SCGA Amateur Championship : Starkman Outlasts Greenwood, Wins by 2 Shots

Greg Starkman of Beverly Hills won the 88th Southern California Golf Assn. Amateur Championship on Sunday with his birdie putt on the 69th hole.

Starkman, 25, finished at even-par 70 for the day and three-over 283 for the tournament at Braemar Country Club in Tarzana to beat Steve Lass of Altadena by two strokes. But it was Starkman’s 10-footer on the par-4, 363-yard 15th hole that drove a dagger through Richard Greenwood, Starkman’s closest challenger most of the day.

Greenwood, of West Los Angeles, birdied 13 and saved par with a big-breaking 20-foot putt on 14 to stay within a stroke and keep the pressure on Starkman. But after Starkman birdied 15 and hit the fairway dead center with his next tee shot, Greenwood hit two shots out of bounds from the tee and three-putted for a 9 on the par-4, 396-yard 16th hole.

“It was a dogfight out there with Rich,” Starkman said. “He didn’t let up once. He just got a lot of bad breaks.”

Without Greenwood’s disastrous 16th, the dogfight would have lasted until the par-3 18th, where the 21-year-old UCLA junior knocked his tee shot to within a foot of the pin and Starkman finished with a bogey. But Greenwood, who also ran into tree trouble and double-bogeyed the fifth hole, said the 16th hole finished him.

“I was trying to save seven at least and (the first putt) just lipped out. That kind of put it out of reach for me,” said Greenwood, whose fifth-place 288 at least earned him an exemption from qualifying for next year’s tournament.

Third-round leader Bobby May of La Habra flirted with trouble most of the day, losing his one-stroke lead over Starkman on the third hole, and finally met disaster on the par-5, No. 13 with a double-bogey seven. He hit his tee shot into a bush for an unplayable lie and knocked his third shot into the water in front of the green. May, 18, finished eight-over for the day, seven strokes out at 290.

“It just wasn’t there all morning,” May said. “A seven-hour round is just not golf. You can’t concentrate for seven hours.

“The gallery that followed the leaders, most in a legion of carts, resembled the San Diego Freeway at rush hour, and the commute over the hills and valleys of Braemar’s East Course took about as long. The leaders were scheduled to tee off at 12:36, didn’t leave the No. 1 tee until almost 2 p.m. and finished 5 1/2 hours later.

The awards ceremony, a half hour after Starkman putted out, was nearly called by darkness. The delay was caused primarily by the narrow fairways and difficult greens that troubled many of the golfers in the three flights that teed up ahead of the championship flight.

Starkman said he was surprised he won in the slow conditions, but he had been flirting with success in the SCGA Amateur and other recent tournaments. In 1983, Starkman finished second, and two years ago was fourth.

In a tournament where many played like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Starkman was always within two strokes of the lead. On Sunday, he fell two-behind when he bogeyed the second hole, while May was bogeying the third, and Starkman came back with a birdie, his first of four for the day.

“It’s the first time I’ve won anything big in a long time,” Starkman said. “I’ve been playing real good lately, and I knew it was just a matter of time.”

The group of Greenwood, Starkman and May read like an Eddie Merrins golf clinic. Merrins coached Starkman and Greenwood at UCLA, and although May is headed for Oklahoma State in the fall, Merrins has been his coach for eight years.

Starkman, who played on UCLA’s golf team from 1982-85, hit his best shot from a 10-foot high bush on the seventh hole, where he’d embedded his tee shot, and took a bogey. He used a 7-iron and took a three-inch backswing to role the ball about 25 yards down a hill and back into the fairway.

“I only had to get it three or four feet out and I knew it would roll down the hill,” Starkman said. “But I knew (if I didn’t) it was a 10 or 12 maybe. And the birdie on 15 wouldn’t have mattered.”

Other winners were D. McCallum of Glendora Country Club in the president’s flight with a net 140, Bernie Malloneu of Indian Hills in the vice-president’s flight with a net 139, and Larry Veeh of Brookside in the secretary’s flight (139).