'Unexpected' Medalist Keys D1 Champ
May 29, 2013
By Brandon Veale
Special to Second Half
HOUGHTON – After the Upper Peninsula's infamous spring of 2013, the golfers at Wednesday's U.P. Division 1 Final should have known to expect the unexpected at Portage Lake Golf Course.
Sun-splashed, windless conditions prime for scoring and a medalist who played in his team's No. 3 slot and hadn't broken 80 all season certainly qualified as unexpected.
The man of the hour was Marquette sophomore Scott Frazier, who fired a 1-under-par 71 to earn the medalist honor and lead his team to the overall trophy.
“I'm gonna remember this for a while,” Frazier said after what he described as the best round of his career.
Marquette posted a team total of 308, 15 strokes better than defending champion Houghton, while playing on Houghton’s home course. It is Marquette's first MHSAA title in five years and sixth since competition in nearly-equal divisions began in 2001.
Three over after four holes, Frazier, who started on No. 4, still felt like he had a good round going just a few holes in.
“My putting was unbelievable. I was one-putting everything, and my drives were straight, too,” Frazier said.
He stabilized his round with a big birdie on the par-four ninth hole, then grinded out seven pars and just one bogey over the next eight.
He missed the fairway right on the long, uphill par-5 18th and had his second swing partially obstructed by a tree. All it did was set up a stretch of golf to remember.
“I took out a 3-wood, I took a three-quarters swing, I put it right under a tree branch and I knocked it on (the green) about 20 feet away,” Frazier said.
He rolled in a straight putt for his eagle 3, then wrapped around to birdie both Nos. 1 and 2.
Marquette dropped Frazier's score, a 92, in the Great Northern Conference tournament at Escanaba Country Club last Thursday. But he brought his best game when everything was on the line.
“He's a competitor and a fiery kid,” Marquette coach Ben Smith said. “Part of that turns into frustration sometimes, but he managed it and had a great day.”
Calumet's Reese Lassila, playing with the No. 1's several holes ahead, had no way to know Frazier was catching fire down the stretch.
The 2010 U.P. Final medalist and Copper Country's best golfer all season, he signed for a 74 that was pretty good – but not good enough.
“It's not like I played a bad round of golf. I can't be disappointed,” Lassila, a senior, said.
Lassila started his round with a rollercoaster: bogey on No. 9, par on 10, then birdie-bogey-birdie-bogey.
“I think I really could've heated up on the back nine. But I think every time I made a birdie, I followed it up with a bogey, and it just killed all momentum,” Lassila said.
Lassila finally put two pars together on 18 and 1, then birdied the par-five 2nd hole to get to even-par. But bogeys on No. 5 and his finishing hole, the long par-3 8th, kept him above par for the day. His 74 was still better than his medalist scores in two Western Peninsula Athletic Conference league meets on this course last week.
Key to Marquette's team success was two more golfers in the top five: third-place Jordan Frazier's 76 and just the second 78 of the year from fourth player Mike McGee.
Jordan Frazier, no relation to Scott, arrived from the Las Vegas, Nev., area to Houghton the night before the tournament, but this was no jet-setting trip. Frazier relocated from Nevada to Marquette to play Midget AAA hockey with the Marquette Electricians this season and drove back having not touched a club in four days.
“We won conference and took U.P.'s home to finish off my senior year, which is awesome,” Jordan Frazier said.
The other four Marquette golfers Wednesday were sophomores.
A freshman, Wyatt Liston, led host Houghton to a 323 in an attempt to defend its 2012 championship.
Liston started bogey-double bogey-double, but was even over the next 14 holes for a 78, to tie for fourth individually and all-U.P. honors.
“After the first four (holes), I figured that it can't get much worse, so only good scores from there on,” Liston said.
Sophomore Brendan Longhini scored a 79, one of just seven sub-80 scores on the day.
The other came from Ben Lasecki of third-place Gladstone. The Braves posted a 330. Rival Escanaba was fourth with a 339, followed by Kingsford (348).
After a U.P. prep golf season full of horrors like a Great Northern Conference meet last week played with temperatures in the mid-40s and winds in the low 30s, or a West PAC league schedule during which four meets were rescheduled and two cancelled outright – leading to three meets in three days last week – Wednesday was pleasant enough to put a smile on the faces of even the golfers who turned in a card full of bogeys.
The course was in remarkable shape considering it opened for the season just 15 days ago on May 14, the latest starting date in recorded history for the U.P.'s northernmost 18-hole track.
“(The weather) is awesome for today, but you wish you could've had it a couple other days as well,” Smith said.
PHOTOS: (Top) Marquette's Scott Frazier follows through on his tee shot on the 18th hole at Portage Lake Golf Course during Wednesday's U.P. Division 1 Final. Frazier went on to eagle the hole as part of a 1-under par 71, the medalist score. (Middle) Houghton's Brendan Longhini stares down a putt on the 18th green. He shot a 7-over par 79 for the Gremlins, who finished second to Marquette in the team competition. (Photos by Brandon Veale.)
It's Championship Time for Badker, While Houghton Holds On for Team Title
By
Todd Rose
Special for Second Half
June 1, 2022
BARK RIVER – From the Division 3 boys basketball championship game at the Breslin Center to the Great Northern Conference golf final at Escanaba Country Club, the story of much of Brady Badker’s senior year has been second place.
That changed Wednesday afternoon, as Menominee’s Badker won the individual championship at the Upper Peninsula Division 1 Final at Sage Run Golf Course in Bark River.
“This one feels good to get off my chest,” Badker remarked after the win. “The last two things I cared about most were basketball and golf, and (it was) runner-up, runner-up. But, this one was kind of the one I wanted really bad because last year I came up short.”
Badker shot a 75 on Wednesday to earn a three-stroke win over Houghton’s Marino Pisani.
Badker marked the front nine as the place where he earned his advantage.
“I’d say on the front nine my approach shots were kind of getting real close,” he said. “I got good looks at birdies instead of those long five-foot par putts. Those are the ones you have to save out here because it’s a tough course. When you’ve got those five-footers for birdie instead of five-footers for par, that really helps to keep your mindset going.”
Aside from the added challenge of wind, the Sage Run course itself presents a challenge on its own.
“A lot of courses that we play up here, you’re hitting wedges and all that in the greens,” noted Badker. “Here, you’re hitting 8-irons and 9-irons, so it’s a little bit higher. You have to think about the wind and the bunkers around the green and behind the hole. If you can hit it long or if you can hit it left, it’s a lot tougher. You kind of have to hit your spots or you’re going to struggle here.”
Runner-up Pisani, a Houghton sophomore, felt he had a bit of a rough start and end but still enjoyed the sunny, warm day at Sage Run.
“I thought it was a pretty solid round,” Pisani said. “I started off slow. I had a triple and a couple doubles but rebounded well, stayed composed and kept level-headed. … Somebody told me I was about one back of (Badker) with four to go, and I struggled to close out a bit. I took a double on one of my last holes and had a couple missed putts, but I’ll try not to think about it too much.”
While Pisani finished runner-up in the individual standings – ahead of a three-way tie between Cole Myllyla (Kingsford), Cooper Pigeon (Iron Mountain) and Tyler Annala (Westwood) for third – his Houghton Gremlins shot a collective 329 to take home the team championship.
“Overall, I thought the team did great,” Pisani said. “Every guy performed well, and I think it was just a great day for golf in general.”
Houghton coach Corey Markham shared his excitement as well.
“I’m really proud of the kids,” he added. “We had never seen the course until yesterday. We came down to do a practice round, and the wind was howling like 30, 35 mile an hour. So it was hard to get a read on how you’re playing the course in those kind of winds. But, they got to see the course and how it was laid out, so that really was great.
“They showed up. I told them going in if we could average between 80 and 85, we’d be right in the mix. We had Marino go down into the 70s, and the rest were all between 80 and 85. So, I’m really proud of how they played today.”
The U.P. Finals championship rounds out a successful year for the Gremlins, who also collected top honors in the Western Peninsula Athletic Conference.
“It was a really good year for us,” said Markham. “We started off slow. We had a late spring, and we had no practice before we played our two first meets and our course opened one day before our third meet. We had a slow start, but once we started playing and getting in a groove we won most of the meets we played in the last quarter of the season.”
Finishing second with a score of 334 was GNC champion Marquette.
“Going in, I thought if the guys played well and had a really good day there would be a good chance we’d be in the mix,” said Marquette coach Ben Smith. “I bet if you asked the kids while they were out there, you probably wouldn’t get too many ‘it’s going great Coach’ responses. But, conditions were tough out there. Obviously, the wind and the course itself is not easy. … But, credit to the kids, they hung in there.”
Smith added that close matches throughout the season helped prep Marquette for the competitive nature of the U.P. Finals.
“We’ve had a couple matches this year that came down to a shot or two,” he said. “So, I think the kids kind of bought into the idea that every swing matters and even if it doesn’t seem like it’s your day, just try and get the ball in the hole. Credit to them, they hung in there for each other and were able to come out with a second-place finish.”
The margins at the top of the team standings were thin as the top five all shot within 12 strokes of each other. After Houghton (329) and Marquette (334) were Calumet and Kingsford tied at 337, with Escanaba rounding out the top five at 341.
PHOTOS (Top) Brady Badker of Menominee tees off on hole 16 at Sage Run Golf Course during Wednesday afternoon's MHSAA U.P. Division 1 Boys Golf Final in Bark River. (Middle) Houghton holds up its first-place team trophy. (Photos by Todd Rose.)