Huntingdon Valley’s Brookreson takes Senior Amateur, Senior Silver Cross

  PHILADELPHIA, Pa.–David Brookreson of Huntingdon Valley CC added two more jewels to his championship belt Wednesday when he won the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s 35^th Senior Amateur Championship and the Association’s Senior Silver Cross at Torresdale-Frankford Country Club (par 70, 6,224 yards).

  It was his first Senior Amateur Championship and his second straight Senior Silver Cross, both coming on the heels of his win Sept. 1 at the prestigious national North-South Senior Amateur at Pinehurst Resort & Country Club in North Carolina.

  Huffing at a few missed short putts and puffing continuously on his trademark, ever present cigar, Brookreson, playing in the last threesome of the day, dueled down the back nine with his two closest competitors, Edmund Chylinski of Chester Valley GC, the first-round leader, and Michael Dougherty of Huntingdon Valley CC.

  “It’s always nice to get your name on a permanent trophy,” said a smiling Brookreson, a resident of Huntingdon Valley, Pa. “Last year I had a bad first round and came back strong but Craig [Scott, a close friend and the eventual winner] hung in there to win.”

  It was tight through 14 holes as Brookreson led Dougherty by a stroke and Chylinski by three. Then came a big break on No. 15 when he pulled a hybrid drive into the left tree-line on the short par 4, 297-yard hole, only to have the ball carom off a large oak back into the middle of the fairway.

  He hit a wedge from 95 yards and drained a curling 15-footer for birdie from just in the fringe. Dougherty, playing steady golf all day, had just 80 yards in, but the wheels came off on one swing. He bladed a wedge over the green into an impossible lie in the back of a back bunker, took two to get out, and double-bogeyed the hole. It was a three-shot swing.

  “I made a couple of bad swings,” said Dougherty, 56, of Warrington, Pa. “I had no chance to keep that bunker shot on the green so I kept it in the bunker hoping to get up and down.”

  On the next hole, the 545-yard, par 5 No. 16, the long-driving Chylinski boomed a tee shot 300 yards and pulled out a fairway metal to go for the green. But he topped the shot badly into a walled water hazard 100 yards ahead and double-bogeyed the hole.

  In essence, it was all over, as Brookreson parred in for the win.

  It didn’t start out that well, however, as Brookreson, trailing Chylinski by a shot going into Wednesday’s second round, double-bogeyed the par 4, 394-yard 3d hole, as he missed a two-footer to go 2-over par.

  Then he took charge and essentially won the title with back-to-back-to-back birdies on Nos. 6, 7 and 8. On No. 6, a 418-yard par 4, he sank an uphill nine-footer. On No. 7, the birdie came on a slippery, downhill, 25-footer with a big right to left break.

  On No. 8 (par 4, 439 yards) he came up with the shot of the day, after hitting his drive badly right, past the halfway house, behind trees, to the back of the ninth tee. No problem. An 8-iron over the trees to four feet gave him his third straight red figure.

  He gave a stroke back on No. 9, par 3, 172 yards, when he missed the green right and failed to hole a four-footer. But then came the back nine and the rest was history.

  The Senior Silver Cross, awarded to the player with the lowest aggregate score in the Warner Cup, Chapman Cup and Senior Amateur Championship rounds, was Brookreson’s second successive and second in the two years the award has been competed for.

  “Any time you can win a 72-hole tournament [like the Senior Silver Cross], it feels good inside because you know you held it together for a long period of time,” said Brookreson.