White Manor’s Colbert splashes to medalist honors at 112th Amateur

HUNTINGDON VALLEY, Pa.–Brian Colbert of White Manor Country Club made quite the splash in his first-ever Golf Association of Philadelphia Amateur Championship. Battling all day intermittent, and at times steady, rains, the 2012 Villanova University graduate traversed a soggy 36 holes of the 112th Amateur Championship Qualifier at Huntingdon Valley Country Club (par 70, 6,807 yards)/Torresdale-Frankford Country Club (par 70, 6,359 yards) in 2-under-par 138. Brandon Dalinka of The Ridge at Back Brook and Nelson Hargrove of Merion Golf Club tied for second place at 2-over-par 142. Hargrove is the No. 2 seed. Dalinka is seeded third. Defending champion Michael Hyland of Little Mill Country Club finished with a 146 total. He is the No. 12 seed.

  The first two rounds of match play are set for tomorrow. The Round of 32 begins at 8 a.m. with the Round of 16 to follow.

  The cutline for the 112-player field fell at 152 with seven players competing for the final two spots.

  Colbert, a Chicago native, earned a spot in the Amateur Championship based on an exemption as a qualifier for the 2011 U.S. Publinks Championship.

  “Not to sound cocky, I’m a no name around here, but not back home,” said Colbert, 22, a business major. He lives in Bryn Mawr, Pa. “I’ve been around Philadelphia golf for four years at Villanova. To do this in my first, and probably last Amateur, is cool. I played steady all day. I made no big mistakes. It was fairways and greens pretty much.”

  The odds were stacked against Colbert adding his surname to the regal list of Amateur qualifying medalists on a few fronts. Start with the weather. Add a dash of he’s never seen Torresdale-Frankford before and was playing Huntingdon Valley for the first time in “I can’t tell you when.” And mix in the fact he carried his own bag for 36 holes in the rain.

  “The weather was inconvenient,” said Colbert. “I had my rain pants, jacket, glove and umbrella and that’s all I needed. I did wish I had a caddie.

  “I just wanted to make match play. That was the goal. Obviously I wanted to shoot the lowest score I could and it just happened to be the best score of the day.”

  Colbert, the No. 2 player at Villanova this year, opened the Amateur at Torresdale-Frankford in the morning. He carded four birdies against two bogeys.

  On No. 6 (par 4, 420 yards), Colbert smacked a sand wedge 115 yards to 15 feet and drained the birdie putt before exerting his power on a pair of back nine par 5s (Nos. 10, 484 yards and 13, 557 yards). On the first, he hammered a 3-iron into the front left bunker, splashed out to six feet and sunk the birdie try. Colbert’s 3-wood on No. 13 caught the front bunker, but a superb sand shot stopped within 15 feet of the jar. Colbert also birdied the 18th hole (par 4, 394 yards), knocking a wedge 125 yards to eight feet below the flagstick.

  At Huntingdon Valley, Colbert kept the mojo flowing.

  He opened his second round, starting on the back nine, with a birdie on No. 10 (par 4, 399 yards) courtesy of a 7-iron from 155 yards to 10 feet. He added another circle to the scorecard on No. 15 (par 5, 573 yards) with a 60-degree wedge that stopped a foot away. A bogey on No.16 (par 4, 397 yards) curtailed his push slightly, but Colbert responded on No. 4 (par 4, 366 yards) by draining a 30-foot, big left-to-right breaker for a 3. He finished with bogeys on No. 6 (par 4, 435 yards) and No. 9 (par 4, 437 yards). He pulled his driver on No. 6 when the rains intensified and knocked a 6-iron into the greenside bunker on No. 9 and failed to get up-and-down.

  “I got a text from my teammate from last year, Brendan Kelly. When I told him it was going to rain today, he said ‘don’t worry about it, you’re a mudder’,” said Colbert. 

  A thumbnail of Colbert’s résumé is as follows. He qualified for the 2010 and 2011 U.S. Publinks championships; the 2010 U.S. Amateur Championship at Chambers Bay and finished in the Top 10 of the Illinois State Amateur in 2010.

  “I think I probably turned some heads,” said Colbert. “I’ll definitely look back and show kids. That’s cool.”

  The Amateur Championship Qualifier also serves as the first two rounds of the Silver Cross Award. The Silver Cross is awarded to the player with the lowest aggregate score in the qualifying rounds of the Amateur Championship and the Patterson Cup.

  Founded in 1897, the Golf Association of Philadelphia (GAP) is the oldest regional golf association in the United States and serves as the principal ruling body of amateur golf in its region. Its 145 Member Clubs and 57,000 individual members are spread across parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland. As Philadelphia’s Most Trusted Source of Golf Information, the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s mission is to promote, preserve and protect the game of golf.

NOTES–There was a seven-for-two playoff at Huntingdon Valley for the final match play positions. Brian Gillespie, 37, from Wayne, Pa. and St. Davids Golf Club birdied the first hole, No. 10, with a 6-iron from 172 yards that stopped a foot from the cup to take the 31st seed. Dan Charen, 23 of Langhorne, Pa. and Makefield Highlands Golf Club, parred No. 10 to outlast the other five competitors. He is seeded No. 32.