Haymarket’s Scott Shingler made a birdie on the first hole to take a lead he never relinquished on his way to a 3 and 2 victory over Ji Soo Park of Centreville in the 36-hole final of 98th Virginia Amateur championship Saturday at The Virginian Golf Club in Bristol.
It is the first Virginia Amateur title for Shingler, 39, the state player of the year in 2009. He is the reigning Virginia Mid-Amateur champion. In May, Shingler ran away with the Metropolitan Mid-Am, winning on his home course (Evergreen) by seven strokes.
Shingler is the first player from Northern Virginia and fourth overall to hold Virginia Amateur and Mid-Am titles simultaneously. The others are Tom McKnight of Galax (1985), Keith Decker of Martinsville (1991), and David Partridge of Richmond (1993).
“I’d really like to put my fingerprint on Virginia golf, and this is a start,” Shingler told Andrew Blair of the Virginia State Golf Association. “I don’t set many goals at the beginning of the year. My goal is not to win five tournaments in a year, for example. I just want to get better each day.”
After winning two of the first three holes Saturday morning, Shingler built his lead to 4 up through 15. Park, a recent graduate of Chantilly High who will play on scholarship at Virginia, made his only serious run of the day with birdies at No. 17 , on a 35-foot putt, and No. 18, on a conceded putt, to cut the lead in half.
A winning par on the first hole of the second 18 got the deficit to 1 down. But Shingler resumed control with back-to-back birdies at Nos. 3 and 4. At the par-5 third, Shingler hit a hybrid 245 yards to the green, then two-putted from 20 feet. On No. 4, from 188 yards out, Shingler hit a 7-iron from the rough to within seven feet. Later, he wrapped up the victory with a birdie at the par-4 16th hole, hitting a wedge to within three feet and making the clinching putt.
“I expected [Park] to make a run, but I never wanted him to square the match,” Shingler said. “I always wanted him to know I was up in the match. I expected him to win a hole or two, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t play protective golf.”
Shingler’s five match-play victims in the tournament included former Virginia Amateur champion Keith Decker (1988, 1991) and three who played college golf last year — Sam Beach (Richmond), Evan Beck (Wake Forest), and Paul Woodson (Radford).
“It was nice to beat those young guys,” Shingler said.
Past winners of the Virginia Amateur include legendary seven-time winner Vinny Giles, current PGA Tour players John Rollins and Steve Marino, and former major championship winners Lanny Wadkins and Curtis Strange.
