It’s darn close to a cheesesteak or Liberty Bell pride thing.
Mention the BMW GAP Team Matches to golfers in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey or Maryland and it’s likely they can share a story with a lilt of esteem from this unique and revered event.
The Team Matches of GAP (Golf Association of Philadelphia) are, literally, as old as the association itself, which was founded in 1897.
That year, GAP’s original four clubs – Belmont Golf Association (now Aronimink Golf Club), Philadelphia Country Club, Merion Cricket Club and Philadelphia Cricket Club – set a match, with each club sending two teams with six players on a side. Merion was the first winner.
Uniquely, GAP’s genesis was keyed by the start of the Team Matches as opposed to most state associations around the nation that were founded to conduct state amateur championships or identify state champions.
The Team Matches have been contested in the early spring except during World War II (1943-45), a severe ice storm (1994) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020).
“It’s an awesome thing,” said Kirby Martin, GAP’s director of competitions. “I don’t know if there’s anything like it in the country. Fortunately, the association was founded around it. The four founding member clubs got together for a match, and that’s how the Team Matches were started and pretty much how the association was founded.”
First called the Inter Club Team Matches, then the Suburban League Matches in 1915 and since 1997, its current name, the early-season dose of competitive golf began as a match to ‘“promote spirit, fellowship and camaraderie.”
A total of 30 clubs have won the Team Matches since its inception in 1897, with Huntingdon Valley holding the most victories with 33, including 11 times from 1970 to 1987. Old York Road C.C. has won eight times and Llanerch C.C., Philadelphia Cricket, Overbrook G.C. and Aronimink have won seven each. Recently, Philadelphia Cricket Club has won five times since 2013.
The 2023 version of the Team Matches includes 400 teams (4,800 players) in six divisions (AA through E) and will be played April 23, 30 and May 7, with the playoff matches (for the team title) and the challenge matches (for movement within divisions) on May 13.
GAP’s Team Matches have grown rapidly because of a geographic reach from the Pocono region in the north to the Jersey Shore in the south. BMW has been its presenting sponsor since 2015.
“We take the GAP matches as seriously as any major event that we run going back in our history,” Martin said. “It is a difficult thing to organize. We had about 275 teams in 2000 when I started running it. The geographic footprint has gotten bigger. We are not a city organization anymore. It’s special that even with this size, people still keep flocking toward it. We must do something OK.”
Depending on a strong software package that houses everything from scoring, history, rules, scouting reports and schedules – with as many as five staffers working on the weekends of the competitions – GAP administers the event with its usual aplomb.
“GAP, as an association, has been terrific,” said Matt Kocent of Philadelphia Cricket Club, who was a member of the AA division championship team in 2022. “The professional aspect of how GAP runs events is second to none. It has grown tremendously. When I first joined at White Manor (C.C.), I don’t know how many divisions there were, but now there’s hundreds and hundreds of teams in it. The organization that goes into it is pretty spectacular.”
“Philadelphia holds its own against any other competitions. New York City, Boston and Chicago have great courses, and the quality of the courses in GAP is equal to New York and Boston, but Boston doesn’t have spring."
Carl Everett
For a nearly four-week window, amateurs of a wide range of abilities under the GAP umbrella get an early-bird taste of competition under an intricate scoring system as unique as the Team Matches themselves.
Under match-play format and Nassau scoring (three possible points per match: one for each nine and one for the match), each team has 12 players, with six playing home and six playing away for each match. In each foursome, there is a singles match and four-ball match played concurrently.
Sunnybrook G.C. member Carl Everett, 76, who has played in the Team Matches since 1975, can point to a more formal event “back in the day.”
“In my early experience, we would show up at a club with sport coats and be ready for a big dinner after golf,” said Everett, a semi-retired attorney with Philadelphia’s Saul Ewing law firm. “It was an all-day affair that pretty much shot Sunday, but we figured out what was preferable to our members and our opponents. Now we play in the morning, have lunch off the menu and go home.”
Everett, a member of DuPont C.C. and then Merion Golf Club, when the five-time U.S. Open host club was a champion in 1995 and 2003, also cites the quality of the courses that are played during GAP Team Matches.
“Philadelphia holds its own against any other competitions,” said the former MIT golfer. “New York City, Boston and Chicago have great courses, and the quality of the courses in GAP is equal to New York and Boston, but Boston doesn’t have spring.”
An event open to golfers of all skills appeals to Kocent, 28, a project manager for Camfred Construction who caddied at Philly Cricket while in middle and high school.
“There’s some intrigue of playing competitive golf for players that might not usually do so,” said the former Penn walk-on who has played in Team Matches since 2013. “You are playing against other clubs that you might not play regularly, and you get to meet new people. It is a nice way to kick off the golf season.”
Martin easily trades administrative issues such as scheduling within a large geographic region and the first weekend that he calls a “speed bump” for the rewards of a job well done. But, don’t forget the weather.
“With our geographic footprint being so big, it could be snowing in Scranton and thunderstorming at the Jersey Shore,” Martin said. “Those are the adventures in the Team Matches. It’s amazing to me that we always seem to get these done in four weeks. If you throw all those factors in, how does that even happen? Forty-eight hundred golfers a week, right? Three hundred miles apart. Snowing and raining and guys going out to play in a match when they absolutely wouldn’t play any other time. All of those people coming together and sharing that kind of commitment is amazing.”
Martin, who has played in Team Matches himself, cites the collegiality of the event as a large reason for its success.
“It’s awesome how much people enjoy them,” he said. “They meet other people and have a match, then have a drink. From the best golfers to the average golfer, everyone enjoys the opportunity to go someplace new, meet somebody new and have a match. It’s neat how much people look forward to it and talk about it. It adds to the lore.”
Speaking of lore, Everett remembers the 2003 playoff when GAP was still using quarter points in its scoring system: teams got a quarter point for each hole they were up when the match concluded.
“It was a mathematical nightmare,” Everett said. “We were scattered among four clubs on our phones, and we had concluded that Llanerch (CC) had won. We were pretty sure. I went home thinking, ‘OK, nice try.’ The next morning Mark Peterson (GAP executive director) calls and says ‘Congratulations.’ I say, ‘For what?’ GAP did the scoring and (Merion) won by a quarter point.”
One more for lore, too.
E-MAIL PETE
Top: Philadelphia Cricket Club 2022 GAP Team Matches winners
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