Pittsburgh, PA- Highland Country Club was the venue for this weeks Golf Channel Am Tour of Pittsburgh local event. The course must take its name from all of the Pennsylvania hills that surround the Pittsburgh area as there are not many flat spots on the golf course. Many holes feature rolling hills in which players have to either tee off from an elevated tee box down to a rolling fairway to the hole, or the converse and tee off to higher ground and continue to the green. For the severe undulation that is played on this course, the course equalizes that out by only "tipping" out at just under 5800 yards. This set up for many of the players thinking that a shoot-out could ensue when they saw that the course was playing to such short yardage.
The many undulations and small greens however did not play well into the hands of the Palmer Flight, where it was Woody Burch's 89 defeating Fred Favorite (93) by 4-strokes. The back and forth match between the 2 players was tied going into the final 2 holes where Burch made a birdie on the par-4 17th to claim the lead for good.
In the Sarazen Flight, 12 players fought it out for the title where Jeff Esper shot 80 to defeat James Huber (83) by 3 strokes. Matt Blum and Michael Yates tied for 3rd place with 84's. Esper made 10 pars on his card and enabled him to take the lead midway through the round and hold on for victory. A memorable note to the days rounds was a birdie-birdie finish for Matt Blum on his front 9. Blum birdied the par-5 8th and then the 225-yard par-3 9th by sinking a long putt and cashing both in for 2 skins on the day.
The next event will be played Saturday, June 18th, at the Oglebay Resort's Robert Trent Jones Course in Wheeling, WV. It is a fabulous venue as we look forward to hosting our next Pittsburgh Tour event. We hope to see you there!
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