How old is the CGA Match Play Championship?
The year it was first held, William McKinley was president of the U.S., Butch Cassidy allegedly was in on a train robbery in Montana, and Queen Victoria passed away.
The 113th CGA Match Play will be held next week — July 8-12 — at Bear Creek Golf Club in west Denver.
The championship has been contested every year since 1901. That not only makes it the oldest continuously held statewide golf tournament in Colorado, but one of the oldest in the nation.
While the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, Masters and PGA Championship — along with the British Open — all weren’t held various years because of World War I and/or II, the CGA Match Play has never missed a beat. It’s been contested each year without fail since Frank Woodward defeated H.K.B. Davis Sr., 3 and 2 in the finals in 1901.
The Match Play actually predates the CGA by 14 years, but the association’s first official function when it was founded in 1915 was becoming the administrator of the event.
Over the first 112 years, the champions have included the very famous and the obscure.
Four members of the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame have their names on the Richard C. Campbell CGA Match Play trophy — N.C. “Tub” Morris (1924 and ’27), Charles “Babe” Lind (1946), Hale Irwin (1966) and Steve Jones (1980). Between them, Irwin and Jones went on to win the U.S. Open four times.
“I look back at all those (Colorado amateur) events I was fortunate enough to play and have some success in as really the groundwork that got me started into the golf scene,” Irwin said last year. “Colorado golf is where it all started.”
Other current PGA Tour players who have won the CGA Match Play are Brandt Jobe (1984, ’85, ’88) and fellow Kent Denver High School alum Kevin Stadler (1999 and 2002).
The championship has seen everything from a couple of 12-and-11 routs in the 36-hole final match, to one finale that lasted more than 40 holes, as Sam Valuck needed 42 to overcome future state senator Les Fowler in the 1961 title match at Cherry Hills.
Dr. Larry Bromfield has been by far the most successful player in CGA Match Play history, having won an amazing eight times from 1912-28. Next best are Mark Crabtree, Larry McAtee and Walter Fairbanks, with four titles each.
This year’s Match Play will be contested at Bear Creek, which has hosted the championship 13 previous times since 1986.
Former Georgetown University golfer Brian Dorfman of Cherry Creek Country Club will defend his 2012 title, and last year’s runner-up, Colorado State University golfer Parker Edens, is also back. (Dorfman is pictured above in front of the Match Play trophy.)
Likewise in the field are former University of Colorado golfer Derek Fribbs, who last month won the CGA Public Links Championship after shooting a final-round 62; 2012 CGA Stroke Play champion and 2013 Publinks runner-up Steven Kupcho; 2012 U.S. Amateur match play qualifier Mike Schoolcraft; and 2004 Match Play winner Steve Irwin.
As the defending champ, Dorfman will be the No. 1 seed, with a single round of stroke play on Monday setting up the rest of the 64-man match play bracket.
