Meyer Powers Way to the Top at Southview

WEST ST. PAUL -- Saturday's third round of the U.S. Open could be seen as the ultimate confirmation that golf is now a game that rewards power more than precision. Winged Foot, with its combination of narrow fairways, deep rough and undulating greens, was thought to be a course that couldn't be overpowered. Previous Opens that were played there had been won by straight drivers and great scramblers, such as Billy Casper (1959) and Geoff Ogilvy (2006), not bombers. 

That, it would appear, has changed.

The two players on top of the leaderboard going into the final round of the Open this year, Matthew Wolff and Bryson DeChambeau, hit a combined total of five fairways on Saturday -- and were a combined total of 5 under par. That's not supposed to happen at Winged Foot. Wolff, whose 65 was the lowest score of the day, averaged 344.4 yards off the tee. That was second only to Thomas Pieters (354.4 yards per drive), and those massive drives made Wolff's second shots from the rough shorter and a lot easier than the ones that players were hitting at Winged Foot 14 years ago, when Ogilvy won. 

In the 1974 U.S. Open, which became known as The Massacre at Winged Foot, the winner, Hale Irwin, spent the week hitting 2, 3  and 4 irons for his second shots on the same holes -- most of which have been lengthened -- where Wolff and DeChambeau were hitting wedges and 9 irons on Saturday. 

The preeminence of power in the game of golf is hardly confined to the PGA Tour. In July, the Minnesota State Open was won by Angus Flanagan, with Frankie Capan finishing second. A week later, Capan won the State Amateur. Both Flanagan and Capan hit the ball prodigious distances.

And it looks as though the Tapemark Minnesota PGA Pro-Am is following the same pattern at Southview Country Club this weekend.

Chris Meyer was in one of the last groups to tee off Saturday afternoon, and he came to the 18th hole tied for the lead, at 9 under par, with two-time defending champion Ross Miller, who had posted a 69 earlier in the day. The 18th at Southview is a 480-yard par 5 with out of bounds on the left and trees to the right. Meyer blocked his tee shot, and the ball ended up 30 yards to the right of the fairway. That would have presented a problem for Meyer -- except that he hit the drive 345 yards. He was past most of the trees and had a wide open second shot from 135 yards.

His wedge shot from the rough left him a 20-foot putt for eagle. He just missed it. The ball ended up hanging on the lip. He tapped in for a birdie, which gave him a 3-under 68, and his 36-hole total of 132 has him one stroke ahead of Miller going into Sunday's final round.  

Jeff Sorenson, a former Tapemark champ (2009), shot 70 and is tied for third place at 136, along with Derek Holmes, who had a 69.

A former State Amateur winner, Sam Matthew (2013), also posted a 70 and is alone in fifth at 137, just ahead of seven-time Tapemark winner Don Berry, who's at 138 The rough at Southview is longer and thicker this year than it's been for this tournament in the past, and there was enough wind on Saturday to make things a little tricky. Berry didn't seem to notice. He hardly missed a fairway or a green and would have done better than the 67 he signed for if it hadn't been for a luke warm putter.    

Meyer wasn't thrilled with the way he played in Round 2 (he went to the range right after he finished and hit about 15 practice balls), but his length off the tee enabled him to make some easy birdies, beginning with the first hole, a 355-yard par 4. It's a dogleg to the right, with two large trees 250 yards from the tee guarding the corner of the dogleg. Meyer flew his tee shot over those trees to within 25 yards of the green. From there, it was an easy pitch and a short birdie putt, which he converted.

He then birdied the par-3 second (166 yards). At the 470-yard, par-5 fourth, his tee shot hit a tree and caromed backwards. Despite that, Meyer had only an 8-iron second shot, which he hit to 12 feet and just missed the eagle putt. 

"Then the wind picked up, and it caused some problems for me," he said later. 

For example, his wind-aided 7-iron at the 220-yard, par-3 fifth hole surprised him by going over the green, resulting in the first of his two bogeys. The other one came at the par-4 seventh (370 yards).

"I got off to a great start, 3 under after four holes," he noted, "and I didn't take advantage of that. But the course wasn't playing all that easy, and after I made those bogeys, I was just kind of hanging in there, waiting for the two par-5's at the end."

After the bogey at No. 7, Meyer made nine pars in a row and then put his length to good use on the two closing par-5's. He hit an 8-iron to the green at No. 17 (490 yards) for a two-putt birdie and concluded his round with the wedge from the right rough at the 18th for another two-putt birdie. 

Meyer has an impressive record at the Tapemark, having finished in the top 10 five years in a row (2014 to '18), but he nearly ended up in Europe this weekend, instead of West St. Paul. At the beginning of the year, the 30-year-old Wisconsin alumnus and mini-tour veteran was planning to spend most of 2020 on the PGA Tour LatinoAmerica, but Covid 19 wiped that out. There was also a possibility of playing on the European Challenge Tour. Meyer has partial status over there, and he was offered a spot in the Northern Ireland Open three weeks ago. Unfortunately, that was only one week before the tournament was going to be played, and there wasn't enough time for him to take a Covid 19 test, get the results and get cleared for a trans-Atlantic flight.

As it turned out, the alternate spot Meyer was offered ended up going to another Minnesotan, Tyler Koivisto, a former St. Cloud State golfer from Dassel-Cokato who spent three years teaching third-grade classes in Monticello before deciding two years ago to give professional golf a try -- and Koivisto won the Northern Ireland Open. Now it appears he'll be a regular on the European Tour for the 2020-21 season.    

On the way to his victory in last year's Tapemark, Miller shot 63 in the final round, and he, like Meyer, opened this year's tournament with a 64 on Friday. On Saturday, Miller, 28, started on the back nine, and was cruising along at 3 under for the day when he made the turn. He, too, can bomb his drives and he birdied both par-5's on the back nine, as well as two par 3's, 13 and 15. His first bogey of the tournament came at the par-4 14th (406 yards). He made only one more on Saturday, at the par-3 second hole, but he failed to make any birdies on the front nine and slipped back to 2 under for the round.

"I hit a couple of bad shots, and they cost me," said Miller, who has partial status on the Korn Ferry Tour this year. (He's played in three tournaments out there, made one cut and earned $4,284. But he's also played four tournaments on the Dakotas Tour and won one of them, which was worth $25,000.) "And I didn't birdie either of the par-5's on the front nine, which hurts. My chip shots on those holes weren't very good. I left myself 10- to 12-footers, and missed of the putts."

In the Amateur Division, Bella McCauley lit up the back nine, making five birdies in the last six holes and shooting a 67, which lifted her into a tie for first, along with a fellow Southview member, 14-year-old Sam Udovich, at 140. Udovich followed an opening 66 with a 74. 

McCauley is a high school junior (she's home-schooled, but lives in the Simley HS district, and thus plays for Simley),  and she won the Class AAA championship at the 2019 state high school tournament by 10 shots. She didn't get a chance to defend that title this spring, because the high school golf season was cancelled, but she won the 2020 MGA Junior Girls Championship by five shots. She is playing from the red (women's) tees at Southview this weekend, something she said she hasn't done since she was 9 years old. The reason for giving her such a short course (5,200 yards) is a PGA policy, which says that when women and men are playing in the same tournament, the total length for the women should be 85 percent of the total length for the men. In the case of Southview during the Tapemark, the length for the men is 6,200.

"It's fun playing from the red tees, especially when you're playiing the par-5's," McCauley said, smiling. "But when you're not playing very well from up there, you can get pretty mad at yourself.That's what happened yesterday (when she shot a 73). Today was fun." 


Tapemark Minnesota PGA Pro-Am

At Southview Country Club

Par 71

West St. Paul

Second-round results

Professionals

1. Chris Meyer, Southview CC            64-68--132

2. Ross Miller, Medina G&CC             64-69--133

T3. Jeff Sorenson, Minikahda Club     66-70--136

T3. Derek Holmes, PXG Mpls.            67-69--136

5. Sam Matthew, North Oaks CC        67-70--137

6. Don Berry, Edinburgh USA             71-67--138

T7. Matt Rachey, Bolstad/University   67-72--139

T7. Eric Rolland, Augsburg Univ.        70-69--139

T7. Brian Hills, 2nd Swing                   70-69--139

T10. Eddie Wynne, Bolstad/University 72-68--140

T10. Cameron White, PXG Mpls.         72-68--140

T10. Brent Snyder, Troy Burne GC       70-70--140

T10. Josh Whalen, Elk River GC          71-69--140


Amateurs

T1. Sam Udovich, Southview CC          66-74--140

T1. Bella McCauley, Southview  CC     73-67--140

3. Mike Tschida, Chisago Lakes GC     75-67--142

4. Jasi Acharya, Interlachen CC            74-71--145

T5. Pete Odell, Midland Hills CC           70-78--148

T5. Scott Fenwick, Southview CC         76-72--148

7. Mark Petzold, Wayzata CC               79-70--149

T8. Ty Munneke, Tianna CC                 71-79--150

T8. Josh Matthies, Heritage GC           76-74--150