Link to championship page and results: Net Stableford
ANN ARBOR – Jason Carpenter of Fremont was first in a couple of ways.
He finished first with the most points overall, and he won a new tournament – the First GAM Net Stableford Championship presented Tuesday by Preferred Data Systems at the Polo Fields Golf & Country Club
Carpenter’s 44 points topped Arthur Black of Brighton’s 42 and Matt O’Neill of Livonia’s 41 in the overall championship, which used the Net Stableford format in which a player’s score for a hole is based on points.
The points are awarded by comparing the player’s number of strokes (including strokes made and penalty strokes) on a hole to a fixed target score. In the tournament the fixed score was the with-handicap net par for each golfer for each of the 18 holes played.
O’Neill, in addition to finishing third overall, won the men’s division in the unique tournament that included men and women. O’Neill’s 41 points topped Dustin Ross of Garden City, who had 40 points.
Black, in addition to finishing as the overall runner-up, won the senior men’s division with his 42 points. Second in that division went to James Rashid of Birmingham and Tom Hollander of Ann Arbor, who had 40 points.
A senior women’s division was also played, and Cheryl Grant of Ann Arbor scored 39 points to win. Krys Olson of Northville had 35 points to finish as the runner-up.
The Net tournaments are designed by the GAM to serve more than just the elite golfers in the state in competitive formats. A field of 58 golfers registered for the first-time tournament.
Carpenter, a 38-year-old teacher and junior varsity football coach in Fremont, called it special being the first Net Stableford winner.
“I’ve been back in Michigan the last three years, and got back in the GAM,” he said. “They do a great job with all their events, so credit goes to those guys for coming up with these Net events. I’ve had a great time playing in them.”
Carpenter said he tried to not pay attention to the format scoring during his winning ground.
“I think that helped me out because I stayed focused on one shot at a time and not making a big number,” he said. “I knew taking something over a double was going to be zero points. I was able to stay away from the big numbers and hit a lot of decent shots.”
The football coach said his good play is the result of work on his game the last few summers.
“My index was a 9.5 for this event and trending down obviously now that I shot a 76,” he said. “I started out really working on it two years ago when I was a 12. My goal is to get it under 5.4 so I can start to try and qualify for some gross events, the Michigan Amateur, tournaments like that.”
-Greg Johnson [email protected]
