Some of the best collegiate golfers in the country vied in the Maidstone Club’s fourth 54-hole intercollegiate tournament over the course of two sunny days last week, breezing through the beautiful links-style course, which can bite you, the club’s head pro, Eden Foster, said during a conversation the next day, if the wind is blowing.
The opening day, Monday, Oct. 2, was most memorable for the fact that the University of Alabama’s sophomore number-one, Nick Dunlap, the national amateur champion, who is from Huntsville, Ala., broke by two strokes the club record with a 12-under par 60, a nigh-historic round that attracted a sizable crowd of onlookers. He would have shot an unheard-of (among collegians) 59 had a putt of his not lipped out on the 18th green.
The 6-foot-3-inch Dunlap’s record round, the second one he played on Oct. 2, began with an eagle and three birdies on the front nine. He made the turn at five under par, and followed up with seven birdies on the back nine. He finished the first day with an eagle, 13 birdies, 22 pars, and no bogeys.
Alabama’s top four, with an aggregate 840 strokes, a tournament record, won, besting Ohio State (843), U.C.L.A. (844), Virginia (854), Princeton (856), Yale (870), Howard (881), Georgetown (890), Harvard (891), Loyola Maryland (891), and Penn (894).
Jay Seawell, Alabama’s coach, was reported to have said of the team’s win, “I am really proud of how the entire team performed this week. Winning a college golf tournament is a hard thing to do, and takes a lot of work and a lot of practice. . . . There are going to be a lot of milkshakes for us on the way home.”
Luke Powell, a U.C.L.A. freshman, was the winner, however, not Dunlap, who shot a 71 to his partner’s 68 on the final day, Oct. 3. Powell’s one-stroke win, 199 to 200, wasn’t a shock, though. “He’s finished in the top three or top five in his first few tournaments,” Foster said.
A California native and a former state scholastic champion, Powell shot rounds of 64, 67, and 68 — Dunlap carded rounds of 69, 60, and 71.
“They loved it,” Maidstone’s head pro added of the golfers’ reactions to the gorgeous wide-open course. “Multiple players and coaches said it was the best event they’ve played in in their college careers.”
“When the course is really firm, it plays hard, but the recent rains softened it,” said Foster, whose son, Turner, a fifth-year business major at Loyola Maryland, was in the field. The younger Foster, who has played as high as number-one on Loyola’s team, won the Suffolk County individual championship when he was a student at East Hampton High School, one of three Bonackers to have done so, the others being Zach Grossman and James Bradley.
The elder Foster, who has been the head pro at Maidstone for 30 years, said of the medium-to-small greens on the 6,742-yard, par-72 course, “They were fast, but not very firm because of the rain, which made them easier to play. You could throw darts, as they say. . . . Of the four intercollegiate events we’ve had here, this was the best. It wasn’t raining and the wind wasn’t blowing 30 miles an hour.”
This time, there was a pleasant southwest breeze on the final day, and on the first day, during which two rounds were played, while the wind was out of the northeast, it was at six miles per hour.
The national amateur runner-up to Dunlap, Neal Shipley of Ohio State, was also among the competitors, as was another top collegiate golfer, Ben James of the University of Virginia, a teammate of Dunlap’s on the United States’ winning Walker Cup team this summer.
The previous course record, a 62, “was shot six weeks ago,” Foster said, “by a kid from Penn, their number-one, from England, John Richardson, who also played in this tournament. Before him it was a kid from Northwestern” — Eric McIntosh — “who shot a 65 in this event two years ago.”
Foster added that his son has also shot a 65 at Maidstone, the course he grew up on, along with a peer of his, George Roessler, a member of Penn’s team, and a Maidstone member, who had a hand in inaugurating this tournament in 2019. Roessler, a Penn sophomore, is the club champion.
Aside from the Met Mid-Amateur tournament, which the club played host to a few years ago, “this is it,” said Foster, adding that “we’ve had big member events and a lot of charity events. . . . The caliber of play this week was much higher than the Met Mid-Amateur. These were some of the top players in the world. They could win the Masters,” for which Dunlap has qualified, “some day.”
