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Wellington’s Harrison a Mid-Am champion in first try
   2010 KGA Mid-Amateur Championship

   Score one for the small-school golfers.
   Wellington’s Derek Harrison, who played his college golf at Wichita’s Newman College, gave

players who did not carry bags from schools in the Big 12 or Missouri Valley Conference a sense of pride earlier this month. The 25-year-old bested the field by two shots at the KGA Mid-Amateur Championship, hosted this year by Meadowbrook Golf & Country Club in the Kansas City suburb of Prairie Village.
   Harrison opened with a sparkling four-under 67 on the first day and battled blustery conditions in the second round on a tight Meadowbrook layout, holding off challenger and 2005 KGA Mid-Am champion Tyler Shelton of Fairway by two shots.
   “It’s very exciting; it’s my first time playing the Mid-Am,” said Harrison, a program manager for an aerospace company in Wellington. “It’s a good tournament. I’ve come close (to winning a KGA Championship) a few times and it’s really exciting to finally win one. It’s kind of a little validation for myself – that I can play out here. I think a lot of guys out here probably don’t know me. There are a few who do from little ‘flares’ of good play. It’s nice to go out and close one.”

Closing out a championship
   And closing out his first KGA title meant withstanding the pressure on the back nine of the final round against a championship-credentialed competitor like Shelton in less-than-ideal playing conditions. Gone were the picture-perfect spring conditions of day one and in their Derek Harrison

place were a gusting spring blast that reached near 30 mph and temperatures up into the 80s for the first time of the Kansas golf season.
   Harrison, though it seemed he’d controlled the event for the better part of two days, saw his lead over Shelton trimmed to just a single shot after bogeys at Nos. 16 and 17 the second day. But at No. 18 he reached for the borrowed driver that had served him so well during the tourney and hit one of his better tee balls of the day.
   “My mindset was I hit a bad drive there yesterday and had 189 yards into the green. I couldn’t get enough club on it; all I could get on it was a six-iron to get it out of the rough and up short of the green. I ended up making a good par,” said Wellington Golf Club’s Harrison. “So I was thinking ‘you’ve put a couple suspect swings on the last few tee balls so why don’t you just collect yourself and hit a good shot’ and I killed it. I don’t think I could have hit it any better.”
   Harrison had just 155 yards into the green this time and said he knew his pitching wedge would not go past the hole from that distance. He was right. The approach left him 20 feet below the hole. Shelton’s approach shot at the home hole found the front bunker and that led to a bogey five. Harrison calmly two putted for par and his 140 total left him as the only player in red figures and owner of a two-shot victory.
   Shelton, who won his Mid-Am championship in 2005 at Leawood South, settled for second Tyler Shelton

place at even-par 142. He opened the event with a one-under 70 that could have been a bit better as he had it to four under at one point in the round.
   “As the old saying goes ‘you can’t win the tournament on the first day but you can lose it,’” said Shelton, 37 and the 2009 Kansas City Amateur champion. “I was definitely in the hunt after the first day. It would have been nice to finish a little better after the hot start. It’s still early in the season and my swing is not in great form and my short game is not where it should be. But I made 10 birdies in two days and that should be good enough to win the golf tournament, but you just can’t make the bogeys.”
   Shelton had back-to-back birdies at the second and third hole in round two to overcome an opening-hole bogey. He was as many as five shots off the pace midway through the round, but hung in there in the gusty conditions and had a chance to cut into what had become just a two-shot deficit at the par-5 15th hole. On the back edge in two, Shelton’s four-foot birdie try slid past the hole as Harrison was making a birdie from about eight feet to go three in front.
   “I felt like I really needed to make that to kind of stay in it, not thinking he was going to bogey 16 and 17,” Shelton said.
   The final grouping, which also included Lenexa’s Jon Platz, struggled out of the gate on day two, playing the opening hole in a combined five over par. Platz, who opened the championship with a three-under 68 to stand alone in second place, hit his third shot on the par 4 into the water and settled for triple bogey. The 2007 KGA Public Links champion would bogey Nos. 7, 8 and 9 to close out the front in 40 and he finished with a 78. His two-day total of 146 netted sixth place.
   Harrison bounced back with a par at the second hole and a splendid iron second to four feet at the par-5 third. He missed the eagle putt for a slight letdown, but his birdie moved him back Jon Platz

to four-under for the championship as both Platz and Shelton made birdie on the hole.
   “I tell you what I think I was more disappointed that I wasn’t going to get one of those little crystals than anything else,” admitted Harrison, who finished fourth at the 2009 High Plains Amateur and was a 2005 Kansas Amateur semifinalist at Colbert Hills.
   Harrison added another birdie at the par-4 seventh hole, draining an 18-footer. He made the turn at 34 and was five under for the event and five shots clear of his nearest competition as Shelton bogeyed the ninth hole to turn at even par. That’s also when Harrison’s 2009 Mid-Am Team Championship partner Charlie Ballard took his golf bag as caddy for the last nine holes. Harrison and Ballard played in the final pairing and settled for 11th last fall at Terradyne Country Club in Andover.

Seniors stand up in wind, field
   The annual KGA Mid-Am always provides an interesting looking leader board as players must be at least 25 years old, thus college-aged players are eliminated from the field. That, plus a golf course like Meadowbrook Golf & Country Club which does not require players to terribly long off the tee, put some of the Association’s top seniors right in the thick of things at this year’s event. Entering the final round, three players who’d seen their 50^th birthday come and go were among the last three groups – and one challenger was north of 60.
   One of those talented “seasoned” players was Raytown, Mo.’s Steve Groom. Groom, who entered the final round at even par after an opening-round 71 and playing in the next to last Charlie Stevens

grouping, matched champion Harrison’s two-over 73 on the day and wound up finishing third in the overall standings. Groom had gotten to one under for the event late on day two and said had a feeling he was right there in contention.
   “I got it to one under through 12 and I kind of sensed I was in the hunt because I kept looking back and seeing the guys behind me; nobody really said anything but you kind of get a sense as a player, where you stand. As soon as that happened, I three-putted at 13 from about 15 feet,” said Groom, 51 and playing most of his non-tournament golf at Jackson County’s Fred Arbanas Golf Course these days. “I hit my irons pretty well both days and gave myself a lot of birdie putts. The difference today was I had four three-putts versus yesterday I didn’t have any.”
   Groom, who said he was still long enough to hit several three-woods off the tees during the event, went on to post 144 for solo third place just two shots back of Shelton. He topped both the gross and net divisions of the 45 and older age group. Two more familiar KGA seniors and former Senior Players of the Year also had high placings at Meadowbrook. Three-time senior POY Don Kuehn of Kansas City had rounds of 71-77 and 2007 senior POY Andy Smith, also of Kansas City, turned in 72-76. The 148 totals left them in a tie for eighth place.
   “This course is short enough and those guys are mostly straight enough hitters,” said Groom, who teamed with Smith for a 2009 KGA Senior Four-Ball Championship at Spring Hill’s Sycamore Ridge. “Yesterday was a mostly calm day and those guys just played well, kept it in play and putted well.”

Stevens plays well in another Mid-Am
   The seniors were not the only familiar faces at the top of another KGA Mid-Amateur Championship. Wichita’s Charlie Stevens, who fell in a playoff at last year’s event at Falcon Lakes in Basehor, again moved himself up the Mid-Am leader board this year at Meadowbrook. Andy Smith

Stevens opened the event with a one-over 72 and found himself playing in the third-to-last grouping in the final round with Smith and Prairie Village’s Pete Krsnich, a member of the 2009 Mid-Am Team champion last fall at Terradyne.
   “Yesterday, having never seen the course, it was nice that the wind didn’t blow,” admitted Stevens, 40 and playing out of Wichita Country Club. “I had three double bogeys and six birdies. I had a double on the second hole and was kind of fighting back from there.”
   The commercial real estate manager matched the two-over 73 of Harrison and Groom in the second round and finished in a tie for fourth with Lawrence’s Tyler Cummins (75-70) at 145. Cummins, a former Kansas State University golfer and the KGA’s junior golf manager, was the only player in red figures for the windy second round with his 70.
   “Today we all had a second chance to look at it and it affected all of us,” Stevens said of the gusty conditions in the second round. “I like the wind. I grew up playing in it. I’d much rather it be windy than calm.”
   And with gusts nearing 30 mph in his second trip around Meadowbrook, Mother Nature gave Stevens a chance to prove that.
   “I’d say it was a two- or three-club wind and with this course, as tight as the fairways are, it’s tough to hit the driver in between the trees,” said Stevens, playing in the event for just the second time. “With the wind it was difficult so I was pretty happy with the way I played. I haven’t competed since last year, so just getting out here and playing competitive golf is fun. Playing well is a bonus.”