HARBOR SPRINGS – Boyne
Highlands Resort’s premier Heather and Moor golf courses will welcome a
standout field of 170 golfers Thursday and Friday in the 35th GAM Mid-Amateur
Championship presented by OmniKinetics.
Boyne Highlands is
hosting the championship for Michigan male amateur golfers over age 25 for the
16th consecutive year and 20th time in the history of the event. The Highlands,
also home to the Country Club of Boyne, features four courses that are part of
11 golf courses and 171 holes of golf that can be played at three Boyne Resorts
in the northern section of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
The field is split
in half this year to take on the Heather and Moor courses for the 36-holes and
two days of stroke play competition, and an overall Mid-Am winner and winners
in three other age categories will be determined (Mid-Amateur age 25-and-over,
Mid-Seniors 45-and-over, Seniors 55-and-over and Super Seniors 65-and-over).
Boyne Highlands, the
No. 1 choice in the “2015 Top Ten Favorite U.S. Golf Resorts for Value” by
GOLF.com, has long featured The Heather, a Robert Trent Jones course that has
been listed by Golf Digest among America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses.
The Heather was
Boyne’s first golf course, and Jones created a classic that features wide
tree-lined fairways, sculpted bunkers and challenging water hazards. The Mid-Am
field is very familiar with The Heather. It hosted the 100th Michigan Amateur
in 2011.
The Moor was the
second course built at Boyne Highlands and challenges golfers with numerous
doglegs and water hazards. It, too, has a championship pedigree as host of past
Mid-Amateurs, the AJGA’s annual visit, the Kircher Cup and Harbor Cup
tournaments.
Nick Shaw and Jeremy Neer are the
superintendents at Boyne Highlands. Josh Richter is the director of golf, and
John Myers and David Trudell are golf professionals.
Two-time defending
champion and a three-time winner Anthony Sorentino of Rochester (2006, ’15, ’16)
is in the field, as is six-time champion Tom Werkmeister of Grandville (2008, ’09,
’10, ’11, ’13, ’14), who plans to take a shot at the PGA Champions Tour and
turn professional this fall.
For more information on the tournament, visit
gam.org. Ken Hartmann, senior director of rules
and competition for the GAM, is the tournament director ([email protected]). Information on Boyne
Highlands and sponsoring Boyne Resorts is available at boyne.com/boynehighlands.
