David Hutsell, director of instruction at the Elkridge Club in Baltimore, won the 44th PGA Professional National Championship Wednesday at Hershey Country Club, emerging in a three-way playoff.
Hutsell, 40, won on the second extra hole, where he made a 10-foot putt for birdie. Former James Madison University standout Faber Jamerson bogeyed after hitting his tee shot behind a tree on the 17th hole at Hershey’s East Course.
A hole earlier, Scott Erdmann of Tigard, Ore. was eliminated from the playoff when he made a bogey.
Hutsell finished with an 11-under-par 274 (69-70-67-68) to capture the Walter Hagen Cup for the first time. He also received the first-place check of $75,000 and exemptions into six PGA Tour events.
“I didn’t really come here thinking this could happen this week,” Hutsell told the Golf Channel. “I guess the golf course kind of set up well for me and I made a lot of putts. That’s really what it comes down to.”
Last year Hutsell, a former baseball player at Towson and UMBC, finished sixth in the PNC and advanced to his first PGA Championship. As an assistant at Columbia Country Club, Hutsell qualified for the Kemper Open in 2000 and 2002, making the cut on his second try.
Jamerson (68-67-69-70 – 274), a 34-year-old pro at Falling River Country Club in Appomattox, is a three-time Virginia Open champion who was playing in the event for the first time. He, and the rest of the players who finished in the top 20, advance to the PGA Championship, Aug. 11-14, at Atlanta Athletic Club.
Rockville High graduate Danny Balin, a 29-year-old teaching pro in Greenwich, Conn., finished fourth for the second straight year, and will advance to the PGA for the second straight year. Balin, 29, entered the final round out of the top 20, but blistered the East Course at Hershey, making five birdies for a back nine 30 on his way to an 8-under-par, course record 63.
The late-blooming Balin was a soccer player at Rockville before turning to golf in his senior year.
Two-time defending champion and University of Illinois golf coach Mike Small (67-71-68-72 – 278) failed in his bid to win an unprecedented third straight PNC title, finishing tied for eighth.
Jim Estes (68-71-71-76 – 286) of Olney Golf Park and the Salute Military Golf Association was in position to place in the top 20, but the 46-year-old bogeyed the final three holes to finish two strokes shy of a playoff.
