A contractor. A landscaper. A FedEx driver and an account
manager. A member of the local four-man team that advanced in the
prestigous Buick Scramble, which touts itself as the
“world’s largest amateur golf tournament,” could very well be
your next-door neighbor.
A contractor. A landscaper. A FedEx driver and an account manager.
A member of the local four-man team that advanced in the prestigous Buick Scramble, which touts itself as the “world’s largest amateur golf tournament,” could very well be your next-door neighbor.
“I guess you could say we’re just your standard, blue-collar guys,” said 26-year-old Morgan Hill native Jeremy Thielen, who helps out at Gilroy Golf and Country Club when he’s not working at his mother’s CPA firm.
“We just got pretty lucky.”
Luck, however, seemed to have little to do with his team’s runaway victory in Friday’s mini-playoff at Hollister’s Ridgemark Golf Course.
Playing against the five other top teams from last month’s qualifying scramble in Gilroy, Thielen and his three buddies – all in their late 20s and with a collective handicap of two – blew by the field and won the gross-score division by eight shots after posting a 17-under 55.
The team, which includes Gilroyan Des Melia and Watsonville natives Ryan Rojos and Eric Betz – all members of the Gilroy GC – will now be joined by that course’s head pro, Don DeLorenzo, as it prepares for the Aug. 30 Northern California sectional qualifier at Dayton Valley Golf Club near Reno.
“I just hope I don’t screw things up,” DeLorenzo joked. “These guys really lit up down at Ridgemark. To shoot a 17-under at that course is pretty awesome.”
They’ll also be joined at the sectional by a team led by Gilroy assistant golf pro Kari Williams. Four Morgan Hill natives with a handicap of seven – Dave Sebald, John Wolfenberger, Harold Higgenbottom and his son, Christan – posted a 59 Friday and held off two teams by one shot to win the net division.
They will team up with Williams, a teacher and girls basketball coach at Gilroy High School. Williams competed at both the University of Hawaii and on the Futures Tour, but will be participating in her first scramble as a professional.
“I’m ready to get back out there,” said Williams, who just recently starting playing golf again after undergoing knee repair surgery back in March.
Two five-person teams from the Dayton scramble, one of five taking place in the region, will advance and join 212 other squads at October’s national finals in Orlando, Fla.
According to DeLorenzo, the teams from this area are always properly prepared.
The Gilroy GC has participated in the scramble for 17 years, but it was only in the mid-1990s that DeLorenzo decided to add a second round of qualifying.
With a longer layout than the Gilroy course, Ridgemark is “without a doubt” more similar to Dayton Valley, DeLorenzo said.
The area had not sent one group to Orlando through 1995, but has advanced five squads to nationals in the last eight years.
“You can shoot a pretty good score at Gilroy without hitting it very long,” DeLorenzo said. “But you can’t do that at Ridgemark.
“And you certainly can’t do it at Dayton Valley.”
In a scramble, though, you can’t miss putts, either.
As a team, the members of DeLorenzo’s group are undoubtedly big hitters. To be successful in Nevada, though, the key is to continue the solid putting job from the first two scrambles.
“I can’t stress enough how important putting is in a scramble,” said Thielen, who played high school golf at Live Oak and collegiately at Gavilan and the University of Hawaii. “It’s everything.”
The competition isn’t everything to these guys, though. They’re out there to have fun, DeLorenzo said, and that’s why they’ve been so successful.
“They’ve got as good a chance as any group I’ve taken to Orlando, because they’ve got such great chemistry,” he said. “They stay loose and don’t let their nerves get to them, and that’s big. I’d be surprised if these guys don’t do well.”
