Fairways • August 2011
The Comebak Kid is the State Am Champ
by Mike Sorensen

Growing up the son of a golf professional with a couple of older brothers who were excellent golfers, Jeff Evans was destined to be an excellent golfer himself.

The 21-year-old Evans certainly proved it when he won the 113th edition of the Men's State Amateur in mid-July. Evans, who will be a senior at Southern Utah University in the fall, won five matches, capped off by a comfortable 8 & 7 victory over Stratton Schulz in the finals at the Soldier Hollow Gold Course in what was the largest margin of victory in a State Am final since Doug Bybee defeated Robert Shunn 10 & 9 at Hobble Creek in 1996.

Even though he wasn't that well known before the tournament, in retrospect, perhaps we should have known Evans was the man to beat at this year's Men's State Amateur from the very first day.

Evans put a 68 on the board at the Gold Course, while the rest of the field averaged 79 on the tougher of the two Soldier Hollow courses. Although he faltered to a 73 on the easier Silver Course in the second round, that was the last time he'd be over par for the week as he went back to the Gold Course for each of his matches in the match-play portion of the tournament.

"It's unbelievable, I can't put it into words,'' Evans said after his Sunday finals victory and hoisting the large silver State Am trophy. "I've worked so hard, it's nice to see it finally pay off.''

As the No. 8 seed, Evans cruised in an opening match win over David Madsen 6 & 4. Then in his second-round match against former State Am runner-up and current Salt Lake City Amateur title-holder Scott Clark, Evans showed why he'd be called the Comeback Kid by the end of the week.

With just seven holes left, he found himself down three holes. However, he ran off three straight birdies to tie the match, won the next hole with a par and closed out the match with a birdie at the par-4 No. 18 hole, which he birdied all five times he played it during the week.

That put him in the final eight and in both of his Saturday matches, Evans had to fight back from behind, making birdies at 18 both times to force extra holes. Both Saturday matches ended up going 21 holes and he won both matches by hitting 9-iron tee shots at the 175-yard par-3 hole to within five feet and making the winning birdie putts.

"I really had to dig deep to come back and was able to do it every time,'' Evans said.

Evans' opponent in the finals was an unlikely foe, the 19-year-old Schulz, who was playing in his first-ever State Am tournament. Schulz grew up in Vernal, where he was a top golfer, as well as a top wrestler. His parents used to drive him into the Wasatch Front to play tournaments in the Utah Junior Golf Association, where he was among the 10 best in his age group for several years.

Schulz had survived the humongous 16-man playoff on Thursday evening, and then polished off four opponents, never even going as far as the final hole. In the end, he didn't have the game to keep up with the steady Evans, saying, "He's just a better player. There wasn't a whole lot I could do.''

The week began with 288 golfers competing on the two Soldier Hollow courses for the right to play in the 32-person match play. Neither defending champion Joe Parkinson, who is on an LDS mission in Florida, nor 2009 champion Zac Blair, who was competing at an out-of-state amateur event, were playing, leaving 2008 champion Dan Horner as the logical favorite.

Horner, not only had won the tournament when it was played at Soldier Hollow three years earlier, but was in the midst of a spectacular year, winning seven different events on the local amateur circuit.

However, Horner could never find his game on Wednesday and Thursday and scores of 73 and 77 sent him home early. He was joined by the likes of three-time champion Doug Bybee, two-time runner-up Jon Morgan, BYU golfers Daniel Reid and Cole Ogden, ex-professionals Jon Wright and Eric Rustand and former champions Gregg Oliphant, Todd Barker and Steve Borget.

Mike Branca, who just completed his senior season at the University of Utah, shared the first-day lead with John Busby, a 32-year-old from St. George who works in real estate.

The son of Salt Lake Country Club head pro Ron Branca, Mike is working for the Utah Golf Association this year as a P.J. Boatwright intern, which meant he had other duties at the tournament besides making birdies. Perhaps that had an effect on his game as he could only manage a 74 in the second round and then lost in the second round of match play.

Casey Halliday, a 20-year-old who is transferring from Weber State to Utah, was two shots behind after the first round of medal play with a 68. He shot a 70 on the Gold Course on Thursday for a 138 total, but apparently didn't think it would be good enough for medalist honors. Because when Busby finished at 138 and was the only player around when medal play was completed Thursday afternoon, he was declared the medalist.

A fierce thunderstorm had come over the mountains at 6 o'clock and halted play while sheets of rain attacked the Soldier Hollow layout. But it lasted less than an hour and the three groups out on each of the four nines were able to finish up before 8.

The tournament couldn't afford to lose an hour, especially when 16 golfers ended up tied at 145 and had to play off for three spots. It was the largest playoff in State Am history and it seemed certain the playoff would have to finish up early Friday morning.

The 16 golfers teed off in four foursomes and after one hole, seven survived with birdies -- Schulz, Travis Miner, Nic Booth, Devon Purser, Michael May, Troy Creer and Ryan Smith. One of the nine golfers eliminated on the first hole was 13-year-old Rhett Rasmussen of Draper, who wowed everyone with his remarkable play with rounds of 72 and 73. In fact, if he could have eliminated just one of three bogeys on the final four holes, he would have made it to match play.

With darkness quickly approaching and mosquitoes starting to eat the golfers and remaining spectators alive, the seven golfers teed off on the par-5 No. 2 hole on the Silver Course. After Schulz, Miner and Booth all birdied, Smith was left with a 6-footer to keep the playoff going.

However, after slapping away the mosquitoes on his legs, he slid the putt by, ending the playoff much to the relief of the other golfers as well as tournament officials. It was 9:04 p.m.

"A lot of mosquitoes and I couldn't see anything,'' the 33-year-old from Provo said when asked to describe the playoff. "It was tough. I couldn't see whether the putt broke or not.''

With the 32 match-play golfers determined, they had an early wake-up call for the Champions Breakfast the next morning where former UGA executive director Joe Watts spoke about the wonderful sport of golf and the significance of the State Amateur.

By early Friday afternoon, the match play field had been cut in half and in half again by late afternoon.

Several top players went down, including 2005 champion Tommy Sharp, last year's runner-up Stu Gold, 2009 runner-up Alex Sutton and former runner-up Kirk Siddens.

The Elite Eight were mostly guys unknown on the local golf scene, like Greg Wojtkun, a transplant from Massachusetts, Cameron Edens, a Phoenix native who had transferred to BYU for his senior year and Conner Jones, a recent Dixie State graduate, who rarely played in local tournaments.

Others in the quarterfinals included 17-year-old Travis Norseth of Salt Lake, recent Weber State graduate Nick Despain and Busby, who wasn't well-known before winning medalist honors.

Schulz upset Edens in the morning round 3 & 2, before coming back to crush Wojtkun in the afternoon 6 & 5. Wojtkun had made five birdies while beating Despain in the morning, but wasn't on his game in the afternoon.

In the other half of the bracket; Evans worked overtime to beat Busby on the 21st hole, while Jones edged Norseth on the 19th hole, where Norseth had beaten Siddens a day earlier.

That left Evans and Schulz for Sunday's scheduled 36-hole final.

Schulz went 2 up early in the match, but by the 9th hole, Evans had evened things and Evans won the next two holes as well as No. 13 to go 3 up, only to see Schulz win the next two holes. However, Evans won the 17th and 18th holes with birdies to take a 3 up lead at the break. A 30-foot birdie putt at 18 was Evans' fifth birdie in five tries during the week at the par-4 finishing hole, which gave him momentum going into the lunch break.

"I was 5-under on 18 this week,'' Evans said. "That was a big hole for me all week.''

Birdies at 2 and 3 in the afternoon round increased Evans' lead to 5 up. At the par-4 No. 6, the 24th hole of the match, it looked like Schulz might win his first hole since the 15th, when he hit next to the green and Evans found the bunker in front.

Evans ended up bogeying, but after chipping onto the green Schulz needed three putts to get in the hole from five feet for a double bogey and he lost a hole it looked like he should win.

"One bad putt doesn't determine 36 holes,'' Stratton said when asked if that was a turning point.

Evans later said, "Sometimes you get lucky'' about a likely losing hole turning into a winning one.

From there, Evans won the next two holes, as Schulz lost a ball in the tall weeds at No. 7 and then missed the par-3 No. 8 green left and bogeyed.

With an 8-up lead, Evans just needed to make pars and he halved the next three holes to close out the match at No. 11, the 29th hole. It was just 1:20 in the afternoon, one of the earliest finishes ever in the State Am.

"He played better than me today,'' said Schulz."He hit better shots and he made more putts.''

Evans, who said his finals victory wasn't as easy as it may have looked, celebrated with his wife, Heather, his father, John, the head pro at Cedar Ridge Golf Course, his mother, Pam, as well as several of his five siblings and his golf coach at SUU, Richard Church.

Then he had some definite plans after playing 139 holes in five days.

"I'm ready to go home now and sleep.''

Mike Sorensen is a frequent contributor to Fairways.