Arnold tends to business
Playoff decides BDGA Mid-Am
By Bob DiCesare
NEWS SPORTS REPORTER
Updated: 06/20/07 6:57 AM
RIDGEWAY, Ont. — The Buffalo District Golf Association launched its Mid-Amateur Championship on Tuesday, a concession that collegiate golfers have become the dominant force on the local scene. Mid- Am events are for those 25 and older. Mid-Ams typically have players active in the work force, although the size of the field for this inaugural event — a robust 114 — would seem to contradict that notion.
Woody Arnold is someone who should have been tending to business Tuesday. Nine years ago, after leaving his job as vice president of marketing for Dunlop Tire, Arnold started Zipline Golf, a company that imprints golf balls with logos, personalized wording and the like. Zipline’s coming off the best month in its history. There’s plenty of work to do. Arnold was at Cherry Hill and participating in the Mid-Am only because his wife, Judy, agreed to hold down the Zipline fort for the day.
Arnold, who plays out of The Park Club, entered the event accompanied by modest expectations. Although a 4-handicap, he’d shot 82 at the recent BDGA Senior Championship at Diamond Hawk. And now here he was at Cherry Hill, home to some of the area’s quicker and more deceptive greens, further challenged by swirling winds that kicked up late morning, pitted against some players more than 30 years younger.
All things considered, Arnold, 59, was a fringe candidate to put his imprint on the first BDGA Mid-Am. But that’s what he did, shooting a 1-over 73 to tie for the lead and then outlasting Attica’s Scott Dean on the third hole of a stirring suddendeath playoff.
“That round came out of nowhere,” Arnold said. “It was one of those days when the ball’s going where you’re aiming, inexplicably.”
The title appeared halfway into Dean’s pocket when he rammed home a 30-foot uphill birdie putt on the first playoff hole. Arnold, undaunted, countered by cashing a downhill 15- footer. Touche.
“My putter was working real well all day,” Arnold said. “That was my key.”
Dean had Arnold backed to the wall again on No. 2. He hit an exemplary drive and surpassed it with a wedge to within 6 feet of a pin perilously tucked in the front right corner. When Arnold missed from 11 feet, it appeared the title would go to Dean, a 53-year-old veteran of the New York State Department of Corrections, for whom he oversees planning, staffing and inmate discipline at Livingston Correctional.
Dean hit his putt right where he wanted it . . . but this green wouldn’t have passed a lie detector.
“I saw it as dead straight,” he said. “It appeared to defy gravity. It went left to right, which I didn’t see.”
Arnold triumphed by getting up and down for par on No. 3 while Dean was left to lament another 6-foot putt that escaped him, this one for par.
“That was just a real bad putt,” he said.
A good number of competitors had misgivings about the size of the Mid-Am field, which resulted in two groups on most holes of the shotgun start. There were no handicap qualifications. An interminable day appeared forthcoming.
“I thought it was going to be a death march,” Arnold admitted.
But the event concluded in just over five hours, an acceptable span resulting in little grousing.
Fred Hartrick, executive director of the BDGA, admitted this Mid-Am was a trial balloon, an attempt to gauge interest before perhaps moving to limit the field. There could be a handicap minimum next year. The event might also be expanded to 36 holes over two days, stiffening the test. It’ll all be weighed by the board of directors during the offseason.
What’s clear is that once the layer of college golfers is peeled away, quality still abounds in Western New York. And to see Dean and Arnold, two elder statesmen of the Mid-Amateur set, emerge at the top?
“I think,” Dean said, “that says something for the old guys.”