Disaster down the stretch, leads to a playoff in the field

By: Jeff Sinkiewicz on 09/14/09 11:32 AM

After two days of wet, miserable weather, golfers at Thorny Lea finally saw the sun. Course superintendent, Jim Mederos tried to make it tough on the remaining 57 golfers with difficult pin placements but with the 6" of rain in the last two days, golfers were able to throw darts at the soft greens knowing they would hold.

Nobody knows that better than field player Tony Direnzo from DW Field who aced the par 3 9th hole. Direnzo sucked back  a PW 12 feet past the hole that was playing 115 yards. Normally a front right pin placement is very difficult. That was Tony's first hole in one who finished with an 83 today.

At the beginning of the day, there was a three way tie in the field division. Jeff Cavicchi had a two shot lead coming down the 18th fairway and ran into trouble, hitting his second shot into a green side bunker as his tee shot was in a very difficult lie down in the rough. Being 40 yards from the green and out of bounds only 10 yards behind the green, Jeff said he was just trying to play it safe. Unfortunately for Cavicchi he left it in the bunker and went on to make a triple bogey- 7. That mistake left Jeff one shot out of a playoff between Haglof and DiBari.

After both players made par on the first playoff hole, Mike Haglof hooked his tee shot 20 yards short of the 210 yard par 3 and managed to get up and down sinking the 6-foot par putt to hold off Bob DiBari.Haglof is not a stranger to playoff holes, Mike and his partner Ken Fitzpatrick won the 2008 FourBall in a playoff between 3 teams. Mike told me that he had his clubs in his trunk and had no idea he was still in it until Thorny Lea Pro, Peter Norton told him to head to the first tee.

John Spadea from DW Field seemed to be more devastated than Cavicchi telling me "I was sick to my stomach, I was right there". John played with DiBari today and had a disastrous front 9 going nine over at the turn. Spadea held his composure and was just one shot behind Dibari after 15 holes. "I knew I needed to shoot under par on the back"  but then went on to bogey 16 and 18, shooting a 36(+1) on the back.

See all the results of the Brockton City Open Here