Seal Slips in the Back Door to Win AAA Boys; Eden Prairie Is Team Champ

By Mike Fermoyle (mikefermoyle@gmail.com) 

COON RAPIDS -- It happened before; it will happen again; and it happened Wednesday at Bunker Hills Golf Course in the final round of the boys Class AAA portion of the Minnesota state high school tournament. 

As the final nine began, it looked like a two-horse race for the individual medal, and the two players in the final group that most people assumed would decide the championship between themselves -- Winona senior William Leaf and Owatonna sophomore Peter Jones -- got involved in a match-play contest against each other. When that happens, strokes usually start to slip away. 

Meanwhile, someone comes from out of the pack, in this case Chanhassen senior Cody Seal, and he ends up with the title.

That was exactly what happened.

Having started the day four strokes behind Leaf, Seal played a less-than-flawless round from tee to green, but he scrambled effectively (11 putts on the final nine), put his considerable length to good use and shot a 2-under-par 70, which enabled him to overtake Leaf and Jones down the stretch and claim medalist honors with a 36-hole total of 143. 

Leaf, who was as solid as granite all season (he was No. 1 in Class AAA with a scoring average of 71.3), had a 69 on Tuesday. He continued his good play on Wednesday, and seemed in control of the tournament through the first 13 holes. Just about every shot that the Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville recruit hit was going where it was intended to go.

But then his shots  started to wander, and he bogeyed four of the last five holes. He wound up with a 77 and slipped back into a five-way tie for second at 146.

Jones also ended up at that number. He shot 72 in the first round, and played the first 10 holes on Wednesday in even par. He double-bogeyed the 530-yard, par-5 11th hole (No. 2 West), but got one back with a birdie at the 220-yard, par-3 17th (8 West) and had a chance to get back to even par for the tournament when he hit a 300-yard drive at the 370-yard, par-4 18th, and then hit a wedge to within 12 feet.

Putting slightly uphill, Jones blew the first one 3 feet past the cup. After Leaf missed a 15-footer for par -- and 145, which, at that point, looked like the probable winning score -- Jones missed his come-backer. So he posted a 74 and tied Leaf at 146.

It turned out that three other players would go on to finish at 146. Brady Hanson, a senior from East Ridge, got there with a valedictory 72, the second-best score of the day, behind only the 70 by Seal. Lakeville North junior Freddy Thomas, who finished alone in third last year, was also a part of the tie for second this year, after a final-round 74.

And another junior, Zach Peters, completed the fivesome at 146 by matching his opening round of 73. In the process, he helped Eden Prairie win the team championship.

The Eagles were third after the first round, three behind first-place Wayzata with a 301. But conditions were tougher on Wednesday, and Eden Prairie won by combining for a 308, and an aggregate of 609. Wayzata could do no better than 312 and ended up with a 610. Forest Lake was third with a 618.

Ultimately, the team competition came down to the left-handed Peters, who needed to make a 10-foot putt for par on the last hole to win the title outright. He made it. 

"I didn't know that I needed to make it for us to win," he said. "But I thought it was a possibility. Even though it was a really important putt, I just stuck with what I'd been doing, and tried to hit the best putt I could. Fortunately, it went in." 

It was the second team title for the Eagles, and the first for head coach Ty Armstrong, a former regular on the PGA Tour who spent more than 10 years the web.com Tour, before it was called that.

"I played it under every other name that it's had (starting with the "Ben Hogan Tour" in 1990 and '91, then the Nike Tour, Buy.com Tour and Nationwide)," Armstrong said, grinning at the thought of all those incarnations.

For the last seven years, he's been the coach of the Eagles, and he knows how hard it is to win a state championship, because he's had some supremely talented teams that didn't.

"The team we had two years ago was probably the most talented," he speculated on Wednesday, "and that team finished third. The team this year wasn't the most talented we've had, but these guys have worked the hardest, and they've improved the most. When I think about how we started this year at the Tri-State (Eden Prairie shot 331-321--652 and tied for 10th -- 48 strokes behind the winning team from Minnetonka -- at the season-opening Tri-State invitational in late April at Edinburgh USA) and where we are today, I'm amazed."

Peters is like most of the rest of the players on this year's Eden Prairie team in that he barely played in varsity competition before this year.

"When you're in a school with 4,000 kids, there is going to be a lot of competition just to make one of the teams," he noted. "It's a big gene pool, and we had a lot of seniors the last two year who were really good. We (the players who made up this year's team) knew that the only ways to crack the line-up were to play unbelievably well, or just wait."

Peters got into an occasional event as a sophomore. But mostly he waited. When his chance came this year, he made the most of it.

"Yesterday morning, when this tournament started, I was just happy to be here," he said. "But I wanted to do well, and I just tried to concentrate on every shot. There were a couple of times when it crossed my mind that I was in it (in contention for the Class AAA individual medal), I kind of kicked myself. I knew that I needed to forget about that and keep doing what I was doing, and just take it one shot at a time."

Wednesday provided a fitting conclusion to the 2013 Minnesota high school golf season. Like the season, the day got off to a miserable start. The sky was ominously dark, and it began to rain hard not long after the players started their rounds, creating lots of small ponds on the fairways and in the rough at Bunker Hills.

Play had to be stopped at 9:30 a.m., and the players didn't get back on the course until 11:10. 

Rain delays are no fun, but Seal thought that this one might be beneficial to him. 

"After the first round (he opened with a 1-over 73), I was thinking that if I could just get back to par, or maybe 1 under, I'd be in pretty good shape," he said. "Around par usually wins these tournaments. Then, when we got all of that rain, I knew that would make the course longer and harder. I thought the longer course improved my chances, because I could still reach all of the par-5's in two, and a lot of the other guys couldn't."

Seal, who plays left-handed, also thought he had an advantage in that he could hit his 5-wood 270 yards off the tee, get it in the fairway more often that way, and still be even with drivers that most other players were hitting." 

His round started auspciously; he stiffed a wedge at the first hole (No. 1 East, 427 yards, par 4). But the University of South Dakota recruit gave one back -- ironically --, at the short par-5 fourth (470 yards).

Then he made eight consecutive pars. So he was still 1 over for the tournament -- and three behid Leaf -- when he came to the 13th tee (No. 4 West, 375 yards, par 4). His 300-yard drive left him a 75-yard wedge, which he hit to 5 feet, and he made the putt for a birdie. 

At the 540-yard, par-5 14th (5 West), the other players in his group hit their drives in the neighborhood of 275 to 285 yards, which is pretty respectable when you consider that that was how far they flew. Basically, everything was all carry on Wednesday, and no roll.  

Seal blastedt his drive 40 yards past them -- 320 yards in the air -- and he followed it with a 3-iron to the front of the green. He chipped close and tapped in for the birdie that, combined with the three-putt bogey that Leaf would make a few minutes later, tied him for the lead. 

There was one more minor crisis for Seal to face. That was at the par-3 17th, where he got into trouble off the tee, missing the green, and hit a weak chip. He saved himself by making a 20-foot putt for par. Ultimately, that was the putt the clinched the victory for him.

Leaf and Jones were in the group right behind Seal. So he knew within 20 minutes after he finished that he had moved comfortably ahead of them. That left Wayzata junior Jack Holmgren as the player he considered to have the best chance of beating him.

Holmgren, who was No. 1 in the final MGA Individual Rankings this spring this spring (Leaf was 3, Jones was 6 and Seal was 14), shot 71 on Tuesday. But he was part of the Wayzata team and, therefore,  was nearly an hour behind Seal. (Players competing as individuals and not with their teams went in the first wave of starting times both days, and the players competing with their teams followed, beginning with the No. 6 players and ending with the No. 1's.) 

So Seal and a couple of his buddies went out to inquire about how Holmgren was doing.

That's not nearly as easy as people used to watching the PGA Tour -- or the Champions Tour, or the LPGA Tour -- might think. There are no leaderboards at high school tournaments. There are only rumors, and the main way that you find out how someone is doing is by asking someone who's following him -- and the information you get that way isn't necessarily reliable, as Seal can attest. 

He and his research assistants found Holmgren as he was playing the 17th hole on Wednesday, and they got reports from two different people on how he was doing. 

"The first guy we talked to said he was 2 under par for the day (which would have put him 2 strokes ahead)," Seal said. "Then somebody else said he was 5 over."

Even by the standards of the high school golf rumor mills, that was a really wide disparity. But the second report (5 over) turned out to be accurate. Holmgren, who had actually shot 41 on the front (East) nine and played the first seven holes on the back (West) in even par. He went on to par the last two holes and signed for a 77, which put  him alone in seventh place with a 148.

At that point, Seal could start celebrating.   
  

BOYS HIGH SCHOOL GOLF 

State Tournament

Class AAA

At Bunker Hills Golf Course

Par 72

Coon Rapids

Final results 

1. Eden Prairie                301-307--608

2. Wayzata                        298-312--610

3. Forest Lake                  300-318--618

4. Hastings                        309-314--623

5. Lakeville North             307-317--624

6. Alexandria                     315-311--626

7. White Bear Lake           313-318--631

8. Rogers                           322-319--641

Individuals

1. Cody Seal, Chanhassen                   73-70--146

T2. William Leaf, Winona                       69--77--146

T2. Peter Jones, Owatonna                   72-74--146

T2. Brady Hanson, East Ridge              74-72--146

T2. Zach Peters, Eden Prairie               73-73--146

T2. Freddy Thomas, Lakeville North    72-74--146

7. Jack Holmgren, Wayzata                   71-77--148

8. Sam Sicard, Stillwater                        72-77--149

T9. Justin Doeden, Lakeville South     75-75--150

T9. Conor McGinnis, Minnetonka         77-73--150

T9. Ian Hiltner, St. Cloud Tech               75-75--150

T9. David Scharenbroich, SC Tech      73-77--150