Sep 30, 2014 By Mike Dudurich for The 3 min read

There weren’t many competitors in the field rushing up to Roy Vucinich and John Aber to wish them the best in the afternoon round of the Uniontown Pro-Pro at Uniontown Country Club.

Oh, they all congratulated the duo that combined to shoot 58, which is 13-under par at UCC. But they didn’t share the concerns about how the two leaders were going to protect the five-shot lead they had over Kevin Shields and Rob McClellan.

Actually, they got no sympathy at all.

“What they did in the morning made it almost impossible to catch them,” Shields, of the Club at Nevillewood, said. “We knew if we were going to catch them, we had to get them early. And I had good chances on two of the first three holes, but didn’t take advantage. They’re almost too good.”

As it turned out, they were too good. They backed up the 13-under with a six-under and finished at 19-under, good enough for a five-shot win over Shields and McClellan.

“Protecting a lead is a challenge, but we knew what we had to do and it worked out,” said Aber, the current golf professional at Allegheny Country Club. His partner, Vucinich, is the longtime former pro at Allegheny.

The tournament is a unique one on the Tri-State Section PGA slate each year. The morning round is played as a Chapman event, which is something of a hybrid of a scramble, alternate shot and flag-hunting combo. It creates the opportunity for lots of birdies and Aber and Vucinich made 13 yesterday morning.

“We made a lot of putts and hit it close a lot in the morning,” Aber said.

Vucinich added, “We didn’t even think about making a bogey.”

Shields and McClellan made eight birdies in their first round and probably felt pretty good about that … until they saw the scoreboard.

Before the field went back out in the afternoon’s better-ball session, the leaders laid out a game plan.

“We knew we just needed to get two or three birdies on each side and if we did, they would need to shoot 59 or 60 to catch us,” Vucinich said. “We thought if we were five or six-under, we’d be all right.”

And that’s exactly what they did.

The runners-up made six birdies, too. They also had an eagle, but hurt their cause a lot when they made two bogeys.

“The two bogeys killed us,” Shields said. “You just can’t make bogeys in this sort of tournament.”

In the afternoon round, several teams posted seven-under par rounds of 64, making the leaderboard behind Vucinich and Aber much more crowded than after the first round.

Host pro Tom Bummer and partner Steve Superick were stung by three bogeys in their first round but made five birdies, an eagle and just one bogey in the second to post 66-65 and finished in a tie for fifth.

The event has been around for many years in a couple different reincarnations. The earlier version was much bigger with fields as large as 100 pros. Now it’s a much smaller version and, in addition to being a fun day for the pros, the event as well as other activities around it has created $700,000 for scholarships, allowing many children in the area the opportunity to further their educations.