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Washburn’s Ewald caps big year with KGA honor
    2009 KGA Player of the Year

   Funny how often the Kansas Golf Association’s Player of the Year honors go to a player in transition. Usually it is a golfer capping a fine collegiate career and planning a future in the Matt Ewald

sport or in some other profession.
   Leawood’s Matt Ewald is no exception.
   The Washburn University standout, who ended his eligibility in the spring, rode an outstanding week of golf to the title at the 99^th Kansas Amateur Championship this summer at Kansas City Country Club. The triumph and its accompanying 260 points helped Ewald tally 440 points in the final standings and the 23-year-old is the 2009 KGA Player of the Year.
   “It’s a great finishing point to a great year that I had through college and then the summer,” says Ewald, a three-time All-American who spent this fall finishing up his finance and management degree and working an internship at Capitol Federal Bank in Topeka. “It’s an award that a lot of great players have won; players that have gone on to professional careers. It’s a phenomenal award to win…it’s a feather in your hat to finish off a great year.”
   Ewald’s 440 points were 30 ahead of Mission Hills’ Bryan Norton. Norton, 50, earned KGA Senior Player of the Year honors with his fine campaign. Wichita’s Dodge Kemmer, who Ewald defeated in the championship match at the Kansas Am, placed third at 396.25 points. This year’s Junior Player of the Year, Michael Gellerman of Sterling, placed fourth, nearly 100 points behind Kemmer.

Dream comes true
   Watching the talented Ewald work his way through two rounds of stroke play and then six matches against some of the best players in the Sunflower State, it’s amazing to think he had modest expectations for his performance in late-July and early-August’s Kansas Amateur Championship at Kansas City Country Club.
   “Coming into the week I didn’t give myself high expectations, I’d been practicing a lot more than I’d been playing,” Ewald revealed. “I just came into the week taking it easy. I was more Matt Ewald

relaxed and was just out there to have fun and see what happens. That’s what I told my opponents in match play, ‘Let’s just relax, have fun and see what the golf gods have for us.’”
   Anyone who saw the poise and performance of Ewald during the week would have had to have been impressed. Ewald downed Stanford’s Kemmer 7&5 in the 36-hole finals to put his name on the trophy and win the most important title in Kansas amateur golf.
   “It’s a dream come true,” Ewald told Kansas Golfer Online moments after the match. “You always think about it. But you don’t know how realistic it is, because getting through four days of match play…it’s tough. One bad stretch of holes can cost you the whole tournament.”
   Ewald never had to worry about that. With the Kansas City CC course drying from the opening day’s rain, he shot a round of two-under 68 to go along with his opening-round 70 and earned medalist honors and the top seed for match play. The 138 total was a shot better than former Penn player and Kansas City Country Club member Dean Merrill.
   “It’s nice, but when it comes to match play it doesn’t mean anything,” Ewald said as his focus turned from stroke play to the one-on-one of match play. “Match play is fun; it’s you versus another guy and I kind of thrive on that.”
   Ewald faced No. 64 seed and 1991 Kansas Am champion John Loomis of Wichita to open match play. The top seed downed Loomis 5&4 and he was off and running. In the second round, Ewald beat No. 32 Ben Lowman of Manhattan 5&4 and ousted No. 48 Kyle Marcolla 4&3 in the third round.
   Ewald put together a 3&2 win over Spring Hill mid-am standout Jon Troutman in the quarterfinals and downed Kansas State golfer Joe Ida of Fort Scott 2&1 in their semifinal match. Deadly consistent, Ewald had only one bogey in his quarterfinal and semifinal rounds combined.
   On championship Sunday, his morning 66 put Ewald 2-up over Kemmer. He built the lead to 5 up by the turn of the second round and went 6 up with a 13-foot birdie putt on the 28^th hole. A conceded birdie after another fine approach shot ended up less than 3 feet from the cup at the 31^st hole gave Ewald the 7&5 victory.
   “He played very consistently…really didn’t give (me) many openings,” Kemmer said after the match. “Especially the longer birdie putts he’d make really forced me to make birdies to win holes which I didn’t do. So definitely he won it.”
   Ewald became just the second player in the last 18 years to earn medalist honors and then make it through all six matches to capture the title. Berryton’s Gary Woodland was co-medalist in 2007 at his home Topeka Country Club and went on to knock off co-medalist Wes Stonestreet in the championship match. Ewald and Woodland are the only players to accomplish the feat since Wichita’s Loomis did it back in 1991 at Alvamar Golf Country in Lawrence.

On to Southern Hills
   Ewald spent Monday of Kansas Amateur week at Kansas City’s Blue Hills Country Club playing in the U.S. Amateur qualifier. He took advantage of his course knowledge gained through Matt Ewald

relationships with members of the Blue Hills staff and turned in a 141 for the two rounds to grab one of the three qualifying spots.
   “I knew the course well and I knew if I could hit solid shots…it’s a tough course with good, tough greens,” Ewald said. “I went through the morning round and wasn’t putting too much pressure on myself and didn’t have real high expectations. I think I was in third, fourth or fifth after the morning round. In the afternoon, coming down the stretch I knew it was going to be close. I hit a lot of good shots coming in and made about a 10-footer on my 18^th hole.”
   That sent Ewald to August’s U.S. Amateur at storied Southern Hills in Tulsa, Okla. In his second trip to the country’s biggest amateur championship, having qualified for the 2008 event at Pinehurst, Ewald had rounds of 75 and 76 to finish at 11 over par and missed the cut for match play by three shots.
   “It was a lot fun having my family there following me…I had my brother on the bag,” Ewald said. “Obviously Southern Hills is one of the great courses in the Midwest, if not the country. At Pinehurst I was kind of walking around awestruck. At Southern Hills I knew if I was playing well I could play with these guys…that was the frame of mind I had. I caught a bad break the first day when my group was penalized a shot for slow play and I’m not a slow player. The second day I played Southern Hills and knew I had to post a good score. I hit the ball great, drove the ball great all week…the one thing that hurt me that week was my putting.”
   Ewald paired with UMKC’s Josh Taylor for June’s Kansas Four-Ball Championship at Alvamar Golf Club in Lawrence. The duo shot 67-66 in the stroke play portion of the event and grabbed a No 2 seed before going on a match-play run. They put together a 5&4 quarterfinal victory over seventh-seeded Jeff Jarvis and Trey Siegel, after downing No. 18 Kit Grove and Jason Seeman 4&3 in the second round. Ewald and Overland Park’s Taylor opened match play with a 3&2 win over No. 31 Jeff Bell and Elliott Soyez.
   Ewald and Taylor had a nip-and-tuck battle with eventual champions Curtis and Kyle Yonke in the Four-Ball semifinals before falling 1 up. Reaching the semifinals netted Ewald 30 points in the Player of the Year chase.
   “Josh and I have a really good camaraderie…we play all the team stuff whether it’s the Four-ball or the Heart (Four-ball),” Ewald said. “We played well all tournament. Against the Yonkes, I was still hitting the ball well. The putts just weren’t falling. Curtis and Kyle are both great players and they made a couple putts and got up on us early. It was a fun match to be a part of... We felt like the winner of that match was going to win it all and that’s what happened.”
   Ewald says he and Taylor have always fared pretty well at the Kansas Four-Ball.
   “The last few years we’ve at least made the quarters,” he added.
   Besides his 2009 Amateur title, Ewald’s KGA championship resume includes reaching the quarterfinals before losing to eventual champion Gary Woodland at the 2007 Kansas Amateur at Topeka Country Club. He lost in the third round to K-State’s Kyle Smell at the 2008 version at Wichita Country Club.

Giving pro golf a shot
   A fine young athlete in sports like baseball and soccer, Ewald began honing his golf game a little later. His family lived on Leawood South Country Club and Ewald played in its junior program. He learned much of the game from club professional Paul Hoosier.
   “I liked a lot of sports and like a lot kids today I was never completely devoted to one sport like golf at a young age,” Ewald admits.
   A talented soccer player as well, Ewald played baseball his freshman year at Blue Valley

North High School. But he joined his buddies on the golf team the next spring. As a sophomore he was sort of the “sixth man,” playing in some of the varsity tournaments. His junior season he became a key part of a talent-laden BVN squad. He played in the state tourney his junior and senior campaigns. His senior year the team had high expectations going into the state championships at Hutchinson’s Carey Park.
   “We had a great team that year…we won every event, except state,” says Ewald, who would not play any team sports that summer, working on his golf game many evenings on Leawood South’s 11^th hole near his house.While playing in his first Kansas Amateur at Colbert Hills that July, Ewald made contact with the Washburn men’s golf coach and that led him to the Ichabods.
   “I didn’t make (the Amateur cut) but I was caddying for Josh and Washburn coach Doug Hamilton called me and said ‘We have a little bit of extra scholarship money, do you want to come and give golf a shot?’” Ewald recalls. “We drove back to Topeka, met coach Hamilton at Topeka Country Club, had lunch and shot the (bull) for about an hour and he asked me to give it a shot.”
   Joining Washburn’s golf squad would be a wise choice. Ewald developed into a three-time NCAA Div. II All-American and placed a career-best 14th at the NCAA Championships his senior season at Loomis Trail Golf Club in Blaine, Wash.
   “That’s where I had my hole-in-one on a par 4 – the claim to fame of my college career,” Ewald says.
   While at Washburn Ewald has been working on a degree in finance. This fall he’s been finishing off his last few hours and working as an intern at Topeka’s Capitol Federal Bank.
   “They’ve actually offered me a full-time job as a financial analyst there in downtown Topeka,” Ewald says. “I think I’m going to take that position for now, with the way the economy is beggars can’t be choosers so I’m very fortunate to be part of a good company right here. They have a strong foundation with a lot of good people in the company.”
   Meanwhile, Ewald has not given up on a professional golf career. He says he plans to continue working on his game at Topeka’s Cypress Ridge Golf Course, a public layout where he’s worked part-time for the last couple years, and Topeka CC, where he has ties from his college days.
   “I’ve talked to a lot of people and it’s still up in the air,” Ewald says of pursuing pro golf. “I think I’m going to stay amateur through the (2010) Kansas Amateur. Then if I do try to do something I would start off with (PGA Tour) Q school next year…give it a shot to see where my game is. …I’d like to give it a shot so 10 years down the road I don’t look back and say ‘What if?’ I think, most importantly, what ever decision I make I’m going to walk forward and I’m not going to look back...”
   Ewald plans to marry Lauren Lawless, a former Washburn soccer player and his caddie/golf cart riding partner during his drive to the 2009 Kansas Amateur championship, on June 19^th – so long as he’s not playing in the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach…
   “I never gave her credit for the Kansas Am…I could get in the cart and I didn’t really have to (worry) about anything…I could get in the cart and talk about whatever,” Ewald says of Lawless, an elementary education major from Washburn Rural High. “I didn’t have to think about each shot…I was able to just have fun. Actually that helped me out more than I expected.”
   Matt also credits the support of parents David and Sue Ewald for much of his success. David is an engineer for Black and Veatch in Overland Park and Sue is an English as a Second Language teacher at Indian Valley Elementary. Matt’s brother, Adam, is a pharmacist in Minnesota when he’s not on Matt’s bag for big amateur golf events. His sister, Sue, is a sales representative for a jewelry company in Wisconsin.