Dominant is an understatement to describe Tim Hogarth’s performance this week at Santa Ana CC.
Riding a nine-stroke lead as he teed off for his final round on Wednesday, the three-time SCGA Player of the Year secured the 2022 Senior Amateur Championship, adding yet another trophy to his ever-growing resume.
He finished 15-under 201 to win by 13 strokes, which marks one of the largest margins of victory and one of the lowest overall scores in tournament history. And this was only his first appearance in this tournament, fresh off a U.S. Senior Open appearance that he was not pleased with.
“My confidence was pretty low,” Hogarth said. “I had a little bit of a hole I needed to dig out of, so this tournament really helped me. It meant a lot to play the way I did.”
Hogarth was firing on all cylinders from the jump, shooting eight-under 64 on Monday, which was the lowest round of the tournament, to establish a three-shot advantage. He gained six more strokes on Tuesday after another round in the red (67).
He didn’t stop there. Even as his lead grew to 12 strokes making the turn on Wednesday, he kept the pedal to the metal, eventually posting a final round 70 to put a bow on his runaway wire-to-wire victory.
Hogarth, who has won the SCGA Mid-Amateur four times and each the California Amateur and SCGA Amateur championships, bogeyed just six holes in the 54-hole stretch - four of them coming in his final round. Everything seemed to click and none of his opponents (which included the likes of Jeff Burda, Robert Funk and Craig Davis) came remotely close to catching him.
“Typically those leads don’t happen unless I feel very strongly about my game,” Hogarth said. “I putted pretty well. That certainly isn’t the strongest part of my game, but I made a lot of putts.”
Hogarth posted his fifth birdie of the round two holes into the back-nine on Wednesday to all but guarantee victory. It was especially meaningful that Hogarth got it done on the same day of his late father’s birthday.
“He really enjoyed watching me play. To be able to win on his birthday, it means something.”
Burda, who just won the Senior Match Play Championship a couple months ago at Journey at Pechanga, was the next best finisher behind Hogarth (-2). Funk finished third (-1), then Iain Macdonald, John Mack and Don DuBois tied for fourth (E). All of them, in addition to the rest of the top ten finishers, earned exemptions to this year’s California Senior Amateur at Pasatiempo GC as well as next year’s SCGA Senior Amateur at Ironwood GC.