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JUPITER, FLORIDA | It all came down to a hit flagstick and a putt that burned the edge.
The Virginia duo of Evan Beck and Jon Hurst held off the fast-charging team of Louisiana’s Derek Busby and Iowa’s Gene Elliott by one stroke, shooting 24-under-par 192 Wednesday to win the National Senior-Junior Championship at Dye Preserve Golf Club. It was the first time that Beck, a former All-ACC performer at Wake Forest, had partnered with Hurst, once an All-American at Old Dominion University, as fellow competitors Keith Decker and Vinny Giles had put them together thinking they would be a good team.
“I don’t think we had a lip-out all week,” Beck said. “The whole tournament, it just seemed like if I had a bad shot, Jon would hit a good one and vice versa.”
The event – which pairs elite mid-amateurs and senior amateurs as they play best-ball, alternate shot and scramble formats – appeared to be a foregone conclusion as Beck and Hurst held a commanding three-stroke lead arriving at the 15th hole of the final round. Given how the pair had been performing together – they were 9 under on the round for their two-man scramble and had come off of a sensational 8-under 64 in the daunting alternate shot format the day before – something strange needed to happen in order for Busby and Elliott to catch them. Beck and Hurst started the day three strokes ahead and had frustrated Busby and Elliott throughout the round, answering every birdie with one of their own.
... something strange needed to happen in order for Busby and Elliott to catch them.
But down the final stretch, Busby and Elliott finally chipped into the lead and came inches from forcing a playoff.
On the reachable par-5 15th, Busby hit his second shot to 35 feet and then showed Elliott the line on the ensuing putt. Elliott read the snaking, left-to-right putt to perfection, holing it with the ideal speed and giving an emphatic fist pump. Beck and Hurst scrambled for their birdie, but the Elliott eagle had cut the margin down to two.
The short par-4 16th had even more drama. After Elliott stuck his approach to 5 feet to apply pressure to the leaders, both Beck and Hurst flew the green with their wedge approaches, leaving them short-sided with the possibility of making their first bogey of the event. They each chose to putt from off the green and could do no better than leaving themselves with a tricky 5-footer for par. Busby brushed in a birdie putt for his side, but Beck missed his par attempt and left Hurst needing to make his in order to avoid a two-shot swing. He converted, allowing his team to hold on to a one-stroke lead.
With no blood on the par-3 17th, the tournament arrived at the long par-4 18th. Busby’s substandard approach put the pressure on Elliott and he responded with a laser-beam of an iron shot that struck the bottom of the flagstick and ricocheted backwards, rolling slowly down the hill to about 15 feet. A case could be made for it being both a good break and a bad break. If it had missed the stick, the duo may have been left with a fast downhill putt on the other side of the hole, or maybe they would have been significantly closer. Either way, they now faced a curving left-to-right birdie attempt up the hill.
Meanwhile, Beck and Hurst had more stress than they would have liked. After Beck’s approach to 30 feet, both teammates sent their birdie putts past the hole, leaving them with a 4-foot par attempt that needed to be played about a ball outside the hole.
As Beck and Hurst contemplated their par putt, Busby’s birdie effort never came close and left the stage for Elliott. The senior legend hit a beautiful putt along his intended line, but it twisted sharply at the end, rolling painfully over the lower edge.
“It was just so slow, I couldn’t hit it hard enough,” Elliott said.
All had not been settled, however. After Beck missed his par attempt, Hurst now had to make his putt in order to avoid a sudden death playoff.
He calmly rolled home the putt, giving a sigh of relief and a large smile all at once.
“I wasn’t nervous or anything,” Hurst said. “We had been hitting good shots all day, we just hit a couple of bad ones at the wrong time but we were able to recover.”
After Beck’s stellar career at Wake Forest, he turned pro for three years but struggled with a back injury that hampered his development. He ultimately decided to get his amateur status back in 2017 and now works in investment management in Virginia Beach.
Hurst won five college tournaments his senior year at Old Dominion in 1991 and is considered one of the best players in school history. He mostly labored on mini-tours for seven years with the highlight of playing in the 1998 Greater Greensboro Chrysler Classic on the PGA Tour. Hurst then left professional golf to get into the construction business where his company builds custom homes and does remodeling in the Fredericksburg, Virginia, area.
It’s a rarity for Hurst to play in non-senior events, but he said there is certainly the possibility he could partner with Beck in the future, especially at next year’s Senior-Junior.
“If he putts like that, he can be my partner anytime,” Beck said.
RESULTS
Sean Fairholm