U.S. Amateur Champion Voges Readies for Top Tournaments

Mitch Voges of Simi Valley, who had the year of a lifetime in 1991 when he came out of relative obscurity to win the U.S. Amateur golf championship, is about to embark on another year of a lifetime.

As a reward for winning the biggest amateur tournament in the nation, Voges’ dance card has been filled for 1992. It kicks off Thursday when he begins play in the Los Angeles Open and will be followed by berths in the world’s most prestigious golf events--the Masters, U.S. Open and British Open.

Also, Voges has agreed to play in the Nestle Invitational at Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club in Orlando, Fla., the Memorial tournament at Jack Nicklaus’ Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio, and the Colonial at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Tex.

Voges won the U.S. Amateur in August in Tennessee with a stirring, 36-hole blitz in the championship match over South African Manny Zerman, the 1991 Pacific-10 champion from the University of Arizona. The win vaulted Voges, 42, onto the U.S. Walker Cup team that competed against Europe’s best amateurs in Ireland in September.

“I had just started adjusting to the fact that I really did win the U.S. Amateur,” Voges said earlier this week. “But now that the rewards are coming in, I’ve been pinching myself, asking, ‘Did this really happen?’ ”

Voges, the director of golf at the posh Spanish Hills Golf and Country Club in Camarillo, scheduled to open late this year, said he has no delusions about sweeping the PGA Tour the way he did the U.S. Amateur.

However, . . .

“When I went to Tennessee I really didn’t think I had much chance of winning the U.S. Amateur, either,” he said. “The PGA players are such great players. I watch them on weekends. And right now, I figure there’s no way I can get to 20-under at Riviera to keep up with them.

“But really, in my mind, I know that if I play as well as I can play, I can be competitive.”