Sizzling Myers coasts to Lilac win
There is golf as mere mortals normally experience it, and then there’s whatever it was that Colby Myers was playing during the final two rounds of the 2006 Lilac Invitational at The Fairways at West Terrace golf course.
Myers, a 27-year-old professional out of Toka Sticks Golf Course in Mesa, Ariz., followed up Saturday’s brilliant course-record round of 11-under-par 61 with a bit more comprehensible 66 on Sunday, but still managed to blow away the rest of the field and cruise to a six-stroke victory.
“I feel like I accomplished something real big,” said Myers, who posted a four-round total of 25-under-par 263 and picked up a $5,000 check for winning the region’s only 72-hole golf event. “I didn’t falter, I just went straight ahead, and I didn’t make any bogies on the front nine.”
Which meant the tournament was pretty much over by the time Myers and his playing partners Conner Robbins and Troy Kelly, who each started the day three strokes in arrears, stepped to the No. 10 tee.
At that point, Myers was already five strokes under par. Despite burning the cup with a couple of splendidly executed chip shots, he turned in 31 and then coasted in with a back-nine 35 that included a double-bogey on the challenging par-3 13th.
Robbins, who tried to make things interesting by making birdies on three of the first four holes, made a double-bogey-5 on the par-3 7th and turned in a final-round 69 that earned him his second-straight runner-up Lilac finish and a check worth $3,000.
“Troy and I just never put any pressure on him,” Robbins said of Myers, whose robotic front nine included five birdies and no bogeys. “We both hit the ball a long way, and we’re both normally birdie-makers, but nothing we did seemed to bother him. He just kept hitting the ball solid and making putts.”
Kelly, who shot 71 and finished in a fourth-place tie with Peter Sisich at 271, had a chance to squeeze Myers early, but missed four birdie putts on the first five holes that were all inside of 4 feet – including a 2-footer on No. 2 that didn’t even scare the hole.
“It was brutal,” Kelly said of his putting. “I could have been hanging around, but then I don’t make anything and Colby just keeps pouring in putts and pulling away.”
Myers had an eight-shot lead when he stepped to the tee on the 173-yard 13th, which plays over water to a peninsula green. He changed clubs right before striking his tee shot and ended up backing his ball off the rise in front of the green and into the reeds at the edge of water.
From there, he took a drop from the drop area short and left of the green, left his pitch 12 feet short and missed his bogey putt.
“I had the six-iron out and went with the seven,” Myers said of his decision to change clubs. “The seven was the right play, but I chunked it. It must have hit the bank and rolled back, but it ended up being my only bad goof-up.”
And by that time, the issue was all but settled.
“I was really nervous on the first tee,” Myers admitted. “But when I made that birdie on No. 2, it kind of calmed me down a little bit, because I felt I had a stroke to, maybe, throw away.
“Then, when I got it to five under on No. 9, my stress level went way down. (Robbins and Kelly) had a couple of hiccups there, too, that helped me settle down little bit. It was a lot more fun at that point.”
Jerry Zink, the co-head professional at The Fairways, put together a final-round 66 on his home course on Sunday to claim the $1,000 winner’s check in the Senior Professional Division with a 72-hole total of 6-under-par 282. Maxton Reinland matched Zink’s total to claim low-amateur honors.