Rustand, rest of state's best take on Wolf Creek
Predicting the winner of the Utah State Amateur is about as hard as guessing the number the ball lands on a roulette wheel -- three consecutive times.
Of the 148 players entered into this year's state am at Wolf Creek Resort in Eden -- the 107th consecutive start of the oldest continuous tournament in the world -- more than 100 have a legitimate chance to win.
The player with the best opportunity is defending champion Clark Rustand. But that's only because, as champion, Rustand will take the No. 1 seed into match play, which begins Friday.
Everyone else will battle in stroke play qualifying on Wednesday and Thursday for one of the 31 remaining match play spots.
"This is one of the strongest groups of players we've had in the state am," Utah Golf Association executive director Joe Watts said. "The field here just keeps getting better and better."
There are 95 players in the field boasting a handicap index of less than 1 -- another 31 players are between 1 and 2. The median handicap, or the player posted 74th on the handicap list, carries an index of zero.
The player with the lowest handicap is a 15-year-old -- Tony Finau's index is at plus-3.6. The player with the highest handicap to qualify -- former champions are exempt into the tournament -- is Troy Miya at 6.9.
The Utah State Amateur has become so competitive that prominent local players such as Craig "Woody" Woodward, who had made match play the last three years, and Ryan Job, who won the Art City Amateur one week ago, did not get out of their qualifying tournaments.
But several other players from the Top of Utah should be considered strong championship contenders.
Clay Ogden, the former David High School standout and current member of the BYU golf team, has three wins this season. He won the Valley View Amateur and the Golden Spike Amateur at Eagle Mountain. Ogden also tied for the championship at the Wolf Creek Amateur with Jared Humphries, the current Utah State University and former Northridge High School star, and Stuart Gold, the former member of the Weber State golf team out of Viewmont High School.
Other strong local candidates include Pete Stone, Clay Bingham, Marty Jacks, Brandt Hoffman, Matt Chang, Brett Black, Greg Buckway, Barry Schenk, Jason Lund, Preston Otte, Ben Smuin, Jeff Powars and Daniel Summerhays.
Summerhays returned only two weeks ago from serving a two-year, LDS Church mission in Chile. The state am champion in 2000 and 2001, Summerhays has not played in the tournament since 2002.
The Utah State Amateur begins Wednesday, with the first pairing of Rustand, Summerhays and three-time champion Doug Bybee scheduled to tee off at 7:30 a.m.
