Written by Shane René, USGA P.J. Boatwright Intern
BURLEY — Defending champions lurked in four of six divisions last Thursday as wind whipped across Burley and players set out on River’s Edge Golf Course for a seeding round in the 2024 Match Play Championships.
River’s Edge may be best known to Idaho’s golfers as the one they glance at travelling east and west across southern Idaho, but a classic set of pristine, small and demanding greens proved to be a worthy test for players from across the Gem State.
With wind a feature early, ball strikers bubbled to the top; and as gusts laid down for match play, the gutsy found glory.
Ava Schroeder
WOMEN’S DIVISION
Ava Schroeder’s round of even-par 75 ran away with the No. 1 seed Thursday, followed by fellow Twin Fall’s junior Tanli Lemoyne who created some separation of her own.
Defending champion Caroline Caven struggled in qualifying, drawing the No. 6 seed.
With players seeded directly into the quarterfinals, Schroeder continued her dominant showing with an 8&7 victory to punch her ticket into the semifinals. On the other side of the bracket, Lemoyne won 3&2 to draw a semifinal match with Caven, who returned to form with a 4&3 upset of No. 3 seed Ellyce Simmons.
Caven and Lemoyne found themselves in a tight match Friday afternoon, trading blows until the defending champ fell on the seventeenth hole 2&1. Schroeder, who was forced to scramble back to the golf course for her tee time, also found herself in a back-n-forth match with Halle Western until she won the sixteenth hole to advance 4&2.
“It’s fun,” Schroeder said. “My match with Halle was very back and forth. Super competitive.”
While Lemoyne never held a lead in the final match, that fact is no reflection of the fight she showed. Down early, she continued to hold the match at or near square, winning two consecutive holes through the turn. But then Schroeder turned on the gas, winning three consecutive holes before throwing a dagger into the sixteenth green and tapped in for the win, 4&2.
Sheryl Scott
“My driver was pretty good this week,” Schroeder said. “I’ve been hitting it pretty far lately — because I do yoga.”
SENIOR WOMEN’S DIVISION
Stacey Camara and Sheryl Scott put the field on notice early with two-over rounds of 77 to run away with the top-two seeds. Both women would run through their respective sides of the bracket to square off in the championship match.
Scott’s birdie on the first was her first and final lead of the day. But after Scott got to 3 up through five holes, Camara struck back with a birdie on the sixth to chip away at her deficit and was only 1 down after a birdie on the tenth. Evidently bothered by Camara mounting her comeback, Scott birdied the next two holes and won a third consecutive hole with par at the thirteenth.
Standing over a four-footer for the win on the fifteenth hole, Scott conquered her putting demons of the last year and poured it in.
“[I was thinking] I hope I make this because I don’t want to play any more holes because she was tough.” Scott said. “It was really a fun match.”
This is Scott’s third IGA Match Play title.
MEN’S DIVISION
Lekkerkerk using the tenth green as a dart board in his championship match Saturday.
Boise State’s Seth Jones and Nampa’s newly-reinstated amateur Keynan Fanslow found themselves two shots clear of the men’s field with scores of 70 (-2) in Thursday’s seeding round. Burley’s own Brock Whitaker locked up a top-three seed with an even par 72, matched by Weiser’s Carter Williams to round out the top four. A low-handicap tie breaker handed Fanslow the No. 1 seed.
Defending Men’s Amateur Champion Trevor Garus — who finished runner-up in the 2023 Match Play — stumbled out of the blocks with a double bogey on the benign par-5 first and continued to scrape his ball around before playing his final five holes in two-under par to lock up the No. 5 seed. Defending Champion Derek Lekkerkerk provided some fireworks in his seeding round with an ace on the par-3 seventh, helping him lock up the No. 9 seed in an otherwise messy round.
The round of 16 was highlighted by key upsets. Buhl’s Braden Anderson downed No.2 seed Jones 3&2 and Blackfoot native Skyler Jensen cruised by Fanslow 6&5. Fifteen-year-old No. 10 seed Trey Lambert, who made the trip south from Coeur D Alane, captured a decisive 4&2 win over Caldwell’s Connor Johnstone (No. 7 seed).
Garus made light work of his opening match, winning 5&3 to advance into a heavyweight battle with Utah Tech’s Carter Williams. With a 3&2 victory there, Garus found the rematch he was looking for from last year's championship match. With a habit of digging holes and crawling out of them, Lekkerkerk squeezed by Ryan Shepard 1-up and used a hot start to his back nine to win his quarterfinal match 4&3.
On the ninth hole of their semi-final match, Garus’s tidy lag-putt for eagle was knocked away by Lekkerkerk who then smoked his birdie effort past the hole, making the turn down in his match once again. But Lekkerkerk’s birdie on the scenic tenth squared the match, and the two continued to trade pars down the back nine until Lekkerkerk broke the tension with a birdie on 15. With his back against the wall, Garus took aim at a hole location pasted up against the left edge of the 17th green and watched his ball spin out of sight and off the green. Knocking his chip long of the hole, he buried a 12-footer to extend the match to 18 holes, but tree trouble on the par-5 closer all but dashed his hopes of a comeback, as Lekkerkerk sent a long iron to 25 feet for an eagle putt he never had to hit.
On the other side of the bracket, Lambert — fresh off a 20-hole victory the day before — continued to impress early in his semifinal match, charging out to a 4-up lead through 6 holes over Wacey Williams. Williams battled back through the turn as Lambert played holes 7-9 in three-over par, but the emerging Northern Idaho junior stand out shut the door on the back nine without losing another hole, closing his match 4&3.
Lambert kept the momentum going into the afternoon’s championship match, using birdies on the first and third to take an early 2-up lead. Gifted a bogey from Lambert on the fourth, Lekkerkerk returned the favor with a bogey on six and found himself destined to enter the back nine down in a match once again.
Derek Lekkerkerk
“I just think I’m wired different than the next guy,” Lekkerkerk said. “Whether that’s real or not, I don’t know, but it seems to work. One thing I tell myself when another player is putting to beat or tie me — I tell myself ‘I want you to make it because I want to keep going. Let’s keep battling.’ I just think the love of that keeps me going.”
In that spirit, Lekkerkerk turned with his jet thrusters on high, making back-to-back birdies to take his first lead of the match and moved 2-up with another birdie at the par-5 fourteenth. Lambert, struggling with the driver most of the afternoon, caught a break on sixteen when his tee shot rattled around in the left trees and kicked back in bounds. With Lekkerkerk in for birdie, Lambert canned a slippery 12-footer to halve the hole and keep the match going, but a concession after a tidy birdie lag handed Lekkerkerk his second consecutive victory at the IGA Match Play Championship.
“It’s nice,” he said. “It’s nice. I went through a lot of adversity in this last year — first year in college and some challenges there, but that prepared me a lot for all of these matches. I think I was down in every match, except one, maybe. It was close every single time.”
The win is his first amateur victory since announcing that he is transferring from Colorado State to California Baptist University this fall.
“God puts us through things to grow us and allows us to fall to some pretty low places for us to have him pick us up again. It’s hard to put into words how much I’ve grown. That maturity and understanding has helped a lot on the course, specifically when things feel like they are going bad in a round — it’s like take a deep breath and be like, man, I’m loved by so many people, and I’m loved by the Lord, so this is pretty good.”
Robb Price
MEN’S MASTER-40 DIVISION
2022 Men’s Master-40 Match Play champion Gilbert Livas took hold of the No. 1 seed on Thursday with a round of one-over 73, followed by Robb Price and Dustin Ianson with 75. Kenny Walker earned the No. 4 seed.
With a first-round bye, Livas found himself scheduled for a dance with defending champion Jason Clifford — which did not go his way, losing in 19 holes. Kenny Walker met a similar fate when he faced Clifford in the semifinals, falling 3&2.
In the other half of the bracket, Robb Price found himself in a friendly match with 2023 runner-up Brien Riff, ultimately besting his practice round partner 2&1. In the semifinal, Price dug a hole for himself early on, down 2 through 4 holes and would make the turn with the same deficit to make up. Playing with a par-birdie-birdie start to the back nine, Price finally found himself briefly on top of the match. Trading blows down the stretch, Price used a par on the eighteenth hole to win the match 1 up and advance to the final.
In the championship match, the defending champion took the first hole with a birdie, but a birdie at the third for Price squared the match and Clifford was unable to retake the lead for the rest of the day. Birdie at the eleventh, a classy up-and-down at the thirteenth and birdie at the fifteenth put Price in cruise control and a par at the sixteenth closed the deal.
“I was able to stay out of trouble for the most part,” Price said. “I was hitting a lot of fairways with the driver and keeping it around the green — I wasn’t short siding myself and able to get it up and down when I needed to. I didn’t make a lot of birdies, but a lot of pars.”
SENIOR MEN’S DIVISION
Brad Bartram’s cool two-under round of 70 earned a bye in the round of 16, but a field of seasoned competitors stood in his way. Among them, Jay Sutton — the defending champion — turned in a round of 71 to lock up the No. 2 seed, followed by Scott Vermeer, Darren Kuhn, Randall Cross, Stephen Hartnett, Bret Rupert, and Steve White to round out the top half of the bracket.
Stephen Hartnett
Sutton had his back against the wall early in the round of 16, requiring extra holes to escape the clutches of No. 15 seed Calvin Fillmore, but made quick work of his quarterfinal match, 5&4, to cruise into the semifinals.
Hartnett joined Sutton in that semifinal match, surviving what he described as a “heavyweight” battle with Scott Vermeer — trading birdies and eagles for much of the round before escaping 3&1. That blow-for-blow theme continued in the semifinal but back-to-back birdies on the difficult par-3 seventeenth and par-5 eighteenth earned Hartnett a 1up victory and a trip to the championship match.
On the other side of the bracket, Bartram squeezed by Mark Spalding before running into a competitive match with 2023 runner-up Darren Kuhn. Early on the back nine, Kuhn took advantage of Bartram’s stumbles, going par-birdie-par to move three up before a par at the sixteenth sent Kuhn back to the championship match for a second consecutive year.
Hartnett and Kuhn danced along a knife’s edge for the better part of 18 holes with Kuhn applying the pressure early, moving 2 up through four. Hartnett’s birdie on the sixth and par on the eighth squared the match, and he took his first lead of the match on the tenth after Kuhn’s long deliberation in the penalty area left of the green resulted in a drop, chip and a two putt.
“I was just trying to stay in the moment,” Hartnett said. “You’ve heard it said: shot by shot, just trying to focus on myself... just tear off that NASCAR windshield and let that one go.”
Kuhn re-squared the match with a birdie on the fourteenth hole and seemed to be summoning some fire with a hearty fist pump after saving par from the trees on the sixteenth. As the match moved to eighteen all square, Kuhn found trouble in the right trees, as Hartnett freely plotted his way toward the green, coasting in for par and the victory.
Peter Sacks
“[My mental game] served me really well this week,” Hartnett said. “That and the fact that I really, really enjoy the Burley course. It was a good combination.”
SUPER SENIOR MEN’S DIVISION
Peter Sacks cruised through the Super-Senior division last weekend. He and Bruce Dunham were the only two players to break 80 in Thursday’s seeding round, and each made quick work of their semifinal matches, winning 4&3 and 5&4 respectively.
Sacks got on the move early in the championship match, winning three of the first six holes. And while Dunham found his moments to chip away at Sacks’ lead, Sacks took the momentum back with a chip-in birdie at the treacherous par-3 twelfth and ran away with the title.
“My irons were really sharp yesterday,” Sacks said. “Today I was just a little off, but I managed to get a 4 up lead and hang on to win it at the end. The putting — I got up and down a few times, and I chipped in for two on a par three which was huge.”
*Side note: Sacks is an author who lives in Hagerman, Idaho. His new book, Liberty Land, is available on Amazon (but check your local bookstore first!).