AMATEUR
Haag ‘Preserves’ Wire-To-Wire
Victory At Stocker Cup Invitational

CARMEL, CALIFORNIA | Playing
against the largest and best field in
tournament history, California ama-
teur golf legend Randy Haag authored
a dominating wire-to-wire win at the
Stocker Cup at the Preserve Golf Club.
Haag, winning at the Preserve for
the first time and the title for the third
time overall, posted a 72-hole total
of 279, 9-under par. In carding four
rounds under par, Haag finished eight
shots clear of his closest pursuers.
After finishing second again last
year for the fifth time, Haag sent a
message to the field with an open-
ing-round, 4-under 68, one clear of
Anthony Barrera. He widened his lead
to three shots after 36 holes, and took
a five-shot lead into the final round.
The 1992 and 1997 champion was
not comfortable with his lead, and he
worried about missed short putts in
his nightly posts at his blog
( randyhaag.com).
“Sleeping on a five-shot lead is bit-
tersweet, it’s not nearly enough shots
to rest easy, and if you don’t win,
you’ve blown a big lead,” he wrote on
the eve of the final round.
Two-time defending champion
Kevin Marsh tried to make it interest-
ing on the final day, and at one point
cut the lead to three shots. Haag
birdied 12 and 13 to get back to even
par, and Marsh ran out of gas.

Marsh finished in a four-way tie
for second at 1-under-par 287, with
Jerry Ledzinski, Dan Sullivan and
Billy Mitchell.

Barrera, 27, finished alone in
sixth at even-par 288 in his maiden
Stocker Cup appearance. He has ad-
vanced to the quarterfinals and final
16 in successive U.S. Mid-Amateur
appearances.
Brady Exber shot 5-over 293 to
win the Tatum Cup for low senior.
Fred Vinton captured the Elliott Cup,
a 54-hole, best-ball team competi-
tion that pits a scratch A player with
a B player competing at 90 percent
of his assigned handicap. Vinton was
powered by a tournament-low net 60
in the second round.

The top 16 A players and ties
along with the top four senior players
advanced to the final round. The cut
came at 6-over 222 with 22 players
( 18 plus four seniors) earning a spot
in the fourth round.
For the side-saddle putting Haag
it has been another outstanding year
in a career full of them. The 52-year-
old played in three USGA champion-
ships and was low amateur at the
British Senior Open for the second
year in a row. As always, he was a
factor every time he teed it up in
Northern California and has claimed
his third straight NCGA Player of the
Year award, and sixth overall.

CARMEL, CALIFORNIA | The Stocker
Cup attracts a heady field of entrants
each year and ranks among the best
Mid-Amateur tournaments in the
U.S. Equally as impressive is the
Preserve Golf Club course on which
it is contested outside this Monterey
Peninsula town.
Designed by Tom Fazio and North-
ern California golf icon Sandy Tatum
and opened in 2000, the track is a
bucolic gem and the centerpiece of a
20,000-acre planned private commu-
nity in the Santa Lucia Range that has
only 300 home sites and teems with
wild turkeys and feral hogs as well as
white-tail deer, blue quail and bobcat.
Competitors in this annual event
– which is named after San Fran-
cisco real estate developer and avid
sportsman Pete Stocker, who died
in a helicopter crash while survey-
ing this property more than 20 years
ago – love the heathland-style layout.
And it comes as no surprise that it is
regarded as one of the finest in the
Golden State – and also the U.S.
The Preserve is a private golf club
of some 300 members with a gener-
ous policy of unaccompanied play for
guests of members and players intro-
duced through their home PGA profes-
sionals. And Fazio and Tatum made
great use of the rolling hills and gaping
ravines in their routing here, providing
a number of elevated tee shots with
sweeping vistas that give golfers an
enjoyable sense of drama when they
hit their drives as well as a very clear
idea of where to place them.

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