African Violet

Trevor Immelman's Game Blossomed At Perfect Time To Win 1998 U.S. Amateur Public Links Title


April 15, 2008

This story was reprinted from the August 1998 issue of the USGA's Golf Journal magazine.

By Rich Skyzinski

If nothing else, the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship played last month in San Diego, Calif., proved that the daily-fee player in this country is a resilient, unflappable ol' soul.

Seconds after he stepped onto the tee at the par-3 third hole during his second-round match, Sal Spallone got a yardage, grabbed a club, teed up a ball and addressed it. Before he even had a chance to waggle the club he glanced at his target and . whoa! What happened to the flag? The green? For that matter, was the end of the tee out there somewhere? Spallone had no answers, and as a hand went to his brow to form a makeshift visor, he peered off the end of the world, into a fog that had fallen like a curtain, and no matter how hard he squinted, no matter where he looked, there was but a sullen, misty, graying doom of nothing-ness before him. Welcome to the first APL played in Transylvania.

One of the novel attractions of playing golf in and around San Diego is watching the Navy planes that frequently zip across the horizon. You can hear them miles away, when their engine thrusts are but a murmur, and it takes but seconds for the ear-splitting flyers to appear, then be gone. When the fog has lowered the ceiling to a point where you can reach up and touch it, and the ground trembles from the roar of an aircraft streaking overhead so low you think you ought to duck for cover, it is, to say the least, a bit disconcerting. Welcome to the first APL played at Shea Stadium.

Masters champion Trevor Immelman won the 1998 APL title at Torrey Pines, site of this year's U.S. Open. (USGA Photo Archives)

As Trevor Immelman and Jason Dufner stepped off the 18th tee and began the march to the clubhouse, their 36-hole final nearing the halfway point, the music was barely audible. But as the par 5 brought them closer and closer to the clubhouse, Michael Jackson sang louder and annoyingly louder from the reception on the second floor until Immelman - "just beat iiiiiiit" - completed the hole and allowed everyone to mercifully seek refuge. Actually, the music there was nothing compared to the band performing at the Glider Port, San Diego's most popular spot for hang gliders, as the finalists samba'd up the adjacent 12th later that afternoon, first to Bob Dylan, then the Rolling Stones, then to something completely indecipherable. Welcome to the first APL played in concert with Lollapalooza.

Dufner overcame all that and more, even the teenagers disguised as English soccer fans who hooted and hollered and purposely interrupted his swing at the par-3 11th that morning. What he could not overcome was Immelman.

By capping a fog-encompassed week with a 3-and-2 victory in a fog-delayed final, the 18-year-old South African planted another flag along his globe-trotting itinerary. Prior to gaining the final at a weary South Course at Torrey Pines, he had played in the title match of four national championships - the '97 U.S. Junior, the South African, British and New Zealand Amateurs - since April 1997 but one just once (South African).

"Over the past year and a half I've always seemed to come up one hurdle short," he said, "so it's unbelievable for me to finally win one. And definitely worth the wait."

Though his play in the final wasn't his best of the week, Immelman used to his fullest the advantage presented to him when Dufner bogeyed and lost the opening two holes, played as the noon hour approached and the week's fourth fog delay persisted. Dufner, a senior at Auburn University who will redshirt the 1998-99 in hopes of a bang-up finale (the Tigers will host the 2000 NCAA Championships), birdied four of seven holes starting at the eighth of the morning round. Yet he gained no ground on his 2-down deficit and in fact won only two of those holes.

"The 17th this morning was critical," Dufner admitted. "I'd gotten it to 1 down, but I didn't play that hole very well and lost that, then in this afternoon's round I didn't get off to a good start. I was behind from the get-go, and that's tough against a player as good as he is."

"I don't think there was a turning point," offered Immelman. "I was always up, which is nice, to give myself a little bit of a cushion."

"Dufner had chances to make it a contest, but the 18th hole of the morning round served as a precursor that it wasn't to be his day. He rolled in a 15-foot birdie, only to have Immelman make a 10-foot birdie on top of that to preserve a 2-up edge at the lunch break.

Had golf's forebears decided that golf holes should be 4½ inches in diameter instead of 4¼, there's no telling how different the final might have been. Twice in the afternoon round Dufner missed putts by the width of a dimple: at the first, when his nine-footer for par seemed like a sure thing two revolutions away from the cup; and at the par-4 10th, when the slightest reverberation - where's the speeding F-14 when you need it? - would have caused his eight-foot birdie effort to fall over the edge.

The most painful miss, however, was a three-footer for birdie at the 33rd hole that closed the door on his fading hopes. "I'm pretty pleased with the way I played," he said. "I just wish I could have made a couple more putt.The one at 15, I just pushed it, right off the bat. Not a good stroke."

Immelman's future will be molded without college. Though scholarship offers have come from every major American program, he has decided to go a different route than his older brother, Mark, who earned All-America status at was then Columbus College in Georgia. He'll play amateur golf for another year, maybe two, and then probably cast his lot in the professional ranks.

"I just thought for me, I didn't need to go away from home to mature and grow up," he said. "I've been doing a lot of traveling since I was 13 and I've had to kind of look after myself. It was a tough decision because I value education highly, but I tried to sort out my priorities and golf came up No. 1 every which way I looked at it."

The game Immelman unveiled in mid-week was proof positive why recruiters were salivating over the prospect of landing him. After uneventful wins in his first two matches, 17-hole decisions over 40-year-old Michigan sporting goods salesman Brad Cruts and 35-year-old Arizonan Allen French, Immelman played the most unforgettable 10 holes of his life.

That's all he needed to lay a 9-and-8 whipping on Andrew Komor of New Brighton, Minn. Racking up a margin of victory surpassing only once in the history of the APL, Immelman needed less than an hour and 45 minutes to make seven birdies - only one was conceded - and three pars.

"He's got an unbelievable game," conceded Komor, a University of Minnesota senior eliminated in the round of 16 for the second straight year. "He stripes it off the tee and, boy, is he a good putter."

Immelman was impressive to the point where one would have thought he'd been roaming around in the fog and didn't play all the holes. "It's the best golf I've ever played by a long shot," he admitted. "I don't have anything scientific to say.This morning I went out and played really good the front side; I was three under after the front nine, and then what happened to me is pretty much what's been happening the whole year. I'll be a couple under after nine and then lose my head a little on the back. I've been struggling to get going.It's just the way I felt, that it was time for me to go out there and play to my ability."

His fourth victim, Spallone, fell by 6 and 5, giving Immelman consecutive match-play wins in a total of just 23 holes, another APL best. Despite that incredible play, Immelman nearly missed out on the opportunity to become the second successive South African to win the APL.

He and Todd Rose came to the par-5 18th hole of their semifinal all square with Rose appearing to have the advantage after Immelman drove into a fairway bunker. Strategy changed, however, when Immelman laid up short of the pond fronting the green and Rose's 5-iron from 200 yards faded into the right greenside bunker. But a pair of birdies - Immelman stuck his 84-yard wedge to 18 inches and Rose made a three-foot putt for a nice up-and-down - sent the match to extra holes, where Rose got an unfortunate break, but not a completely unexpected one, at the 19th.

The week before the APL, some 900 junior players descended on San Diego for the Optimist Junior Worlds, and among the courses they used were both the North and South layouts at Torrey Pines. It is difficult enough to prepare and maintain a course for one championship, but two in consecutive weeks is an exceptionally demanding assignment. Rose's drive at the 19th settled deep in a patch of dense rough (only a matter of feet from other areas that weren't high enough to cover a player's shoes), giving the strapping Fresno State junior virtually no chance to cover the 170 yards to the flagstick. "It was at least six inches down there," Rose said of his lie. "I hit it as hard as I could."

After Rose's approach stopped 20 feet short of the green, Immelman hit his second onto the back fringe. Rose played an indifferent pitch-and-run to 20 feet, and then Immelman settled matters for good by chipping in.

"I've played all these matches this week and I never think a guy is out of the hole," Rose said. "I always think everybody's going to make their shot and that was a great shot he hit.I wish I could be playing tomorrow, but there will be other matches."

That there were, which made for a noteworthy opening round of match play that included several upsets: medalist Todd Eckenrode of Corona del Mar, Calif., who lost to fellow Californian Daniel Arroyo at the 18th green as nightfall descended; 1996 U.S. Amateur runner-up Steve Scott, who fell victim to French; and last year's runner-up, Ryuji Imada, eliminated on a 20-foot birdie putt at the 18th by Jim Seki Jr., a 17-year-old Hawaiian on a stopover to the U.S. Junior the following week.

With the North Course's cash register cha-chinging like clockwork, fog or no fog, that opening round featured at least one other APL first: four players going down the first fairway at the same time - two playing a match and two misguided souls from the North Course looking for wayward tee shots.

It all made for some interesting talk in the grill room. Table 1: Did you hit 1- or 2-iron to that par 5? Table 2: I can't believe I didn't break par today. Table 3: Hey, Wally, I think you got a skin with that 7 on the back. Welcome to the first APL at Torrey Pines.

Editor's note: Like Immelman, Dufner also eventually made it to the PGA Tour. Other future PGA Tour players to make the match-play draw at the 1998 APL included Bubba Watson, 1997 APL runner-up Ryuji Imada and Ryan Armour, the runner-up to Tiger Woods at the 1993 U.S. Junior Amateur.