For years he's been one of the top Southern California mid-amateur golfers. Last summer, he proved he was one of the nation's top mid-amateur golfers, advancing to the semifinals of the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship. But for the first time, Dan Sullivan can say he is at the top, cruising to a 4-stroke victory at Ironwood CC to win the 2017 SCGA Mid-Amateur Championship in impressive fashion.
"It feels great," said Sullivan. "I played really well, especially yesterday, and as you all know I was very much wanting to win this tournament, so to actually do it is a great feeling."
Sullivan opened the tournament with one of the best 36-hole days in SCGA Mid-Amateur history, carding scores of 67-66 to finish Day 1 and Round 2 at 11-under par, 6 strokes better than the rest of the 84-player field.
"The course was in great condition," said Sullivan. "When you hit great shots you were rewarded. The greens were perfect, so if you put a good roll on the ball you could make putts, and yesterday I made putts. I was really happy to play as well as I did. That was probably my best 36 holes of golf in one day I've ever played."
But a lead is rarely ever safe, no matter its size, and with one of the strongest fields in event history and one that includes eight past champions, Sullivan knew he still had to put together one more solid round.
"I woke up in the middle of the night and that's when I started thinking about [the big lead]," said Sullivan. "I knew I just had to try and duplicate what I did the first day, and make good swings."
Duplicating what he had done the day prior would have been an extremely tall order, but Sullivan did do a great job protecting his lead. He played the front nine in 1-under par, and maintained an advantage of 5 or 6 strokes until the final two holes, when a bogey-bogey-par finish was his only blemish of a spectacular tournament performance. The even par final round was enough to do the trick, and do it pretty easily.
With Sullivan the lone outlier, the rest of the field competed hard to fill out the rest of the Top 5, with J.R. Warthen, a champion of last year's SCGA Four-Ball Championship, putting together the best round of Day 2, shooting a 6-under par 66 to catapult from T12 to T2 on the leaderboard. Joining Warthen in the runner-up position was Mark Manwaring of Long Beach and Kyle Rector of San Diego. Rounding out the top of the leaderboard was Bowen Osborn of Burbank and Trae Cassell of Indio, who both finished T5.
For Sullivan, the win was a long time coming, as the Pasadena resident has competed in the event for years, earning two Top 10s and one additional Top 20 in the past five years alone. A two-time winner of the SCGA Foursomes Championship, a two-time winner of the Pasadena City Championship and the victor of the 2012 SCGA Public Links Championships, this Mid-Am accomplishment is Sullivan's first major SCGA championship. The win comes on the heels of some of Sullivan's best golf, as the 50-year old's accomplishments at last year's U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship jumpstarted an impressive stretch of golf for the Brookside GC member.
"This summer I am going to try and focus on my game and really see how good I can get," said Sullivan. "But at the same time family is going to be first for me. My wife and I just had our second child a few weeks ago, so that will obviously cut into my practice time. But I will take it one tournament at a time and see what happens."
With the win, Sullivan earns an exemption into this summer's California Amateur Championship at The Olympic Club. The Top 5 finishers all earn spots in this year's SCGA Amateur Championship, which will be held at Mission Hills CC in July, and the Top 10 earn exemptions into next year's SCGA Mid-Amateur Championship, to be held at Saticoy CC in April.