Why this American amateur competitor feels like a ‘fish from water’

San Francisco – Someone must always be the oldest player in the field. At this week’s American amateur championship, the designation of Greg Sanders is.

“I would not say that I feel old,” said Sanders, 61,. “But I feel like a fish from water.”

It was a Mark Twain summer day in San Francisco, cool and foggy, and Sanders was fresh from his opening round of stroke on the ocean track in the Olympic club. The fact that he had failed to shoot his age did not surprise him – not with rough and greens so firmly on a course that touched long irons in par 4s. For a golfer of his vintage, Sanders strikes a lot. But most of the day Monday he had made his approaches from far behind his play partners, Jake Olson, 20, and Anh Minh Nguyen, 18, both younger than the two sons of Sanden.

“My prospects have been very realistic from the start,” said Sanders. “A fraction of a second, I thought I shouldn’t even play in this, because what are my chances? But my friends said, you have to go, because it’s the Olympic club! And I thought, yes, you’re right.”

Moreover, he had earned his way in honest and square by winning a big title in his adoption state. Sanders, resident of Missouri, moved to Alaska after the university and spent the next 37 years there and founded a family with his wife, Lisa, while working as a petroleum engineer. Anchorage, where he settled, was not exactly a wave -brewery, but that hardly mattered because Sanders was not exactly a golf junkie. He grew up playing tennis and did not start taking his swing seriously until his thirty. By that time he had fallen with a small, close -knit community of anchor golfers who played a small rota of area courses. There were not many options, or many months to practice. The golf season in Alaska almost starts and ends with the summer.

“These days we have launch monitors and simulators and all that,” said Sanders. “But we had no indoor practice facilities early on, so in April I would hit wedges in the snow.”

It took another decade before he found that his game could stand in competition. It has done that good enough to win the Alaska State amateur 11 times. The most recent of those titles, on Anchorage Golf Course just over a week ago, came with an exemption from the American amateur (before that the power of the field in the event was not recognized as Snuff). For the first time, Sanders had hit his ticket to compete against the children. (And when the American senior amateur champion Louis Brown, who is two months older than Sanders, withdrew from this week’s competition, Sanders became the grayest of the Graybeards in the field).

Although he would never set foot on the Olympic club, he knew that the location would be a challenge. I have only proved difficult enough for it. From Anchorage Sanders flew to Phoenix, where he and his wife now spend the cooler months, and then flew to Tennessee to visit grandchildren before jumping on a flight to the west that was eventually delayed. He arrived late in San Francisco for a Saturday exercise round.

His first close-up look at the Olympic club on Sunday was something of an Alaska moment. Sanders noticed that he was staring at a bear.

“If you have par 4s from 470 to 520 meters, it exerts so much pressure on the driver,” he said. “Say it that way, it’s not a senior wave.”

On Monday morning Sanders went to a fountain of the youth start and shot his opening ride into one of his partners. But a par on the first was followed by three straight bogeys, and then a triple-bowy on the 6th when he lay down his tee shot further than outside the bound stakes that he did not know it existed-a disadvantage of missing his practice round. He ended with a 10-over-par 80, 14 shots of the pace of the first round leader Charlie Forster of England.

The day had been a physical and mental test. Sanders has reached the age at which injuries appear without explanation. His left foot nagged him on Monday, because it has been eliminated in the last six years, a stubborn problem with an unknown cause. Sometimes his mind also worked against him.

“I feel that if I play a hole, I just have to avoid, which is annoying because I don’t want to think,” said Sanders. “Part of it is that I just don’t be used to playing with players so well and so young.”

For the second round of Tuesday of Slagspel, Sanders will be against the same field. However, the test will be stouter, on the longer, harder, more difficult lake course of the Olympic club.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that much more wave is waiting. Sanders is exempt from next week’s North & South Senior amateur Championship in Pinehurst, followed by the US Senior Amateur Championship in Oak Hills Country Club in San Antonio.

“That is one that I am really looking forward to,” he said. “I’m not there any fish from water.”

Other Monday Notables:

1st t -piece nerves: As the ruling club champion at the Olympic club, Jacob Goode benefits 21, from course knowledge. On Monday, however, he also died with the extra pressure to hit the opening shot of the championship for a large, partisan crowd. “It is probably the most nervous I have ever been,” said Goode. Goode, a resident of San Francisco, recently graduated from the University of Washington, where he did not play in the golf team for the past four years, because, as he says, “I was not good enough.” The school now clearly thinks differently, because Goode goes back for a fifth year on campus, where he will play on a golf fair. He will do this with some nail polish to his resume after he recently conquered the California State Amateur. In the opening round on Monday of a stroke game, Goode shot a 3-over 73 and T103 is on the way to the second and last battle of Tuesday.

Royalty at Olympic: Who says the USGA has no sense of humor? Proof appeared with the current 12:46 pm Tee -time on the ocean course, with the following group: King/Tsar/Royalty. Such as in William King from Kansas, Pavel Tsar from Florida and Keenan Royalty of North Carolina.

Supergroep: A day after the outside Lands Music Festival was completed in nearby Golden Gate Park, a super group arrived at the stage at the Olympic club. It contained Jackson Koivun, Ben James and Ethan Fang, the number 1, 2 and 3 arranged amateurs in the world, who played together on the ocean track. Koivun finished the day at 2 under; James on 2-over; And fang on 3-over.

That name sounds known: This week’s large amateur championship has various pro connections in the form of Luke Poulter (son of Ryder Cup legend Ian), John Daly II (son of double large champion John) and Reed and Dean Greyserman (brothers of the Max Greyerman of the PGA Tour). Poulter ended on Monday at Even par; Daly II shot 4-over; And the Greyserman’s went 1-under and 7-over.