There was more than the usual amount of chatter in Canadian golf circles this week as Albin Choi proceeded through his matches in the U.S. Amateur at the Cherry Hills Country Club near Denver. Choi, the 2010 Canadian Amateur and 2012 Ontario Amateur champion, had made it to the round of 16 and was two-up over Michael Weaver with two holes to go in their match.
The Torontonian was on a roll. He'd made the cut at last month's RBC Canadian Open in Ancaster, Ont. The North Carolina State student was playing strong golf. Canadians who follow amateur golf were wondering whether Choi might become the first Canadian to win the U.S. Amateur since Gary Cowan took the championship in 1971. Cowan had also won in 1966, which was 34 years after C. Ross (Sandy) Somerville had become the first Canadian to win the U.S. Amateur.
But Choi lost the 17th and 18th holes to Weaver, and then made bogey on the first extra hole of their sudden-death playoff. The Canadians I'd heard from suddenly went quiet, and their collective silence was understandable. Did that really happen? Had Choi really lost?
Still, he'd put forth a terrific showing. I was reminded of how well Canadians have done in U.S. national amateur championships. They've distinguished themselves in that exalted arena. Canadian men and women have won 11 of the U.S. national amateurs, quite a tally.
Cowan won his two U.S. Amateurs. Somerville won the championship twice. Marlene Streit won the 1956 U.S. Women's Amateur while Cathy Sherk won the 1978 championship. Streit won the 1985, 1994, and 2003 U.S. Women's Senior Amateurs, while Gayle Borthwick won in 1996 and 1998. Mary Ann Hayward won the 2005 U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur. Add 'em up: 11 U.S. Amateur titles belong to Canadians.
Eighty years have passed since Somerville, a talented athlete in track and field, hockey, cricket, and football, won the 1932 U.S. Amateur at the Baltimore Country Club, also known as Five Farms. Somerville won in his fourth attempt at the championship. He had already won four Canadian Amateurs, and would go on to win two more. He had also spent a summer in Dornoch, Scotland, where he played the links I would rather play than just about any course in the world.
Somerville played Johnny Goodman in the final match of the 1932 U.S. Amateur. (Goodman went on to win the 1933 U.S. Open, against the finest pros in the game). Somerville won on the 35th hole, taking the match 2&1. The gentleman from London, Ont., known everywhere as Silent Sandy because he was a man of few words, thereby became the first Canadian to win the U.S. Amateur. Here's a video clip about Silent Sandy that you might enjoy.
Years later I was privileged to meet Somerville at his home in London, near the London Hunt Club where he belonged and where he had won the 1930 Canadian Amateur. We sat in his home and chatted for a couple of hours. I was in the presence of greatness. Here was a dignified man, a ferocious competitor, and a friend of the game and of golfers. He had played the first Masters, in 1934, and made the first hole-in-one at the tournament. He had made a hole-in-one earlier in 1980, the year I visited him. This was on the 17th hole at London Hunt, and it was his first hole-in-one in 40 years.
I can still see Somerville sitting in his home, taking me through his life in the game. As I wrote in a Globe column after my visit, he told me of how he viewed practice.
"There really was not much sense in hitting balls all the time," he said. "I tried to keep my swing simple, and worked mostly on my concentration."
I asked him about the basic principles in the game. He had three words of advice as to the primary principle: "Hit the ball." I'm reminded of the best title I've ever seen for an instruction book. George Cumming, the winner of the 1905 Canadian Open and the head professional at the Toronto Golf Club from 1900-1950, wrote it. The book is called "It Goes Where You Hit It."
No argument there, and no argument with what Silent Sandy told me 32 years ago as we sat in his living room. "Hit the ball." He did just that, and very well. It went where he hit it most of the time.
The same thing goes for the other Canadians who have won national amateur championships in the U.S. The title wasn't to be for Choi this year, though. Maybe it will happen next year, for him or another Canadian. Why not? After all, fellow Canadians have established the precedent, many times over.
RELATED LINK: More blogs from Lorne Rubenstein
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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 12 books, including Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); This Round's on Me (2009); and the latest Moe & Me: Encounters with Moe Norman, Golf's Mysterious Genius (2012). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca . You can now follow him on Twitter @lornerubenstein