Defending champion Brad Sutterfield faces a dangerous obstacle in his bid for two straight State Amateur golf titles in today's 36-hole final at Park Meadows Golf Course.
Not the yips, or a head cold, or altitude sickness. This could be worse: Sutterfield faces an opponent who wants to be like him."All through high school I looked up to him. Brad Sutterfield was THE player, the one everybody looked up to and wanted to beat," said Brett Wayment yesterday moments after outlasting Mark Domm in a 20-hole overtime semifinal match. "I respect him a lot. I'm really looking forward to playing him."
As Wayment said the above at the press conference following the conclusion of Saturday's matches, Sutterfield, who was sitting in the next chair, said, "thanks."
He thinks.
Sutterfield and Wayment had simultaneous, if dissimilar, high school careers. Each graduated in 1987, Sutterfield from Salt Lake's Brighton High and Wayment from Ogden's Weber High. Sutterfield never heard of Wayment during high school, but Wayment heard plenty of Sutterfield, climaxed when Sutterfield won the 1987 high school championship tournament.
"How did I do in that tournament?" said Wayment, "Not that well. I shot 80-something. I wasn't very good in high school. Not at all like Brad."
Wayment did have one thing in his favor, however. He'd started late. Unlike Sutterfield, whose parents belonged to a country club and helped get him started playing golf when he was seven, Wayment didn't seriously tune into golf until he was in his last year of junior high. His rise has been rather meteoric ever since. But then so has Sutterfield's.
Both State Am finalists interrupted their golf rounds to serve two-year LDS church missions a year after high school. Sutterfield went to Korea and Wayment to New Jersey from August of 1988 through August of 1990. They wiped out two golf seasons in the process, although the damage, in hindsight, doesn't seem to have been that great - a development the Philadelphia 76ers, the new employer of returned missionary Shawn Bradley, would no doubt be pleased to note.
"Two years off can't help anybody's game," said Sutterfield, "I felt like I was losing something, but I felt like I was gaining too. I'm glad I did what I did." Wayment voiced similar sentiment, adding, "I did have my mom send a putter once. We messed around with it a little. I probably played twice while I was on my mission, a couple of nine-hole rounds." That and putting on the rug in his apartment was the extent of it.
Sutterfield didn't play any actual rounds of golf, but he took a 5-iron and a putter to Korea, and occasionally used his days off to hit balls in one of Korea's two-story net-surrounded driving ranges.
Both golfers returned to their games with an enthusiasm that was buoyed by the fact that they were on college scholarships -Sutterfield at BYU, where he was a highly prized recruit out of high school, and Wayment at Utah State, where he walked on after his mission and proved himself to be college caliber.
Both will be seniors this fall. They have played together only once as collegians - at the BYU-sponsored Cougar Classic. Sutterfield strained yesterday as he tried to remember details of that lone round. But Wayment didn't. "Brad won," he said, his reflection clear.
Brad will be favored to win again today. It is Sutterfield who is aiming to use college golf and a stellar amateur career to launch into a professional playing career that one day will reach the PGA Tour. It is Sutterfield whose summer job is "working on my game." (He's had just one other form of employment since returning from his mission, when he painted houses with a friend. An experience he says further motivated him to concentrate on his golf).
It is Sutterfield who won last year over a distinguished State Am field, and who has romped past an equally distinguished field this year, winning his matches thus far by four holes, three holes, four holes and two holes, respectively.
That's been a waltz compared to Wayment, an aspiring club professional who had to survive sudden death playoffs in both the second and fourth rounds, winning on the 20th hole each time.
No one will be surprised if Sutterfield wins today. Least of all Brett Wayment. It could be that Wayment has him right where he wants him.