The story entering the 34th Illinois State Mid-Amateur Championship was the recent stretch of torrential downpours, high winds and even tornadoes that plagued golf courses across the Chicago District. Maintenance crews far and wide worked overtime to clean up downed trees and limbs in order to restore playability. While Edgewood Valley Country Club in La Grange was in perfect condition for the state’s top golfers age 25 and up, Aug. 17-18, down south, Brandon Holtz spent the weekend leading up to the event dealing with a flooded basement.
The stress at home would have certainly been enough to consider withdrawing. And after an eventful spring and summer schedule of travel and golf, who could blame him? But that’s not Holtz, who left Central Illinois at 4 a.m. on Monday of tournament week to compete, without having seen the Diddel/Schreiner design.
“And actually, after having 20 inches of water in my basement, this is a tournament that I was like, ‘Well, maybe I better not show up to this’,” admitted the 39-year-old. “But you just gotta keep going. You can’t give up - keep playing and keep riding.”
Holtz’s ‘can-do’ mentality proved fruitful, as he hoisted the Illinois State Mid-Amateur Championship Trophy following a third-round even-par 72. He finished an eye-popping six shots clear of Chadd Slutzky and Daniel Stringfellow. The margin of victory broke the former record of four strokes (Todd Mitchell in 2013, Greg Bauman in 2017), and Holtz’s 10-under-par finish is believed to be the lowest 54-hole score to par in Illinois State Mid-Am history.
“It was good; I played solid pretty much all day today,” said Holtz after the win. “I had a couple of really bad mental mistakes, and compounded them with a bad shot on top of it. I just had to battle through that for a few holes. I had a couple of good shots coming in and found something.”
Following rounds of 65-69 on Monday’s 36-hole opener, Holtz entered the final 18 holes on Tuesday with a four-shot advantage over Stringfellow and Scott Ten Broeck. That lead grew to six shots after nine holes, before Holtz appeared to stumble with a double bogey on No. 11 and a bogey on No. 12. He confessed that leaderboard watching and perhaps too much aggression got him off track, but some self-talk righted the ship. A birdie on No. 14 and pars the rest of the way were enough to secure the title.
Much has been written and discussed about Holtz’s hectic schedule since his U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship victory last September in Arizona. That triumph opened the door to a multitude of invitations to high-level amateur and professional events across the country, including the U.S. Amateur at Merion Golf Club outside of Philadelphia the week before the Illinois State Mid-Am. For the former Illinois State basketball walk-on, while bearing the fruits of his success has been a fun ride, it hasn’t come without its difficulties. Including ones you don’t see on social media - such as a flooded basement.
Holtz claims he had been searching for his game for a while prior to his State Mid-Am win. He hopes the success he found at Edgewood Valley is the catalyst he’s been looking for.
“The logistics and the travel are nuts,” he said of his busy calendar. “And I think it’s just that grit, that determination to keep on, not to give up. It’s kind of like the start to the new, I guess, golf career in Illinois.”