The Hole Story by Craig DeVrieze

Let’s play a nine holes of catchup with the local golf scene:
1) Fresh off an appearance at last week’s U.S. Senior Open, former Crow Valley pro Curt Schnell finished second in the Iowa PGA Section Championship played Tuesday and Thursday.
Schnell lost a sudden death playoff on the first hole at Harvester Golf Course in Rhodes, Iowa. The winner, Iowa State assistant coach Judd Gibb, claimed a spot in next year’s John Deere Classic field.
2) Props to a trio of local golfers who posted top 10 finishes in last week’s Iowa Amateur at Sunnyside Country Club in Waterloo.
Bettendorf’s Ben Peters tied for fourth with a former Bettendorfer, Gene Elliott, while former Bettendorf Bulldogs teammates Adam Seitz, Bettendorf, and Dusty Drenth, Davenport, were part of a three-way share of seventh-place.
3) A pair of Illinois side Q-C players will tee it up in next week’s Illinois State Am at Bloomington Country Club after surviving qualifiers a week ago.
Tom Miler, a Champions Tour-aged golfer from Kewanee, and David Lawrence, an Eastern Illinois sophomore golfer from Moline, both played their way into the 132-player field.
4) Miler also will play along with Rock Island’s Fred Lukasik in the Illinois Senior Am next month near Peoria.
5) A total of 100 points separate Peters and Drenth in the Player of the Year race on the Quad-Cities Amateur Tour.
Both players have won two of the Tour’s five contested events. Peters won the Quad-City Amateur at Emeis in May and at Palmer Hills earlier this month.
Drenth was a winner last month at Short Hills and a couple of weeks back at Glynns Creek.
Clinton’s Dean Cavanaugh was a playoff loser to collegian Kyle Bermel at his hometown Riverboat Days Am and took down first place PoY points there.
6) With three events remaining that race is far from run, but even more wide open is the Senior PoY chase, where 212 points separate first from fifth.
Davenport’s Mike Long is the leader with a Palmer Hills win to his credit. Other senior winners to date: Dan Dalziel (Q-C Am), Blaine Kernan (Short Hills) and Dave Waugh (Glynns Creek).
The local tour resumes this week at Pinnacle Country Club near Milan, then will make up the rained-out Hawthorn Ridge Am in Aledo in two weeks. It wraps up medal play with the major points Tour Championship at Arsenal Country Club Aug. 29-30.
7) Still to come beyond the Tour Championship, of course, is the annual Iowa-vs.-Illinois Hasley Cup matches Sept. 11-12 at Emeis.
Illinois’ chances of erasing Iowa’s stranglehold on the Cup don’t appear promising. Seven of the Tour’s 10 points leaders are Iowans, including each of the top five. The Quad-City Junior Tour wrapped up its fourth season last week at Pebble Creek. Congratulations to all the young golfers who competed in this year’s six-event schedule.
9) Skip Holton, a regular in Iowa club pro events and last year’s IGA Senior Golfer of the Year, died July 31 from complications related to a heart attack. He was 56.

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