With Hurricane Henri bearing down on the northeast, the Anderson Memorial at famed Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, New York, switched from a match-play marathon set to end on Sunday evening to a 54-hole stroke-play sprint completed by early Saturday afternoon.
Stewart Hagestad and Mike McBride, four-ball partners representing nearby Deepdale Golf Club, didn’t mind. Actually, they preferred it.
After they shot 13-under 197 to tie the team of Bobby Wyatt and Lee Knox, representing Belle Meade Country Club in Georgia, McBride made a 15-footer for par on the third playoff hole to clinch the title for his team.
The timing worked out better than expected.
“It’s Mike’s wedding anniversary weekend and I need to get back to L.A., so candidly we were kind of thrilled with it,” Hagestad said. “For anyone who has ever played Winged Foot, it’s a very special place, but when you get through 14 holes it feels like you’ve played 18. It beats you up. Mike and I are older and if we would have had to go up against Bobby and Lee over the gauntlet, I don’t know whether we would have gotten them.”
The Anderson wasn’t played in 2020 due to the pandemic, but this year the event enjoyed a terrific field with many of the top mid-amateurs and senior amateurs in the game. To win the tournament, teams typically have to make the top 16 after two rounds of stroke play before playing 36 holes of match play both Saturday and Sunday. Due to the impending storm, match play was cancelled.
McBride was surprised on Saturday morning when his wife came to celebrate their 11th anniversary at the golf course and his father, whom McBride has partnered with in the Anderson, also came out to watch. He delivered a special ending for them, but it took a few nervous moments to get there.
The playoff started on No. 10, the famous par-3 with a new back tee near the clubhouse. With Wyatt and Knox in for par, Hagestad was forced to make a tricky 4-foot par putt to extend the match. They then went to No. 11 where three of the four players hit the green but could do no better than a two-putt par.
Heading to the 18th hole, the playoff would be decided. Hagestad took an aggressive play off the tee by attempting to go up the 11th fairway of the East course, but that backfired when he was blocked out and had to punch out sideways into the correct fairway. McBride, Wyatt and Knox all missed the green with their seconds, while Hagestad hit his third shot within 5 feet of the hole to give himself a shot a par.
He wouldn’t have to hit that putt.
After Wyatt and Knox hit chip shots that rolled out to 20 feet and then couldn’t convert their par putts, the stage was set for McBride, who had hit just inside of them to 15 feet.
“It was the first square putt I had hit in about nine holes,” McBride joked.
In the senior division, Chip Lutz and Christopher Lange of Pine Valley Golf Club shot 7-under 203 to secure a three-stroke victory ahead of the teams of Jeff Knox/Peter Persons and Michael Brown/Jack Larkin. Lutz and Lange are lifelong friends who grew up playing junior golf together in Philadelphia. This was their second Anderson victory together.
One of the fun footnotes to this year’s tournament was the team who finished dead last in the mid-amateur division. NFL Hall of Famer Peyton Manning and Fox News anchor Bret Baier shot a pair of 77s after being invited to play by Winged Foot member J.P. O’Hara.
Sam Bairstow held off a spectacular late charge from Zachary Chegwidden to win the English Men’s Open Amateur Stroke Play Championship (Brabazon Trophy) at Ganton Golf Club in Yorkshire.
Bairstow, an English international from Hallowes Golf Club in Sheffield, England, started the final round seven shots clear of Chegwidden but needed all his resolve to post a 2-under-par 69 after the Orsett player closed with a superb 64.
Earlier in the week, English international Bel Wardle made up for losing in the final of the English Women’s Amateur Championship earlier this month by crushing the field in the English Women’s Stroke Play Championship at Wallasey.
Todd Hendley, a 62-year-old from Columbus, North Carolina, shot rounds of 67-69-72 for an 8-under 208 total and a four-stroke victory in the 70th North & South Senior Amateur at Pinehurst Resort.
There was little drama in this one as Hendley, who won the same title in 2017 and recently recaptured the Carolinas PGA Senior Open, opened up a six-stroke lead through his first two rounds on Pinehurst No. 5 and No. 8. In his final round on the famed No. 2 course, Hendley carded four birdies and four bogeys without receiving any real threat from challengers.
In the North and South Senior Women’s Amateur, Martha Leach of Hebron, Kentucky, repeated as champion with a 7-over 223 total. Leach’s 4-under 68 on Pinehurst No. 8 during the first round was the only score in the 60s all tournament for the 45-player field.
Staff and Wire Reports