As Brad Sutterfield accepted the large State Amateur trophy late Sunday afternoon, the sun was shining brightly, gleaming on the old trophy as well as Sutterfield's big smile.
It was the first time the sun had shone on a day that produced perhaps the worst weather ever for a State Am golf final. After all, isn't the State Am always played during the hottest week of the year? Instead there were sheets of rain that caused flooding, lightning, and cool temperatures that made it seem more like March than mid-July.Despite the unseasonable weather, Sutterfield, a junior-to-be at BYU, defeated Greg Slack, a junior-to-be at the University of Utah, 5 and 4 to claim the prestigious State Am crown. In the process he became the first golfer in 24 years to win both medalist and match play honors the same year.
"This has always been my dream to win the State Amateur," said Sutterfield, who spent most of his growing up years in Idaho before moving to Salt Lake at the age of 16. "I guess dreams do come true."
Just three and a half hours earlier after 22 of the scheduled 36 holes had been completed, a torrent of rain had fallen on the Hidden Valley Country Club course, turning some greens into small lakes and leaving standing water on several fairways. "I saw it coming down so hard that I thought we'd have to come back tomorrow," said Sutterfield.
But tournament officials were determined to get the final finished Sunday and after an hour and 15-minute delay the match was re-started. But not before a few problems cropped up.
Barely five minutes after the match was halted, the Hidden Valley grounds crew was out with squeegees, removing water on the greens. But two of the squeegies broke, because of the weight of the water, leaving just one to finish the job.
An hour into the delay, tourney officials called the contestants back out to the No. 5 hole, where the players had marked their balls when the green flooded out. Slack was outside on his way to play when a bolt of lightning suddenly hit the course, reportedly 30 yards away from the 5th green. Slack scurried back inside, shaking his head and removing his golf shoes.
That was the last lightning bolt and a few minutes later as Slack started in on another hamburger (he had eaten less than two hours earlier at the lunch break), he was called out to the course once again with Sutterfield.
After being three holes down at the noon break, Slack had gone out and birdied the 1st and 3rd holes before Sutterfield birdied No. 4 with a 20-foot putt just before the rain hit. But any momentum Slack had picked up on those first afternoon holes was washed away in the rain delay.
He bogeyed 7, missing a 3-footer, No. 8, missing a 10-footer and No. 9 when he found tree trouble on his first two shots.
Suddenly he was 5 down and would have been 6 down if Sutterfield hadn't missed an easy 2 1/2-foot par putt at No. 10 after Slack bogeyed. "I started thinking numbers, something that got me in trouble in my earlier matches, and I put a terrible stroke on it," said Sutterfield.
Sutterfield rebounded to save par at 11 with a 12-footer, but Slack cut the margin to 4 at the next hole with an 8-foot birdie putt.
At that point Sutterfield was in the exact position he was in a day earlier in the semifinals when he proceeded to lose four of six holes and find himself in sudden-death against Ryan Job.
But at the next hole, the 172-yard par-3 13th, Sutterfield made the shot of the day, perhaps of the whole tournament. After Slack hit short of the green, Sutterfield stuck his 7-iron shot right at the stick. It landed two feet directly in front of the hole, popped up and finished just 18 inches below the hole.
The birdie put him back to 5-up and when he halved the next hole, the match was history.
The 19-year-old Slack didn't blame the rain for his loss, but acknowledged the delay took something out of his game.
"I had a lot of momentum going," he said. "Even after he made that putt on 4, I thought I was going to win it. I was striking the ball well and hitting it great. But I never really got going after that."
Sutterfield, who changed his shirt during the rain delay, said he felt stiff - a combination of the delay in play and five days of golf adding up to close to 140 holes.
"The key for me was the drive at No. 6 (just after play resumed). I just killed it and that told me I was OK," he said.
For the 23-year-old Sutterfield, Sunday's victory is the highlight of a golfing career that has seen him win a couple of national tournaments as a junior golfer and the Cougar Classic at BYU as a freshman.
"I think I caught the fever for this tournament when I was 18 and played well (making the semifinals). From then on I got the feeling what this tournament is all about."
Sutterfield made the quarterfinals the following year, but missed two State Ams when he took time out for an LDS mission. Then last year he captured medalist honors, but was upset the first round by Rich Rawdin. At the time, he was supposed to have fallen victim to the so-called "jinx" on the medalist.
After that, he was quoted in the Deseret News as saying, "I don't buy that jinx thing. It makes me want to come back and win medalist again and go on and win the whole thing."
Well, Sutterfield did exactly that this year.
He's not making any predictions for next year except to say he'll be back.
"You bet I'll be back," he said. "I think I have as good a chance to win as anyone."