A Joint Venture

In 1978, Wilmington C.C. became first site to host U.S. Junior Championships Together

(Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the October, 1978 issue of Golf Journal.)

By Charles Brome

When the two USGA Committees responsible for conducting the two Junior Championships decided to strike out in new directions, they certainly do the job right.  Not only did 1978 mark the first time two national championships (the Junior Amateur and the Girls’ Junior Championship) have been played simultaneously, at the same club, but the two competitions also produced the following:

• The first player in the 31-year history of the boys’ competition to become medalist in successive years (Willie Woods of Tucson, Arizona).
• The first instance in which both Championships were won by players from outside the continental limits of the United States (Don Hurter and Lori Castillo, both of Honolulu, Hawaii).
• The first national television coverage of the Junior Championships.

Outside of that, things at the Wilmington (Delaware) Country Club in August were fairly routine.

Donald Hurter of Hawaii won the 1978 U.S. Junior Amateur at Wilmington C.C. (USGA Museum)

The proposal to conduct the two competitions simultaneously, which was put before the USGA’s Executive Committee in a letter written by F. Ronald Longenecker in the spring of 1976, raised surprisingly few eyebrows.

“Surprisingly” on several counts:  (1) What Longenecker was advocating had never been attempted before, and the Executive Committee is not a body famous for plunging into unchartered waters without a certain amount of toe-dipping and checking for sharks.  (2) The logistics involved in such an enterprise are imposing enough to give reasonable people pause.  Housing and transportation arrangements alone, for the 270 players (150 boys and 120 girls), not to mention additional hundreds of parents, chaperons, officials, et al., are somewhere in the neighborhood of staggering.  (3) Golf clubs fortunate enough to have two courses of the caliber appropriate for national championships, plus clubhouse and meeting facilities equal to the occasion, plus a membership enthusiastic enough to undertake the considerable effort entailed – clubs meeting all these requirements are not easy to find.

Balanced against these and other possible objections, however, was the existence of a determined and persuasive Roland Longenecker.  Since 1963, when he was first appointed to the Junior Championship Committee, Longenecker had more than once demonstrated a propensity for moving whatever mountains happened to be in the way and leaping over tall problems at a single bound.

To make a long story short, the proposal was approved when the Executive Committee met during the U. S. Open Championship at Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June, 1977.

“By and large,” Longenecker recalls, “they told us that if we were confident we could solve the problems, and if we could find the right club and get the club to agree, we could go ahead.”

Finding the club was no problem.  As a member of Wilmington Country Club, Longenecker knew the clubhouse and meeting facilities were more than adequate.  He knew that Wilmington’s South Course, a Robert Trent Jones design, met all the requirements for a USGA championship – he had served as Chairman when the Junior Amateur Championship was played there in 1965, and again for the U. S. Amateur Championship in 1971. He also knew that the North Course at Wilmington, designed by Dick Wilson, would make a marvelous test for the girls. The North is the shorter of the two – it played to 5,872 yards for the Girls’ Junior, and the boys’ course played at 6,708 yards – but it is by far the more subtly conceived.  The approach shots the girls were required to hit on the North Course demanded less in the way of strength, to be sure, but they required every bit as much in the way of accuracy and intelligence.

Persuading Wilmington Country Club to accept and support the dual championships, of course, was another matter.  Longenecker had approached his club’s Executive Committee in the fall of 1976 (that was after he had submitted his proposal to the USGA, you will remember, but before he had received approval).  The club agreed to support the undertaking – provided that Longenecker would find a way to cover the considerable expense.  No problem.  Longenecker received USGA approval in June, 1977; in August, he engineered an exhibition with Ben Crenshaw, Tom Kite, Allen Miller, and Delaware Junior Amateur Champion Chris Anderson.  The exhibition brought some $5,000 to the club, which took care of this year’s extra expense very nicely – and in advance.

The USGA mountain thus moved and his club’s financial problem leaped over at a single fairly casual bound, Roland Longenecker was happily on hand in August to see his two-and-a-half-year-old idea put into action.

	Lori Castillo's victory at the 1978 U.S. Girls' Junior gave Hawaii both titles at Wilmington C.C. (USGA Museum)

How did it turn out?  As an exercise in logistics, remarkably well.  As an attempt to conduct simultaneous Championships efficiently, remarkably well.  As a socio-psychological investigation into the question of whether teenage boys and girls do, in fact, enjoy each other’s company, about as might be expected.  Which is hardly remarkable. 

That last result should be qualified a little. In informal situations – on the practice tee or green, around the pool, or just hacking around – young people of the male and female persuasions do, indeed, mingle comfortably.  In a formal situation such as the dinner that preceded the Championships, however, the same people who, a few hours earlier, have been happily throwing each other into the pool or showing off their putting strokes will instinctively retreat to separate tables, in a stony silence.  If you want to make doubly certain this will happen, strap the boys into neckties and make sure there is lots and lots of silverware.

“Getting them to mingle at dinner was like trying to force the boys and girls to eat together at the third grade picnic,” Stephen J. Horrell, Chairman of the Junior Championship Committee, said later.  There was a distinct note of puzzlement in his voice.  How soon we forget.

Both Horrell and Miss Sally Carroll, who heads the Girls’ Junior Committee, agreed that few unusual problems involving logistics arose during the week at Wilmington.

“On the whole,” Horrell said, “I think what we did at Wilmington was certainly successful, and the camaraderie among the players was really super.  But for the future I’d have to go with holding the Championships apart, and during different weeks.  There’s less diluting of recognition that way, and the recognition is important.”

A major culprit in the lopsided coverage the boys’ Championship received in the press was the defending Junior Champion, 17-year-old Willie Wood, a high school senior in Tucson, Ariz. Last year, at the Ohio State University Golf Course, in Columbus, Ohio, Willie became only the second player to be both medalist and Champion.  (The first was Johnny Miller, in 1964.)

At Wilmington, he duplicated his previous year’s rounds of 73-68 – 141 to become (1) the Championship’s first repeat medalist, and (2) the only player to break 70 in either of the two qualifying rounds.  Small wonder, then, especially when he won his first four matches handily before being derailed by Keith Banes, 1-up, in Saturday morning’s semifinal round, that the daily press decided that Willie Wood was the number one news item in either Championship.

While everybody was keeping close watch on the stars, of course, the supporting casts were also showing up for their matches.  Keith Banes, for instance, the husky 6’ 2½” youngster from La Mirada, Calif., who put a stop to Willie’s bid for successive Championships.  Banes hits the ball tremendous distances, although not always in the direction he has in mind.  On Wilmington’s South Course, which played to every inch of its yardage, he hit wedges to the greens on 13 holes in the first qualifying round, which he led with 71, even par.  He needed only a wedge on 12 holes for the second round, when he shot 72.

When Banes conquered Wood, most of the attention directed at the other semifinal match concentrated on trying to identify the player unfortunate enough to provide Banes with a victim in the final.  The match pitted Chris Perry, 16, of Edina, Minn., against Don Hurter, a tall, slender 17-year-old from Honolulu, Hawaii. Chris, the son of Jim Perry, the former major league pitcher, had breezed through his early matches by margins of 4 and 3, 6 and 5, and 6 and 5 again. Don’s chief claim to fame was that he is a pupil of Ron Castillo, the Hawaiian professional who coached Althea Tome, the 1977 Girls’ Junior Champion, and whose daughter, Lori, had been methodically beating everyone she met on Wilmington’s North Course.  Hurter made short work of Perry, 6 and 5, and was brave enough to show up for his scheduled destruction by Banes in the afternoon’s final.

At the outset it appeared that destruction was, indeed, to be the order of the day. After seven holes of the final match, Banes was one under par and four holes up. He was playing the same kind of golf he had played all week, however – tee shots of great length and little accuracy, followed by recoveries over, under, around and sometimes through the trees that line nearly every fairway, followed by undistinguished pitches and topped off by a series of putts you wouldn’t believe even if you saw them.

It is possible to make pars for a while that way, but not indefinitely. Banes played the next eight holes in four over par, and after 15 holes the match was even.

Hurter, after a shaky bogey-bogey start, had been playing steady, patient, disciplined golf.  He had gone from four down to even by shooting eight straight pars.

He faltered on the 16th, losing with a bogey to go one down again, staved off defeat by holing an 18-foot putt for a half on the 17th, and saw his patience rewarded on the 18th when Banes’ putter finally failed him. Both were on the green in two strokes, but while Hurter made his par, Banes missed the sidehill three-footer he needed to close out the match.

They matched pars on the first two extra holes, with Hurter coolly holing from eight feet to stay alive on the second, or 20th of the match. On the third, a 562-yard par 5, Banes hooked into the woods again, and by the time he was finally on the green, some three feet from the hole, he was lying five.  Hurter, bunkered behind the green in three, blasted out far too strongly – then watched in delight as his ball struck Banes’ and stopped only inches farther away from the hole.

Convinced, apparently, that his moment had finally arrived (in 20 holes, he had never once been in the lead), Hurter calmly conceded his opponent’s putt, then knocked his own squarely into the hole to win the Championship. 

Why had he conceded an eminently missable putt at such a critical point?

“Because I was sure I was going to make mine,” Hurter said.

The Girls’ final was considerably less of a cliffhanger. Lori Castillo, who lost in the quarterfinals to Althea Tome last year, was simply not to be denied this time.  She qualified for match play comfortably, if not spectacularly, with rounds of 78-78 – 156, then coasted through her first two matches by 4 and 2 and 7 and 5.  In her quarterfinal match, Lori came up against Dana Howe, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, who refused to be coasted by.

Significantly, when Lori needed to come up with something special, she found a way to do it.  The two battled through 17 holes all even, and both were on the green of the 18th, a 458-yard par 5, in regulation figures.  Lori was perhaps 25 feet from the hole and Dana about 15. Whereupon Lori knocked her birdie putt into the hole and Dana didn’t:  on to the semifinals for Miss Castillo.

Although the final, on Saturday morning, contained the elements for considerable drama, it didn’t quite materialize. Facing Lori was Jenny Lidback, 15 years old, of Baton Rouge, La. (by way of Connecticut, Brazil, and Peru, where she was born).  Jenny’s 81-83 – 164 in qualifying play left her in a five-way playoff for the 32nd spot in match play; she promptly birdied the first playoff hole and became the very bottom player in the draw.

Once she had squeaked into match play, she cruised through to the final with surprising ease, winning 2 up, 4 and 3, 3 and 2, and 6 and 5, and she played very close to par golf in doing so.

Against Lori in the final, however, Jenny was not sharp.  Lori won three of the first four holes, each with a par, and after that the issue was never seriously in doubt.  The match ended on the 16th hole, which Lori won with another par for a 4 and 2 margin. The Championship’s scorecard read five over par at the end of the match.  Not relevant.  As she had done all week, Lori played as well as she needed to win, and that’s what match play is all about.

Whether we shall ever see combined Championships again is doubtful.  Separate sites for both the Junior Championships are already picked for the next three years.  Still, from the point of view of the players and of those fortunate enough to see them in action, it was an experience which will not soon be forgotten.

Let us leave the final word to a very large, somewhat elderly gentleman, mounted on a very frail, somewhat elderly bicycle, who was cruising gently about the North Course early on the morning of the second day’s qualifying.  The air was fresh and cool, with the heat of the day yet to come, and the fairways were still dewy.  The gentleman, who lived nearby, paused for a moment on one of the macadam cart paths that profane a portion of the course, to watch a solemn-eyed 15-year old arch an absolutely beautiful 6-iron toward the green, which failed to hold the shot.

“Who is that child?” the gentleman inquired.

He was informed that her name was Denise Bratzler, that she lived in St. Petersburg, Fla., that she was in no danger of qualifying for match play because she had never played on anything other than bermudagrass before and the greens were driving her out of her mind, but that she was well worth following because she could hit a golf ball about as well as it is possible to hit one.

“Indeed she can,” the gentleman said.  “And so I believe I shall follow this group until the path peters out, after which I shall walk over to the other course and watch some boys hit the hell out of the ball.”

And with that he released the brake and glided silently away, downhill, smiling.