner on Thursday night to commemorate 25 years of the cup with many past champions and this years field.

The 2023 Amateur Series presented by Imperial Headwear kicked off another season at Persimmon Woods on May 1 with a 116 players teeing it up in another windy day. A great turnout, we had another 15 or so on the waiting list for the inaugural event of the season. Persimmon was great and a treat to start the season, should be another record breaking season for the Amateur Series!

As some may have seen a couple weeks ago on our social media channels, myself and Curt Goss (Head Professional at St. Albans) are starting a podcast. C&C Golf Factory is ready to launch in the coming days and we could not be more excited to see this finally go, it has been an idea of ours for several years. Our goal with this is to keep it local, talking about golf in the STL. Stay tuned and look for more to come very soon.

This first half of May is just crazy busy for us and the staff. Shogren Cup, East Side Amateur, US Open Local Qualifying and Metropolitan Open Championship are one right after the other and we end with the US Women’s Open Qualifying at Bellerive on May 24. Squeezed in between all of that we welcome our three Boatwright interns to the mix, Josh Plohr, Amari Sewer and Anna Marriott will be joining us soon and Caroline and I are very excited to get them started and into our team for the season.

I hope you all follow us on our social media channels, if not, please go do so...Facebook, Twitter and Instagram! I want to give a big shout out to our Director, Communications and Marketing Caroline Buchan...she has been putting so much content out for our members, golfers and followers and is coming up on her 1 year anniversary with us. Thank you Caroline and great work!

As we get into May we will have our four monthly issues of The Metropolitan through August so a lot is coming your way. If you have any interest in being a corporate sponsor or advertise in the newsletter please reach out to us and Caroline can go through the details. Thank you for reading and good golfing to everyone!

4 - As in feet, as in how much distance there was between the cup and Rory McIlroy’s ball after his drive on the 375yard par 4 par 18th at Austin Country Club during the second day of the WGC-Dell Match Play last month. McIlroy’s drive carried 3439 yards, bounced on the front of the green, then rolled to a stop four feet (actually three inches less). Did he make it? Well, he never had to try. In the match play environment, the next shot was conceded by his opponent, Denny McCarthy, as was the match. In other words, McIlroy closed out his match with an eagle and a 2 up victory. The talented Irishman went on to lose a semifinal match to Cameron Young, but defeated Scottie Scheffler to finish third in the tournament.

1958 - The year “Amen Corner” at Augusta National got its name. The label, of course, refers to holes No. 11, 12 and 13 on the revered golf course. The name was first suggested by legendary golf writer Herbert Warren Wind, who was hacking on a typewriter for Sports Illustrated at the time. Wind applied the prayerful reference specifically to the low-lying section of the golf course that includes the second half of hole No. 11, hole No. 12 and the first half of hole No. 13. Frequently, the holes are where dramatic and operative action takes place in the Masters and that certainly was the case in 1958. On No. 12, Arnold Palmer got a favorable ruling and was awarded a par 3 instead of a double bogey 5. The 28-year old Palmer went on to win that ’58 Masters by a stroke - his first major championship and an event that changed the landscape of professional golf.

12

- That’s the seed position Alex Locke carried going into the 2022 Old Warson Cup. As the Metropolitan posted, the 2023 edition of the Old Watson Cup was opening the 2023 MAGA season at Old Warson Country Club. One never knows what will happen in the match-play event, and 2022 was a prime example. Locke, a product of Glendale

High in Springfield, Mo., had never played the Robert Trent Jones course as the tournament began. But he became familiar with the grounds straight away when both of his matches in the first two rounds went extra holes. Advancing to a championship match with Jason Landry, Locke took a 3-up lead on the front nine and never looked back, closing out the match 6 and 4 to win his first MAGA title. It was a tough-luck outcome for Landry, who faced Sam Migdal in the 2021 championship final only to fall 1-up.

99

- The number of players who exceeded 300 yards in the PGA Tour Driving Distance statistics for the 2021-22 season. The leader was Cameron Champ, whose average drive went 321.40 yards. Right behind Champ was the aforementioned McIlroy, who registered 321.30 yards. The “lightweight” on the list was Hayden Buckley, a University of Missouri product, who posted an average of 300.1 yards; Alex Soren narrowly missed making the club with a 299.8. As for the number of drives that reached 300 or more yards last season, the PGA Tour supplied data to Golf Digest saying 56,930 drives covered at least 300 yards, which meant 27.7 percent of the drives on tour traveled more than 300 yards. That said, 3,775 drives went 350 yards or more, while 74 swipes went 400 yards or longer. And yes, one recorded drive exceeded 450 yards - Scott Stallings hit a mammoth shot of 460 yards on the 15th hole during the second round of the WM Phoenix Open.

738

- According to the National Golf Foundation (NGF), this is the number of public golf courses (daily fee and municipal) to be found in Michigan, which is the No. 1 state in the country for public golf. Florida ranks second with 677 public courses and California has 633. Approximately 86 percent of Michigan’s golf courses are open to public play.