Christopher McCoy, like Elliot Gealy, is now a multiple winner, and he plans to follow his
former teammate into pro golf.That means McCoy, a Catawba College senior, and John Murphy, an
anesthesiologist, probably won’t defend the title they won Saturday afternoon in the
48th annual Goode Crowder Dorsett Labor Day Four-Ball Invitational at the Country Club of
Salisbury.
Murphy, a newcomer to Salisbury
who has quickly become one of the best local golfers, teamed up with the younger McCoy for
a 3 and 2 victory over the father-son team of George and Shane Benfield.
“Elliot’s setting a
pretty good standard, so we’ll see what we can do,” said McCoy, referring to
Gealy’s recent success on the TearDrop Tour. “I’ve been playing golf my
whole life. It would be kind of a waste not to get a shot (at pro golf),” he added.
“If everything works out, we’ll be playing at a different level next year.”
Gealy and McCoy teamed up on state
championship teams at SalisburyHigh School.
Gealy won the 1998 Labor Day event
with Ken Crooms as his partner. It was his third title, counting two with David Goodman.
Gealy and Crooms did not defend their title this year, because Gealy turned pro in June.
McCoy, No. 2 in the South Atlantic
Conference last spring and No. 3 in 1997, will graduate from Catawba in May and probably
turn pro soon afterward, so he and Murphy aren’t likely to defend.
The 51-year-old Murphy, a Concord
native who moved here two years ago from Florence, S.C., teamed up with McCoy, who turns
23 this month, to shoot 5-under-par golf in the finals.
Murphy, twice a club champion at
Florence Country Club, got his first club championship at Salisbury during the past
summer, but he almost didn’t play in his third straight Labor Day event.
“I had won the club
championship, and I’ve been playing in some of the senior tournaments around the
state, so I’ve got quite a bit of tournament playing, and I really had no intention
of playing in the Labor Day,” said Murphy.
“Chris just mentioned to me
about a month ago, he said, ‘Doc, are you interested in playing in the Labor Day? I
said, ‘Well, Chris, I hadn’t planned on it, but if you want to play, sure,’
because I knew he was such a dadgone good player,” said Murphy.
“He’s a super guy to get
along with on the golf course. We never got on each other. We never put any pressure on
each other. We just kind of look at each other sometimes when one makes a bad shot, shrug
it off and kind of pump each other up,” Murphy added.
How do the first-time partners
complement each other?
“I’m usually pretty
steady. I’m not an especially long driver. I usually hit a lot of greens. I’m a
fair putter:I don’t usually make a whole lot of birdies. So I usually provide kind of
a backup to Chris, giving him some pars and an occasional birdie here and there. He’s
a much more explosive player than I am.He’s much more capable of shooting lower
scores out here than I am,” said Murphy.
The doctor, however, exploded for
a winning par and two early birdies that propelled the team to a 3-up lead after only four
holes, and he fired one of the biggest shots of the match to within four feet of the pin
on the par-3 14th hole, which he won with a birdie.
McCoy, who had halved George
Benfield with a birdie on No. 2, finished strong with a winning birdie on the par-5 15th
and a 15-foot birdie putt that matched Shane Benfield’s 18-footer on No. 16 to close
out the match.
“I told Dr. Murphy the last
couple of matches he had birdied the last hole or the last two holes to win.I told him it
was my turn,’ said McCoy of the 16th.
“I had a putt similar to that
in our semifinals match (21-hole duel with Thad Sprinkle and Joey Boley). I had a pretty
good idea what the putt was going to do.I just trusted my instincts, and it worked out. I
missed it to the right in the semifinals match. This time, I knew it wasn’t going to
do as much as I thought it was going to do.It was dead center.I almost left it
short,” said McCoy.
“He (Murphy) is a great
partner. He’s very consistent, doesn’t hit it out of play, he’s always in
the hole, makes a lot of pars. He’s good for three or four birdies every match,”
said McCoy.
McCoy won with Frederick Corriher
for his first title in a 19-hole duel in 1994.
The Benfields, seeking to become
the third father-son champions, didn’t win a hole until No. 12, but still put a lot
of pressure on the eventual champs.
After George’s winning par on
the 12th, his 18-year-old son hit a sand wedge to within two feet of the pin on the par-5
13th for a conceded birdie that cut the deficit to one hole with five to play.
“We felt real good, then John
came back with that great shot on 14. ... That kind of shifted the momentum a little bit.
If we had birdied 15 (where McCoy chipped to within a foot for birdie), I think it would
have been a little bit tighter match,” said the elder Benfield, a 44-year-old who has
been in the championship flight often, but never past the second round.
McCoy’s birdie on the 16th
meant the Benfields had to win the par-4 hole to stay alive.
“I think Shane made a super
putt (18-footer) on 16. It had hardly any break to it,and he just put a good stroke on it.
That’s what our goal was going into that hole, to get a birdie and let it fall the
way it falls,” said George.
He was delighted to have played in
the championship match with his son, who graduated from East Rowan High School in May
after a successful career in golf and cross country.
“I’ve been waiting on
that for 15 years. I couldn’t wait until he got big enough to start playing.
We’ve played three or four years in a row now. We won the first flight last year, so
we’ve progressed every year. He’s progressed. I’m real proud of him,”
said George. “He played well.”
The youngest player in the match,
Shane was obviously disappointed with the loss.
“We could have played a whole
lot better than we did. I’m disappointed we didn’t play that good,” said
the teen-ager.
He downplayed his birdie at 13
that cut the deficit to one hole.
“I was just wanting to come
back strong, and they got us right back to 3 down,” he said.
The Benfields, who eliminated
medalists Todd Lawson and Steven Harvey 5 and 4 in the quarterfinals, will go after the
title again next September.
“I like playing with my dad.
He’s the best partner I’ve got,” said Shane.
“I know what he’s going
to do, because I’ve been around him all my life,” added George Benfield.
The father thought back to the big
win over the medalists.
“We were 5 under against the
medalists. That was our best round of the tournament. Then today, we got off to a shaky
start (bogey on No. 1) — the inexperience, I believe, of both of us not being
there,” he said.
“We tried to fight back, and
Chris and John were just tough competitors. They threw six birdies out there, and
that’s tough to beat,” George Benfield added.
With McCoy being a former Labor
Day champ and Murphy being the reigning Country Club champ, the elder Benfield knew who
was expected to win.
“We felt like we were the
underdogs. That gave us a little bit more motivation to really play well. Our goal was to
shoot 5 under, and we shot 2 (under) with two to play. That was close to our goal,”
he added. |
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