By Mike Blum
The second day of the 2009 Griffin Classic began with perhaps the most interesting final round pairing in a Georgia PGA tournament in recent memory.
The last threesome off the tee that day consisted of Georgia PGA members Stephen Keppler and Tim Weinhart, both four-time Section Players of the Year, and Jonathan Fricke, a Nationwide Tour member.
Keppler’s opening round 66 at Griffin Country Club, where he once shot 27 for nine holes in a tournament victory, gave him a one-stroke lead over Weinhart, also a former Griffin Classic winner, and Fricke, who was looking to become the second tour player to win the event, duplicating the feat of Sonny Skinner in 2000.
But the potential of a birdie-filled shootout from the final pairing never materialized. Griffin’s narrow fairways and subtle greens frustrated all three players in the last group, as well as most of the other players who shot in the 60s the day before.
Most, but not all.
Seth McCain, who had won at Chicopee Woods only five weeks earlier, made it two in a row, shooting a final round 68 for a 7-under 137 total and a one-stroke victory over Chris Dixon.
Weinhart was the only member of the final group to match par on the day, closing with a 72 to tie for third at 139 with Skinner and Trey Kent. Fricke shot 73 to tie for sixth at 140 with former Griffin Classic winner Jeff Hull, while Keppler struggled to a 75 and a tie for eighth at 141. Clark Spratlin, like Weinhart a two-time Griffin Classic champion, was 10th at 142 after an up-and-down 73 the final round that included five birdies, but also three bogeys and a triple bogey.
The final round problems encountered by the lead group extended to two of the players in the next-to-last pairing. Jordan Arnold and Will Hutter, who both shot 67 the first day, followed with rounds of 76 and 77 respectively to tie for 11th and 15th.
Of the eight players who shot in the 60s the first day, McCain was the lone player to follow with another sub-70 score in the second round.
McCain, an assistant at Jennings Mill in Athens, closed out his opening 69 with bogeys on his final two holes, and he began his final round with a bogey. But he quickly recovered with birdies on holes 3 and 4, holing putts of about 8 feet, and had birdie opportunities on the next two holes but failed to convert.
While McCain was recording pars and the occasional birdie on his scorecard, things were not going very smoothly for either his playing partners or the three players in the group behind them.
Keppler missed a short par putt on the second hole, with Weinhart hitting it close for birdie to briefly claim the lead. But Weinhart bogeyed the short, par-5 third, the easiest hole on the course, after dumping a wedge from the fairway into a front bunker.
Fricke and Keppler both knocked it on in two and made birdie, but Griffin’s tight layout claimed both as victims on the next few holes. Fricke’s tee shot on the fourth did not clear the trees on the right corner of the dogleg, and he had to take an unplayable lie, leading to a double bogey.
Both Keppler and Fricke hit it close at the fifth for birdie, with Keppler holding a 2-stroke lead at that point. But on the unimposing par-3 sixth, Keppler found a greenside bunker and hit his second shot over the green. A chip and three putts later, Keppler was left with a triple bogey, with Fricke assuming the lead outright as Weinhart bogeyed the hole.
Fricke’s lead was short-lived, as he drove into the trees at the seventh and made bogey, and also bogeyed the eighth. Inexplicably, Keppler made a second triple bogey in the span of three holes, pulling his tee shot out of bounds on the eighth.
That left Dixon in the lead at 6-under after a 31 on the front nine that included birdies on every other hole beginning at the first. Dixon, an instructor at Kinderlou Forest in Valdosta, played his final nine in even par, but that wasn’t good enough to hold off McCain.
Like most of his fellow challengers, McCain also made a visit into Griffin’s ever-present trees on the par-5 ninth, but managed to make par after facing a 250-yard third shot. At that point, he trailed Dixon by two, but four birdies on his next seven holes put him in command of the tournament.
McCain holed a 12-footer for birdie at 10, curled in a sharply breaking downhill putt for birdie at the 13th, and added two more birdies at 14 and 16, both par 5s, with deft chips from just off both greens.
After his birdie at the 16th, McCain led Dixon by two, and needed only to avoid disaster to pick up his second straight win. He parred the 17th and played the dangerous par-3 18th safely, hitting away from the water and making bogey with a three-putt from long range.
Despite back-to-back bogeys at 13 and 14, Weinhart gave himself one last shot after a birdie at 17, his third in his last six holes. But thinking he needed to hole his tee shot at 18, as Hull did in his win two years ago, Weinhart went at the flag, which was tucked close to the water on the left. His tee shot landed on the bank and bounced into the water, and even though he salvaged a bogey, he fell from a tie for second with Dixon into a tie for third.
McCain, who took home the first place check of $2,100, earned his victory with two quality rounds of golf, coming on the heels of an equally impressive effort at Chicopee Woods.
“I played solid all the way through,” he said. “I drove it in the fairway, hit a lot of greens and made some putts the last couple of days, which not a lot of people were able to do.”
After his scrambling par at the ninth, which he pointed to as his key hole of the day, McCain knew he was right in the hunt, and capitalized on his opportunity. He was able to keep up with what the other challengers were doing thanks to the rolling leaderboards, and with no one able to match his string of birdies coming in, he had his second straight victory.
McCain admitted to being “a little bit surprised,” he was able to win with a 7-under total. “I figured it was going to take double figures to win. But I was only three back at the start of the day, so I knew I had a chance. I just had to play well and I did.”
Skinner and Fricke were just getting back in the state after playing in a Nationwide Tour event a few days earlier in Canada. Skinner, who splits his time between tournament play and working as an instructor at River Pointe in Albany, started the tournament with 13 straight pars before birdies on three of his last five holes in an opening 70. Four birdies on the final nine gave him a 69 and a tie for third with Weinhart and Kent, an assistant at the Ford Plantation in Richmond Hill.
Fricke, a Covington resident who plays out of the Golf Club of Georgia, shot 73 with five birdies, failing out of contention with bogeys at 13 and 15, his third and fourth of the day to go with the double on the fourth. He birdied the final hole to tie for sixth with UGA Golf Course instructor Hull, who shot a bogey-free 69 the second day.
Keppler, the Director of Golf at Marietta CC, had seven birdies in his opening 66, including his last three holes of the day, but his absence of much tournament play was a factor in his second round 75. Keppler notched five birdies on the day, but could not overcome two triples and two bogeys resulting from missing short par putts.
Brandon Lovelady, an assistant at Flat Creek, shot 4-under on his final nine for a 68 to tie Keppler for eighth at 141. Tying Spratlin for 10th and earning low amateur honors was Jeff Rives, playing out of Brookfield CC.
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