Amateur victory Sparks player of the year run
2011 KGA Player of the Year
Winning the Kansas Amateur Match Play Championship, and who you beat along the way, can be the key ingredients in a golfer’s effort to become Kansas Golf Association Player of the Year. In no season was that more apparent than this past summer.
Wichita State University golfer Hunter Sparks defeated Kansas State’s Kyle Smell 2 and 1 in the final match of the 101st Kansas Amateur at Hallbrook Country Club in July, picking up 300 points and boosting his total to 590 in the season-long race. That was good enough to edge his only real competition for 2011 Player of the Year honors, Smell, by 20 points.
“That’s probably one of my biggest accomplishments, so I’m really proud of it,” said Sparks, who added another KGA title earlier in the summer and 175 accompanying points when he captured the title in the first-ever, Railer, Kansas Stroke Play Championship. “I worked really hard and it’s a really big deal to be (Player of the Year).”
Smell, a senior this year at KSU, tallied 200 points in claiming Kansas Amateur medalist and a No. 1 seed for match play with his rounds of 65 and 71 at Leawood’s Hallbrook. The two-time KJGA Player of the Year received 200 more for reaching the finals against Sparks. Smell also finished second at June’s Public Links Championship at Alvamar Golf Club to 2011 KGA Mid-Amateur Player of the Year Tracy Chamberlin and earned another 110 POY points.
Kansas University men’s golf coach Kit Grove placed a distant third in the POY standings with 276 points. Chamberlin was fourth at 272.5 and Sterling’s Michael Gellerman finished fifth at 271.
Top 2011 players meet in Amateur finals
The Amateur title, after two fine rounds of stroke-play qualifying and six match victories over four grueling days in unrelenting Kansas heat on the challenging Hallbrook track, moved Sparks ahead of Smell in the KGA player of the year race for good.
“It means a lot, especially here with my mom here…it’s the biggest tournament I’ve ever won so it feels great,” Sparks, of Oklahoma City’s Putnam City Original High School, said after his
win. “I’ve had a great summer.”
Sparks, a WSU business administration student who turns 21 this month, said he drew on his college golf experience to get him through the exhausting process winning the Kansas Amateur can be.
“College golf is exactly the same…you travel and you’re dead tired,” he said. “Over the two years I’ve played you just learn how to deal with it. You try to set three-hole goals for yourself – try to get three pars and go to the next hole. You just keep grinding and sleep later I guess.”
A tough loss can be a real motivator. It was for Sparks in his only other Kansas Amateur appearance.
He had about a year to think about his 2010 quarterfinal loss to two-time Amateur champion Bryan Norton at Prairie Dunes when Norton escaped with a 1 up victory. Sparks, the 2010 championship’s medalist, had a make-able putt on the last hole to square that match, but he missed.
This year Sparks again faced Norton in the quarters and this time he made sure the match never got close to 18. Norton’s bid to become a three-time Kansas Amateur champion died in a hail of birdies fired by Sparks. When Norton conceded Sparks’ five-footer for birdie at the par-3 13th hole ending the match 7 and 5, Sparks stood eight under for the round.
“When someone is playing that well you just can’t make any mistakes,” former PGA Tour player Norton said of Sparks’ round, which included birdies on Nos. 4, 5 and 6 and an eagle at No. 8 to turn in 31. “He hits it up there to where he has great opportunities. And that leads to making birdies on so many holes.”
Sparks says knew how important that match was to his hopes in 2011 at Hallbrook.
“I just played really well...I mean I couldn’t play any better,” he said. “I parred the first three holes then after that I was lights out. I’ve shot eight under in a tournament twice. But I was eight under through 13 with some birdie holes left and the way I was putting it could have 
been pretty low. I knew I was going to play well. I kind of have been holding it all in since last year when I missed an 8-footer on the last hole to lose to Norton. It just kind of propelled me.”
Sparks battled Overland Park’s Smell to a draw through 33 holes on championship Sunday. The match was all square through the morning round and saw each player get it back to even with birdies late in the second – Sparks hitting an approach shot to a foot and a half at the par-4 11th (27th of the day) and Smell drilling a tee shot to 10 feet and making birdie at the par-3 13th (29th).
Finally, a couple errant tee shots cost the Wildcat senior. Sparks had a conceded birdie on Hallbrook’s par-4 16th hole (their 34th of the day) as Smell found trouble off the tee and suffered double bogey. Sparks then won No. 17 with a par to close out the match.
“I hated how it ended because it was such a good match the whole day and he’s such a good player,” Sparks said.
When Sparks and Smell played their two rounds of stroke-play qualifying together, Smell said he told Wichita State’s Sparks he’s the one he’d like to see in the finals.
“I enjoyed watching him and I think he enjoyed watching me,” Smell said. “I said ‘Hunter it’d be funny if we ended up playing each other in the final match and I would enjoy it.’”
The Wildcat got his wish as he and the Shocker advanced to the championship match with close semifinal victories. Smell held off Southern Methodist University’s Jeffrey Lee 2 and 1. Sparks downed Blue Valley North High’s Alex Higgs by the same 2 and 1 count.
Sparks, who picked up 10 POY points as an Amateur qualifier, added 70 more when he finished third in stroke play qualifying. Sparks earned the third seed for match play with rounds of 68-70 at Hallbrook. He downed KGA senior veteran Don Kuehn in the first round 2 up and 2011 Senior Player of the Year runner-up Steve Newman 5 and 3 in the second round. Sparks then beat Leawood’s Michael McDonnell 2 and 1 in the third round setting up his quarterfinal rematch with Norton.
Sparks wins playoff in first-ever Railer
Sparks had led the inaugural Railer Kansas Stroke Play Championship at Newton’s Sand Creek Station for most of the final round, including starting the day with a four-stroke advantage. But rolling up behind him late on the back nine was Sterling standout junior player Gellerman.
The three-time Kansas state high school champion turned in a four-under 32 on Sand Creek Station’s back side in the heat and wind, overcoming a six-stroke deficit and forcing a playoff as Sparks bogeyed the last two holes of regulation.
But the Oklahoma City native Sparks pulled himself together for the playoff. He made a solid par on the first playoff hole – No. 18 playing into a strong wind and featuring a tough pin placement and a sand-save par on the second – the challenging par-3 17th offering a stiff crosswind and a flag tucked near a bunker -- to claim his first KGA title.
“It means a lot. I’m very proud to be the very first winner,” said Sparks. “The KGA runs great tournaments. The three that I’ve played in have been run perfect…everything run smoothly. So I enjoy it.”
With a howling wind roaring across the green on the par-3 17th at Sand Creek Station and a championship pin position near a bunker, Sparks thought he’d aimed far enough right to get the ball on the green as he and Gellerman played the hole for the second time in a half hour. Gellerman, who’d chipped close for par during regulation at the hole to get within one shot of the lead, had knocked his tee ball in the greenside bunker this time and Sparks knew anything on the green would give him a distinct advantage.
“I started it at the right edge of the green and I thought it would be fine,” Sparks recalled. “It landed on the green and rolled in the bunker. So I don’t know. It was playing tough. I had almost the exact same (bunker) shot in regulation except this time I was a little on the upslope so I knew I was going to be able to stop it a little better. It just came out perfect but it didn’t release as I thought it would.”
Gellerman’s bunker shot went past the hole and his par putt missed leaving the stage set for Sparks and his downhill 5-footer for the win.
“…that putt was fast downhill even back into the wind,” Sparks said. “It was extremely fast, probably 5 feet, left-to-right. I probably had to play it 3 or 4 inches outside the left side because it was back into the wind and the wind was going to make it swing.”
Sparks took a four-stroke lead into the third and final round after putting together rounds of 73 and 69 the first two days. When all four players in the final grouping birdied the par-5 fourth hole he returned to two under for the event and had a comfortable five-shot lead over those in his foursome on a day that proved brutally difficult.
“On 10, I probably could have hit it over the (water) and made par, but I had like a five or six-shot lead at the time so I played for six and made six. That got me to two over and I figured if I shot one or two over (today) I would be fine and I would have if I didn’t bogey the last two holes,” said Sparks. “Michael just played unbelievable on the back nine. He just made everything he looked at for about five holes in a row. After he birdied 10, it was just me and him. It’s hard to make 20-footers when the wind’s not blowing and he was making them.”
Sparks finished the day with a three-over 75 and a one-over total of 217. Gellerman’s two-under 70 was low round of the difficult final day and, with previous rounds of 73 and 74, he joined Sparks.
Dominant in the Valley this fall
Sparks continued his fine play this year right into the fall college season at WSU. His win at the Herb Wimberly Collegiate tourney, after a career-best 14-under-par 68-65-66, earned him Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Week honors for a third time this fall. Earlier he was co-medalist at the Diet Pepsi Shocker Invitational.
“With my ball striking, I was just a lot more consistent,” Sparks says. “I’ve always been a pretty good putter. I just got on one of those streaks this summer where I made a lot of putts. I guess the main thing was I just didn’t make as many bogeys due to my ball striking. I just didn’t get in any trouble or anything.
“I lowered my hands at the end of the school season last year. After that I just started hitting it really well. I practiced quite a bit at the first of the summer and just kind of got on a roll.”
Slenderly-built Sparks says he thinks adding some length is one of the things he’ll need to do to be competitive on the professional level.
“You can always improve every part of your game,” he says. “I think I need to start hitting it a little farther off the tee to be successful at the next level I believe and I still need to work on my iron game. My short game is pretty good right now.”
The Oklahoman, who has now played a lot of golf in the Sunflower State, says high school golf in his home state is “really competitive.”
“I don’t know about Kansas,” he adds. “The (Amateur Championships) are about the same. Oklahoma and Kansas both have great players. The thing I can tell, the KGA holds its tournaments at better courses…although Oklahoma holds its Amateur next year at Southern Hills in Tulsa.”
With sports agents beginning to knock at the door of the Shocker golf program, Sparks says he is trying to take things “one step at a time” as it pertains to his professional future in golf.
“Hopefully I can just keep playing well,” he adds. “I’m not trying to get ahead of myself and we’ll see where it goes. Hopefully, I can just keep practicing and getting better.”
