Drenth hangs on for Q-C Amateur Tour honor
SILVIS, Ill. — Dusty Drenth conceded he had started thinking about captaining the Iowa side in next month’s Quad-City Amateur Tour Hasley Cup competition even before he had booked both the captaincy and tour player of the year honors Sunday.
“I’m real excited to be the captain,” the St. Ambrose junior said of the tour’s annual bi-state team competition that will take place Sept. 5-6 at Short Hills Country Club in East Moline.
Young Drenth confessed he already knows who one of his three captain’s picks to the Iowa side will be. He does, at least, if he wants his supper.
His father Mark is an accomplished player on the tour as well.
“He’d be a little upset,” Dusty said of the prospect of leaving dad off the team.
The Ambrose golfer nearly had cause to be upset himself Sunday at TPC at Deere Run in Silvis, Ill.
Drenth’s closing 7-over 78 led to a ninth-place finish in the season-ending Tour Championship and very nearly opened the door for tour vet Chris Wilkins to pass him in the final points standings.
Second to start the week, Wilkins got to within 62.5 points of the top spot when he closed with a 3-over second-round 74 and forged his way into a tie for fourth behind Tour Championship winner Ben Peters.
Wilkins, though, knew he needed to finish third or better to pass Drenth, and he said he had a pretty good idea he wasn’t going to be able to make that happen when he suffered a quadruple bogey on Deere Run’s par-5 10th Sunday afternoon.
Wilkins shot 3-under par after the 10th but knew a top 3 finish was going to be hard to post.
“I knew 10 was going to be my demise,” he said.
No. 1 very nearly was Peters’ demise after a closing 78 squandered all four strokes of the lead he took into Sunday’s round after firing a 1-under 70 in Saturday’s first round.
After finishing tied with Chad McCarty at the end of regulation, Peters pulled his drive left on the first playoff hole and, with lots of help, spent nearly all five of his allotted minutes searching through the hillside hay.
Just when all hope seemed lost, someone spied a golf ball lying on the very edge of the fairway. That’s where Peters’ ball bounced after hitting a tree on the hillside. He capitalized on the break and hit a 140-yard pitching wedge to within 2 feet of the hole and won with a birdie to McCarty’s par.
“It always feels good to win, even though you win ugly sometimes,” said Peters, who finished third in the year-end standings.
Randy Trine, the Burlington High School golf coach, felt pretty good, too, after finishing second to Carlos Salaber in the seniors portion of the tournament and claiming senior player of the year honors in the point standings.
“That was my goal this year,” said the 54-year-old Trine. “It means an awful lot to me. There aren’t a lot of Seniors who play out here, but the guys who do play are good players.”
Drenth, who won three of the tour’s seven championship flight events, feels the same way about the tour’s championship division and said he takes pride in beating experienced players such as two-event winner Wilkins, as well as a handful of fellow collegians.
“It is a phenomenal accomplishment, and I am proud,” said the NAIA second-team All-American. “I put in a lot of practice to do what I did against all these great players. It just feels great.”
Craig DeVrieze can be contacted at (563) 333-2610 or cdevrieze@qctimes.com.