NCGA Team Match: Dragonfly Goes Back-to-Back

Dragonfly GC made it back-to-back. The Dragonfly GC squad, winners of the Thursday finals, won their second straight NCGA Team Match title Sunday at par-71 Poppy Hills GC, knocking off runner-up Oakhurst GC, 26-10. This year’s Dragonfly GC team had three new players. Everyone else was a returnee from 2017. “It was harder to win it this year for sure,” said captain Steve Neer. “The playoffs were harder. We lucked out a few times.” One close call was a 20-16 win over Silverado Resort. On Saturday, they’d edge Stonetree GC in a playoff. For the second day in a row, Dragonfly got off to a hot start. Stephen Perez and Todd Barsotti swept their Singles and Four-Ball matches, to take a 6-0 lead. The rout was on from there. Doug Johnson later won his Singles match to make it 8-2. Johnson and partner Steve Neer, the team’s captain, also won their Four-Ball match for a 10-2 lead. Later, Marc Watts won his Singles match and he and partner Bill Howard got a halve to make it 15-5. Clint Jones would win in Singles, and partner Steve Foster won in Four-Ball to earn a clinching 19th point. The last and only team to three-peat was Whitney Oaks GC, who did it from 2012-2014. “The guys are already talking about it. It’s hard to just win one,’ Neer said. The championship uses a format where two players from a side face off against two players from an opposing side in four-ball and individual matches concurrently, with players earning two points for a win and one point for a halve. In the third-place match, Stonetree GC rolled to a 26-10 win over Ancil Hoffman GC. Chris Hyland won his Singles match and he and partner Miguel Bunting won Four-Ball, and Stonetree GC also got early wins from Skip Foppert and Roy Gulick to take the early lead. Later, Allen Suzuki and Darren Reiter got wins to make it 10-6. A Four-Ball victory by Foppert and Doug Nickels would give Stonetree 16 points. Nickels also got a win in Singles for the clinching points.