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HOT SPRINGS — Sometimes, it takes just one putt to jumpstart a ho-hum round. For Charles Green III and Bob Rotella, it was a 70-foot eagle putt at the Omni Homestead Resort’s Old Course that put a charge into their round at the 5th VSGA Super Senior Four-Ball Championship.
Rotella’s eagle on No. 3 got his side going, and they rode the momentum to a bogey-free, 8-under-par 64 and a one-shot lead heading into Thursday’s second and final round.
“We didn’t get it on 1, the first par 5 … we missed a couple of putts there,” Green said. “So to get that eagle and get to 2 under after the third hole, that was pretty big.”
Rotella (Glenmore CC) and Green (The Virginian GC) shot 32 on each of the nines at the Old Course, a par-72 Donald Ross design that features six par 5s, six par 4s and six par 3s.
“We didn’t get in any trouble, and we really didn’t have a threat of it,” Rotella said. “We just played good, solid golf.”
Rotella and Green tied for runner-up honors last year at Golden Horseshoe. They’ll enter Thursday with a one-shot lead over Bill Engel and Peter Jacobi (Army Navy CC) and Chips Wooddy and Jack Gregory (Roanoke CC). Both sides returned 7-under 65s.
The brother tandem of Tim Rash and Tom Rash III (Salisbury CC) were in fourth after posting a 4-under 67. Four sides were tied for fifth at 68, four shots back of the lead.
Defending champions Mike McDonald and Bill Flanders Jr. (Two Rivers CC) shot a 1-under 71 and were tied for 14th. Also in that tie were past Super Senior Four-Ball champs J.P. Leigh (Elizabeth Manor G&CC) and John Cuomo (Laurel Hill GC).
There’s plenty of pedigree in the final groups. Green won the 2016 VSGA Super Senior Stroke Play championship. Jacobi won his second Super Senior Stroke Play title in June at Stonehenge in Richmond, an event in which Engel finished tied for fifth.
Jacobi and Engel expressed disappointment at their inability to take advantage of the Old Course’s par 5s, which they played at 2 under, a tally that included their round’s lone bogey on No. 4.
“We three-putted two par 5s today, one for bogey, one for par,” Jacobi said. “That was the downside of the round today. Other than that we played pretty well, except for not maximizing the par 5s. … Six par 5s, with his length and my good looks, we should be doing better than that.”
Said Engel: “One of us was in every hole. We partnered very well today.”
On the flip side, Wooddy and Gregory were strong on the par 5s, finishing with four birdies and two pars during a bogey-free round.
“We started off slow,” Wooddy said. “We couldn’t make a putt on the first four or five holes.”
“On the back nine, it just clicked,” Gregory said. “We took advantage of the par 5s on the back side. We hit two of them in two, and on the other one, we made a putt.”
Green and Rotella’s 64 was one shy of the tournament record, set by Leigh and Cuomo in the second round in 2015. McDonald and Flanders’ winning total last year was a tournament-record 129, and with perfect scoring conditions expected to remain in place for Thursday’s round, that mark may be in jeopardy.
Chris Lang is the Editor of Virginia Golfer Magazine and Manager, Digital Media for the VSGA.