newS // edited by ryan herrington
VoGel’S 2012
win mArked
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colleGe-AGe
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the Apl title
USGA
Come 2015: Four-ball
events in, PubLinx out
�� The USGA’s simultaneous announcement Feb. 11 that it was creating two new
national championships—men’s and
women’s four-ball events to be played
annually each spring starting in
2015—while shutting down its men’s
and women’s Amateur Public Links
tournaments after 2014 suggests
their fates were always linked. Yet
according to Thomas O’Toole, the
chairman of the USGA Championship
Committee, discussions to inaugurate
its first new tournament since 1995
and retire its first events ever were
“mutually exclusive,” converging only
recently when the verdict on each
became clear.
The creation of the four-ball
championship, says O’Toole, came at
the initial suggestion of Mike Davis
shortly after he took over as USGA
executive director in 2011. Two-person
better-ball competitions are played at
many courses around the country and
have had success at the state and
regional level (in 2012, more than 150
events, either strictly four-ball or as
part of a competition format, were held
in all 50 states and Washington D.C.).
A national event seemed to fit a niche
that otherwise wasn’t being met by the
USGA’s existing championships.
