CANADIAN DOELL RECORDS HIS SECOND STOCKER CUP VICTORY

2007 Champion Craig Doell

But it is that scenic drive, where golfers shouldn’t be surprised to see deer, turkey or even wild boar wandering through the woods, which separates the Fazio-Tatum designed course from other venues in the golf-rich Monterey Peninsula area.

Another aspect is the club’s annual hosting of The Stocker Cup Invitational Golf Tournament, the Club’s only outside tournament, which draws top mid-amateurs from all over the country for a 72-hole individual tournament running simultaneously with a 54-hole am-am showdown.

This year’s event morphed into a two-man race after the third round of play, and featured Canadian Craig Doell and Virginian Pat Tallent competing neck-and-neck through 72 holes, each finishing at 1-over 289, only to have the contest decided on a one-hole playoff.

Doell seemed sunk late in the tourney, trailing Tallent by two strokes with three holes to play. But the Victoria, B.C. resident took advantage of back-to-back Tallent bogeys to force the playoff, which he then won with a par when Tallent drove into a difficult bunker lie on 18 to start the sudden-death match.

“Neither Pat nor I played our best out there, but we certainly tried hard,” said Doell. “It was a bit of a pillow fight out there, we didn’t tie any holes until the 18th with pars, so it was an exciting day.”

The victory gave Doell his second Stocker Cup, the first coming in 2004, making him the second golfer to repeat as champ following Randy Haag, who won the title in both 1992 and 1997.

Haag finished fourth in this year’s tourney, five strokes off the lead. He was preceded by Billy Williamson, who took third and trailed by four strokes. Jeff Wilson rounded out the top five.

Tallent and his partner Alan Hyman, chairman of Fremont Bank, won the Elliott Cup, a 54-hole best-ball team competition which pits one of the scratch A-Players with a B-Player competing at their assigned handicap from the gold tees. The pair broke a logjam at the top of the leaderboard by a stroke after a birdie try by team of Billy Williamson and Tom Graunke on the 18th hole slid just by the hole.

The day started with ten teams within three strokes of the lead, and ended with six within five strokes. The award is named for former co-chairman Jack Elliott, who passed away in 2007.

***** amateurgolf.com reporter’s notes *****

• Don’t think the Stocker Cup loss puts a damper on Pat Tallent’s year. After more than 15 years of high finishes in top Virginia events, including runner-ups in the Open, Amateur and Mid-Am, the 53-year-old finally broke through with a victory at the State Amateur this year with a wire-to-wire 7 & 5 victory over Jason Rosenstock at Lowe’s Island, a course in which he was a founding board member.
• Craig Doell shot the tournament’s best round, 4-under-par 68, in the tournaments worst conditions during a windy, rainy second day.
• Day 2’s gusty conditions, combined with the lightning-fast greens made for a few blooper-real moments, with golfers too slow to mark their ball watching in agony as the wind kicked up and blew them right off the false-front edges of the greens
• The tournament dinner held after the third day of play was full of memories and testaments to the tournament’s namesake, Peter Stocker, who passed away in 1990 in a helicopter crash on the property. He was remembered as a fierce competitor (one who refused to take strokes from his long-time partner and lower-handicap friend George Kelly, opting for better gambling odds instead) who was as much fun on the course as he was after the round sharing a post round drink.
• The Tournament Committee’s Mary Craig, was also giving a nice standing ovation for her behind-the-scenes work putting the event in working order at the dinner
• Peter Stocker’s son Erik paired with Jason Pridmore, the winner of the amateurgolf.com California Mid-Am to take a tie for 8th in the team competition
• Nick Ushijima, fresh off a victory in Japan’s version of the Nationwide Tour, took sixth place at 296
• “The course won this year,” remarked tournament chairman George Kelly, and he had a point. The slippery greens and grown-out rough yielded only seven under-par rounds throughout the tournament. Last year, the players had the edge as Bob Niger took first with a 10-under 278 final. An injury kept him from defending his title

Media Information:

FINAL RESULTS - October 14, 2007
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Notes:
1.) www.amateurgolf.com provides information on amateur tournaments around the U.S., runs a 18-event tournament series, and provides web and media services for events such as The Stocker Cup. The subscription fee of $45/year will be waived for members of the golf media upon receipt of an email or phone request.

2.) A-player biographies can be viewed at- http://www.stockercup.com/contestants.htm

RESULTS ARCHIVES:
2006
2005
2004