Local golfers gear up for City Championship

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Published: July 10, 2008

While this year’s 21st annual Reines Jewelers Charlottesville City Golf Championship will be minus the reigning champion and a few of the traditional top names in the field, the tournament shouldn’t lack drama.
For whatever reason, the city championship has been the most unpredictable of all the local major tournaments over the past two decades.
In fact, no one has ever won back-to-back city titles and it won’t happen this year either because defending champ Weston Eklund will be competing elsewhere.
Only one player who has claimed a city title over the past decade is competing in the event, two-time champion Brent Daughtrey, who won crowns in 2005 and 2003.
While some of the more familiar names are missing for this tournament, a three-day, stroke play event that begins this morning at Meadowcreek Golf Course, there’s still plenty of talented players seeking their first title.
Daughtrey will be gunning for a third crown, which would match the tournament record shared by David Bell and Paul Kane, but several others are also considered strong contenders for the championship ring presented by sponsor Peter Reines.
Battle Trophy leader Nick Little, the ‘06 champion, has opted to compete in this week’s Eastern Amateur event in Portsmouth, while Eklund, David Passerell, Kane, Dustin Groves and Mikey Moyers are all skipping the event for other competitions.
However, four of the top five in the Battle Trophy point standings (symbolic of the top amateur golfer in Central Virginia) will compete this weekend, including Scott Garrison of Old Trail Golf Course in Crozet and Jerry Burton of Spring Creek Golf Club at Zion Crossroads.
Farmington’s Phillip Mahone and Birdwood’s Jeff Toms are also considered players to watch in the event.
If nothing else, this year’s event should be a wide-open affair at the city municipal course, which could show its teeth after a substantial amount of rainfall this week. The rough has grown and is thick in many spots, which could prove penal for errant shots.
Little leads the Battle standings with 93 points but has left the door open for Garrison (53.5) and Burton (53.0), and even Mahone (48.0), should either of the three get hot over the course of the last two local tournaments of 2008, the city championship and next month’’s Jefferson Cup at Birdwood.
The winner of each of those two tournaments will be awarded 25 points for each win, which means if Little misses both (he will attempt to qualify for the U.S. Amateur again this season), it is possible for a red-hot competitor to
perhaps catch him in the standings.
Many of the top local players will be jockeying for position among the Battle’s top 16 places, qualifying them for August’s Central Virginia Match Play Championships at Spring Creek.
Tee times begin today at 8 a.m., with the 120-man field finishing with the last tee time at 1 p.m., a format that will remain throughout the weekend. Sunday’s final lead foursome will tee off at one o’clock that afternoon.