Jul. 26—Brian Quackenbush is used to the questions by now each time he tees it up at the Palmetto Amateur.
He knows he’s the elder statesman of sorts, the old man playing alongside some of the best college and junior golfers in the country in addition to a few mid-ams who are still a few years younger than him.
But he’s not here to treat this tournament like a member-guest, or just as some kind of club ambassador who’s there to show his playing partners a good time.
He’s here to compete.
“You’ve got to stay competitive,” said Quackenbush, who finished seventh at last year’s Palmetto Amateur at The Reserve Club while Palmetto was undergoing renovations. “What I’ve discovered going through mid-am and now going toward senior golf is you have to stay out there playing, and you have to play up as high a level as you possibly can. It doesn’t do any good to go out there and play once a week and play in, not putting it down or anything, but like a scramble or something. It’s not the same thing. It helps being competitive out here with the kids.”
He’s played alongside a few of them this week. He was grouped with the University of Alabama’s William Jennings and Charlotte’s Caden Baker in the first two rounds, and then in the third he played with rising Texas high school junior Finn Burkholder and Nihon University’s (Japan) Masato Sumiuchi, the highest-ranked player in the field at No. 58 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking at the start of the week.
Palmetto’s prestige pulls in players of that caliber from around the country and other parts of the world, many of whom rearrange their busy summer schedules for the opportunity to compete here — Monday qualifier Luke Walmet from William & Mary said what he was most looking forward to about the week was just getting to loop it around Palmetto a few more times.
Those players, both new to the course and those who haven’t seen it in a couple of years, by now know the changes that have been made to the course and also the ways it’s playing differently since the renovations. That’s something that can give the local players a leg up on the competition, and for Quackenbush Palmetto’s shorter layout helps him keep up with the young bombers.
“It’s nice being the home course. That allows me to be a little more competitive with these guys,” he said. “I think if I got onto a longer golf course, it’s hard to keep up with them. Their talent is so through the roof nowadays. It’s not just college kids. The high school kids are incredible. I played with a kid a couple weeks ago who was swinging 124 miles an hour clubhead speed. He looked up at me on a 360-yard par-4 and said, ‘Hey, is there a bunker up in front of the green?’ I don’t know. I never thought about that shot.
“They’re more mature nowadays. They’re ready to go. If you’re a local person looking to see somebody that might be on the PGA Tour in a few years, 5-10 years, you’re probably going to see someone out here this week.”
Up next for Quackenbush, and several others from the area, is the 93rd South Carolina Golf Association Amateur Championship on July 31-Aug. 4 at the Country Club of Charleston. He’s also looking at the SCGA’s 44th Mid-Am Championship in October and hopefully a spot in the U.S. Mid-Am in late September. There’s also the City of Aiken Amateur Championship on Sept. 7-8 at The Aiken Golf Club, a tournament Quackenbush has won twice.
But this week is all about his home club.
“We’ve got, what, five guys in the tournament this week, so I think we’re well represented from a Palmetto Golf Club perspective,” he said. “I love to represent as well as possible the membership and the culture that we have around here, because it’s a golf culture. We don’t have anything but golf, really. We’ve got a nice little clubhouse and a lot of history, so it’s all about golf. It’s nice to come out here and be able to play a couple of rounds and represent that culture we have.”
