Playoff Drama

Playoff Drama: Whalen Brothers Work Overtime to Claim Heritage Invitational Title By Dave Renbarger

Talk about a Cinderella story. Talk about an upset special. Talk about two guys bringing out their best stuff during an excruciating four-hole marathon shootout (not to mention three crucial chip-off victories). Saturday's Heritage Invitational finale had all the elements of an instant classic, and when it was over, brothers Bill and Brendan Whalen were the last men standing. They claimed the prestigious 2022 member-guest title at Port Royal Golf and Racquet Club with a hard-fought victory over the team of Bill Hazel and John Welch on the first extra hole. The Whalens admitted that they were among the long shots entering the Saturday's play. After two days, they occupied last place in their flight, earning a spot into the newly formed Survivor Flight, designed to reward slow starters with an avenue into the shootout if they could put it all together on Day 3. And the Whalens' Day 3 performance was pure magic. Because they wound up tied for first in the five-team Survivor Flight, the Whalens had to dig deep just to make it into the seventeam shootout field. Bill and Brendon squared off against Rick D'Arienzo and Chuck Shaynak in a chip-off to break the tie, and the Whalens won it in convincing fashion, with both of them chipping to within 2 feet. So it was on to the first tee of Barony, where seven two-man teams convened for two holes of alternate-shot drama to whittle the field to four and then two teams. The contestants were Hilton Head Flight champions Guy Suchy and Jim Costa, Dafauskie Flight champions Ken Gerth and Jack Morrow, Pinckney Flight champions Hazel and Welch, Lady's Flights champions Jim Stauffer and Jack Leland, Dataw Flight champion Kevin and Steve Nattress, the wild-card entry of John Simpson and Dewey Mullins and the Whalens out of the Survivor Flight. Then an absolutely amazing thing happened: Despite playing an extremely difficult format in front of a large gallery in a highpressure environment, all 14 players come though like champs. The steely competitors, several of them carrying relatively high handicaps, took turns executing good drives, solid approaches, tidy chips and dead-solid perfect putts. Not a single team faltered, resulting in seven gross pars. Five of the seven pars went into the books as net birdies, meaning that the Suchy-Costa and GerthMorrow teams suffered hard-luck eliminations despite fine performances. After the Nattress team was ousted in a five-way chip-off, the four remaining teams squared off on the par-3 second hole, where another three-way tie resulted in another high-pressure chip-off. Team Hazel and Team Whalen prevailed to reach the pressurecooker final hole of the shootout. After two holes of brilliant play, both teams encountered some alternate-shot difficulty on the par-5 third hole with everything on the line. The hole was ultimately halved with double-bogeys to force overtime. The players and the large gallery returned to the No. 1 tee for the tiebreaker, where the alternate-shot format was replaced by a two-ball aggregate game. Hazel was heroic, sinking a 25-footer for birdie, but his partner found the trees and then the sand and could not recover. The Whalens came through smartly with a par and a bogey to nail down the cherished title, celebrating with high-fives and fist pumps. "I still can't believe we won," said Bill, a frequent Skins Game winner at the club whose handicap has been steadily declining all year. "I thought we were dead in the water after the first two days." Brendan, a long-hitting design and construction director at Boston Medical Center, agreed. "I couldn't do anything right the first two days, but everything was clicking today," said Brendan, who is 9 years younger than Bill and sported a snappy Fedora on the course. "I think I shot 50 in the last round on Friday and then 37 on Saturday morning." As happy as the brothers were after their triumph, their biggest fan seemed even more delighted. Donna Whalen, who was cheering loudly for her husband every step of the way, said, "I'm just glad that those new clubs Bill got worked out," she said. "They were really expensive."