Area golfers had tough day at West Penn Stroke Play Championship
UPPER ST. CLAIR — It wasn’t a great day for golfers from the area in the West Penn Golf Association’s Spring Stroke Play Championship at St. Clair Country Club.
On a track that is always a stiff test, some overnight rain and a nice dose of wind made it a tough all day.
Belle Vernon’s Michael Lubrani posted rounds of 81 and 86 for a 167 total.
The father and son combo of Joe and Anthony Cordaro from Connellsville also struggled. Joe finished with 87-81-167 and Anthony, the WPIAL champion a year ago, had 81-80-161.
And how about the rest of the field? Only two players in the field broke par for the day.
The first of those is a familiar name. He’s not familiar just because this is the seventh time Nathan Smith has won the Spring Stroke Play. He’s also familiar because he’s won the U.S. Mid-Amateur title four times, played in the Masters four times and been a member of multiple Walker Cup teams.
The second of those is not so familiar. Zachary Ford is a fresh-faced 19-year-old from Coshocton, Pennsylvania, a smallish town not far from Meadville. His resume is far less sparkling than Smith’s, but he has committed to East Tennessee State where he’ll be playing golf in the fall.
“I’ve never met Nathan Smith, but I certainly knew who he was and I also knew that if I was going to have a top finish, I was going to have to go through him,” Ford, who celebrates his 20th birthday today, said. “He’s just awesome.”
Smith made four birdies and two bogeys in his first round of 70 but had a much tougher time on the putting surfaces in the second round.
“The greens were so tough that it forced me to keep hitting the ball close and I was able to do that,” Smith said. “They were fast and a little bumpy at the same time, I was basically trying to two-putt my way around this afternoon.”
And he was doing a pretty good job of that, making 13 straight pars before making a bogey on his 13th hole, the 148-yard fifth hole. That jolt woke his putter and he birdied the next two holes. The first was a 20-footer uphiller and the next one was even a bit longer.
After that he made routine pars on the final two holes to nail down the win.
“This is a big one,” Smith, who finished at 3-under par, admitted. “This means a lot for a couple reasons. One it’s a big even and I’ve won it several times. I was amazed when I looked at the field and saw how good it was. This field is getting deeper and deeper each year.”
There’s one other reason and it speaks well for the future of golf in Western Pennsylvania.
“This event used to be older,” he said. “Now there are a lot of kids in it and you can tell by the kinds of sounds you hear out there now. They’re all swinging the big bats and you can hear the sounds their drivers are making.”
Ford made four birdies and four bogeys in his first round and four birdies and three bogeys in the second.
“I was inconsistent,” he said. “I was hitting greens, but left myself with a lot of 30-40 foot putts.”
His runner-up finish earned him a spot in the West Penn Amateur in a month and definitely shines a bit of light on him as a player of quality for the future.
“This was my first really big tournament,” Ford said. “I hadn’t played in anything like this because I played a lot of AJGA junior events and that’s what helped me get some attention in terms of colleges. This was awesome.”