Matching Up for 117th Time

For the third time in the last four years, the CGA’s oldest championship, the Match Play, will be contested at a course that’s never before hosted the event.

The 117th CGA Match Play, a fixture on the state golf calendar every year since 1901, will be held at The Club at Ravenna, a highly regarded Jay Morrish design in Littleton.

Stroke-play qualifying is set for Monday (June 19), with the top 64 players advancing to match play, which starts on Tuesday and runs through the 36-hole final on June 23.

Just one former CGA Match Play champion is in the field, 2015 winner Nick Nosewicz, but the last two CGA Amateur champs are entered, Colin Prater of the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs (2016) and Chris Korte of the University of Denver (2015). And all three 2016 CGA players of the year — Kyler Dunkle (open), Chris Thayer (mid-amateur) and Robin Bradbury (senior) are likewise playing.

Also in the 84-man field are several players who earned spots in U.S. Open Sectionals, the second and final qualifying stage for the Open: Jake Staiano, Ross Macdonald, Jackson Solem, Daniel Pearson, Hunter Paugh and Thayer, who qualified for Sectionals but withdrew. Likewise entered are former 5A state high school champion and 2016 CGA Amateur runner-up Spencer Painton; 2016 Mark Simpson Colorado Invitational winner Coby Welch; 2016 5A state champion Kyle Pearson; and the last three winners of the Colorado Junior Amateur: Braden Bentley (2016), Isaac Petersilie (2015) and Macdonald (2013 and ’14).

For Monday’s tee times, CLICK HERE.