AREA GOLF
Eagle lifts Katz to Crag Burn win
His wedge was working for him all day, but it didn’t get any better for Jake Katz than when he holed out from 130 yards for eagle and went on to win the 36-hole Lonnie Nielsen Scratch Invitational on Monday at Crag Burn Golf Club in East Aurora.
The shot was worth five points for Katz in the event that featured the Stableford scoring system. It helped him finish with a score of plus-8 and beat runner-up Jeff Wolniewicz by one point.
Rather than counting the total number of strokes, as in stroke play, the Stableford system involves scoring points based on the number of strokes taken at each hole.
Katz added eight birdies to his eagle on No. 1, the 17th hole of his first round. Katz knew he hit a good shot, but didn’t know how good until reaching the green.
“I actually brought my putter to the green, I didn’t know it was in until I got to the top of the green,” said Katz, who plays out of Westwood.
The eagle gave Katz the first-round lead at plus-3 and the confidence boost he was looking for. “Up to that point, I wasn’t playing great. I was making a lot of bogeys. The eagle was a huge boost to the score. I knew had momentum from that eagle and shot plus-5 in afternoon,” he said.
Katz drove the ball fairly straight and didn’t have a score above bogey all day. After three-putting his last hole from 10 feet, he figured he’d be looking at a playoff with Wolniewicz, but his score held. Katz, 20, will be a junior at Binghamton next month.
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