TEEING OFF: Nachtigall wins inaugural Prairie Scratch Tour event

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This article was published 25/05/2022 (1459 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Evan Nachtigall had plenty of time to ponder the pressure of playing with a lead, especially as he knew Manitoba’s best golfer was breathing down his neck.

The Brandon native shot 3-under 69 to take a two-stroke lead over Braxton Kuntz into the final round of the Prairie Scratch Tour’s inaugural event at Grand Pines Golf Course. He delivered with a 71 on Monday to beat the NCAA Division I rookie by a single shot, taking home a cool $1,000. Nachtigall also claimed 750 points to help qualify for the tour’s championship this fall.

“At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter who I’m going up against, I just know I have to play my game and execute the shots,” Nachtigall said a few hours after the win. “If I do that, I have a good chance of winning. I have that confidence in myself.

“But Braxton’s a hell of a player as you know, as everyone knows. He can really go low and play some good golf so looking back at it now, it does feel nice I was able to finish it off and beat him.”

Prairie Scratch Tour vice-president Jordy Lutz wasn’t surprised to see the Brandonite perform in the season opener.

“I only first knew him last year when we played together in the Manitoba (amateur) and I was blown away by how good he is. I was like ‘Oh my gosh, he’s going to be a stud,’” Lutz said.

“This is the first win I know he’s had and he did it in a great way. He beat our power rankings’ number one player. What a great way to start the year.”

Being 90 kilometres north of Winnipeg, Grand Pines wasn’t exactly familiar territory for most. Nachtigall played it once when he was 12 but remembered “absolutely nothing,” and checked Golf Manitoba’s 2021 match play qualifier leaderboard to find only one red number and figured anything under par would be enough to win.

His weekend didn’t start great with two bogeys on the first eight holes, but he took advantage of the par-5 ninth with a birdie then chipped in on the 13th to get back to even. His putter caught fire as he poured in three straight birdies on the 15th to 17th to take the lead.

“I just stuck to my game plan and stayed within myself,” he said. “I was trying to be really patient on the front nine, got a couple of bad breaks off the tee and didn’t capitalize on any of the good approach shots I hit into greens on the front nine.”

He stayed in Winnipeg between rounds and thought about the idea of sleeping on a lead. He’d never done that before and wasn’t sure if he should shut his phone off and avoid golf altogether.

Turning a TV on after the round to catch the finish of the PGA Championship would have meant watching a leader, Mito Pereira, squander a golden opportunity with a horrendous drive on the 18th hole. Golf is hard enough as it is without those dark thoughts.

In the end, Nachtigall saw no need to change his routine.

“I didn’t really do anything differently than I ever would,” he said. “… Coming into (Monday) I knew anything under par would and should be good enough unless Braxton had an absolute hay day.”

Round 2 didn’t start great either and by the time he made a bad mistake off the tee to double-bogey the fifth, he was two shots back of Kuntz. The Winnipeg product won the 2021 provincial junior and amateur before heading to Louisiana to play golf for Nicholls State and is used to the spotlight.

But Nachtigall bounced back with a birdie on the sixth. He then laced a drive and stuffed his approach to set up an easy eagle on the ninth, tying it up at the top.

Kuntz birdied the 12th to go up one while the two parred the rest of the holes. That is, until the long par-3 17th when Kuntz dumped his tee ball in a short greenside bunker and Nachtigall knocked his to 15 feet for a birdie and two-shot swing.

One long, par-4 18th hole to go: a hole only one player birdied all week.

“I was definitely feeling the nerves on the 18th tee and didn’t hit a phenomenal tee shot,” said Nachtigall, whose ball rolled inches out of a fairway bunker and stayed on the upslope.

“But basically the shot of the week for me was my approach into 18. I had 195 straight into the wind on an absolute launchpad … ball way above my feet and I flushed a four-iron sky high and landed pin high on the green 20 feet away from the pin.

“… I was pretty pleased with how I executed that shot and knew it’d probably take two putts for the win.”

Nachtigall graduated from Neelin in 2019 and is in just his third season playing competitively. Coming off a 12th-place finish at the 2021 amateur in Neepawa, he made up for lost time over the long winter.

He works at Wheat City Golf Course and had access to the simulator installed after last season ended but didn’t limit himself to slamming drives into a screen.

He practised putting with a mat at home, lifted weights and used his SuperSpeed training system — three weighted shafts designed to improve swing speed. He said his goal was to get one per cent better every day. His handicap index is now down to +2.5 — not 2.5, there’s a difference. Five strokes, to be exact.

“More than any other sport, you have to put in the time if you want to see success. You can’t just show up and expect to play well, you have to put in the work to see the results,” Nachtigall said.

“The last couple of years I haven’t been as consistent or played as well as I’d hope to and I never put in the amount of work in the past like I had in these (five) months before.”

“I felt so much better going into this year than I ever have before,” he added. “I knew if I was getting better each and every day, I knew probably not a lot of other golfers in Manitoba were doing the same and I’d have an advantage over a lot of others.”

 

TOUR FILLS VOID

Jordy Lutz breathed a sigh of relief and satisfaction when the dust settled after the first Prairie Scratch Tour event.

It had nothing to do with his two-day grind to a fourth-place finish at even par on the week, but rather the months of turning a half-baked idea into a reality most of Manitoba’s best players have embraced.

Lutz, who co-hosts “Sticks Podcast,” Manitoba’s most popular golf podcast, conjured up the idea with fellow Elmhurst member and PST president Ben Bandura.

They formed a seven-man team to cover all their bases, from sponsorship and marketing to navigating the rules surrounding amateur status.

“For our first major event to have no major issues, we’re pretty proud of that because we had no idea what we were doing,” Lutz said.

“… You can’t do it alone. We had to get the right people involved, people that know the game and have been around tournaments.

“As players, we’re like ‘What can we do better? What do we like? What don’t we like?’ Coming at it as a tour director … ‘What do we have to do to make it the best we can be on this end?’”

The only real hiccup was live scoring updates through Golf Genius weren’t working for everyone, though Lutz figures it could have simply been a service issue being further from major centres.

The motivation for the Prairie Scratch Tour was essentially a lack of competitive scratch — non-handicapped — events in Manitoba. Juniors have the Maple Leaf Junior Golf Tour, which features five multi-day events for players age 19 and under, along with Golf Manitoba’s junior, bantam for 14-and-under players and the amateur for anyone willing to go up against the adults. Many good juniors do, including Kuntz, the defending champion.

Men aged 25 and up get the match play, amateur and mid-amateur while women have the city and district instead of a mid-am. But for men aged 20-24, there are two events besides the Elmhurst Invitational, which (you guessed it) is invite-only. The match play has a one-round qualifier and only the top 32 participate in matches. The amateur, until this year, was four rounds with a 36-hole cut that saw only the top 60 players and ties make the “weekend.”

This year’s amateur is down to three rounds, which only fuelled the Prairie Scratch Tour more.

“We’ve been saying for years that there are only so many events to play,” Lutz said.

“Yes there’s the provincial stuff for Golf Manitoba but I don’t know why they don’t want to add more events to the schedule … they took away four rounds of competitive golf already.

“We need competitive golf, it’s just the way it is.”

Golf Manitoba executive director Jared Ladobruk explained the reason for shortening the amateur is course availability.

The game has grown in the past few years, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic and golf being a safe, outdoor activity many took to when other sports and travel were on pause. Private clubs in Winnipeg and the surrounding area are generally full and hesitant to give up their courses during provincial championship season in July when tee times are already hard to come by.

“We’re dealing with supply and demand issues right now. It’s the economics of it. It’s the reality of it,” Ladobruk said. “We’re having our provincial championship at a fantastic venue this year and three rounds is manageable for them but when we start talking about four rounds, it becomes unmanageable for some.”

Overall, both Golf Manitoba and the PST stated no qualms about co-existing.

“(The PST) grows the sport. It provides more opportunity or additional opportunity for competition,” Ladobruk said. “That never is a bad thing. From that perspective, it’s more events on the calendar so good for them for coming together and organizing it and nice to see that they were able to kick it off last weekend.

“… What we do is we conduct provincial championships … for junior golfers, for senior golfers, for men and women, boys and girls. We’re sort of the pathway to nationals. That’s our expertise, that’s what we do. We work closely with Golf Canada to make sure that our officials are as best trained as they can be and we run along that pathway. That’s our space.”

The PST is awarding points for its members’ performance in Golf Manitoba events. Most of its members have been dedicated participants in provincial championships and several have represented Manitoba at Golf Canada national tournaments.

“This is how I see it and how Ben sees it too: They’re the majors, we’re the regular tour events,” Lutz said.

“They have the history. Our championship will never mean more to someone than theirs because they have the history behind it. You’re going to put your name up there against the Garth Collings, Todd Fannings, Aaron Cockerills. You can’t do that on our tour yet, unfortunately.”

The tour unofficially continues with the Elmhurst Invitational on June 25-26 — it’s an independent event but if a member wins, securing a spot in the Canadian amateur, the PST will donate to help cover their trip.

After that, it’s the two-man better-ball Selkirk Shootout on July 2-3, and then Gimli’s Links at the Lake hosts the last full-field event on Aug 27-28. The top 16 players in points take part in the tour championship on Sept. 10-11, tentatively set for Headingley’s Breezy Bend Country Club.

Lutz noted the 2023 schedule will feature a stop at Shilo, Wheat City, Pleasant Valley or Oak Island after high demand from Westman players.

So far, the players approve.

“It was a lot of fun. A lot of the same guys in the amateur, a lot of really good payers. I thought Jordy and Ben did a phenomenal job running it,” Nachtigall said. “The grounds crew at Grand Pines was great, the greens were great, everything was great. It was awesome.

“It’s something new that golfers in this province haven’t had before and it’s a whole heck of a lot better than only playing one or two amateur events a year.”

 

GOLF MANITOBA TO STAGE ALL-ABILITIES EVENT

The PST is ensuring its schedule doesn’t repeat any courses on the Golf Manitoba major calendar each year. That’s easier now as nine clubs are committed to long-term hosting plans that stretch as far ahead as 2035.

“That’s a big win for us to have that predictability and that commitment long term,” Ladobruk said. “Is the four-round championship dead forever? I’m not going to comment either way, it’s just for right now this is what we have and I’m really excited about that long-term schedule. What a commitment from golf courses from a player development standpoint to step forward and say ‘Yeah, we’re going to commit to this for the next (few years).’”

Ladobruk is particularly excited about Golf Manitoba’s first all-abilities championship, running June 25-26 at La Broquerie alongside the bantam and city and district.

It’s for golfers with various physical and intellectual impairments. Golf Ontario ran its first one a few years ago and Golf Canada’s second all-abilities national championship is set to take place later this year.

“It’s also about inclusivity, accessibility, making golf more available to more people, so we’re really excited about that,” Ladobruk said. “If we get five people playing, 10 people, it’s a win for us. We have to start somewhere.

“… We’re really excited about what opportunities it’s going to make available in the future.”

HOLE-IN-ONE: Doug Wark aced the 98-yard par-3 second hole at Glen Lea Golf Course with an eight-iron on Tuesday. Dale Lintick, Peter Kowalchuk and Gerry Haight witnessed the shot.

BIRDIES: Killarney Lakeside and Pleasant Valley are hosting the Southern Manitoba Golf Classic this Friday to Sunday. Friday is a practice round, followed by a 10 a.m. shotgun start on Saturday at Killarney, then a 10 a.m. shotgun at Pleasant Valley on Sunday. It’s a two-person scramble, costs $130 per player and includes both a steak supper on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday. Call the KLGC shop at 204-523-8277 to register … Glen Lea’s Pinkest Owl is on Saturday, June 11. It’s an 11 a.m. shotgun start and costs $520 per four-person team. Sign up at glenlea.golfems2.com/event/pinkest-owl-2022.

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