STOWE, Vt. — Time is running short for Brady Hathorn to break out his Hartford High golf shirt for competition. He’s moving up in the world soon.
The past year has seen Hathorn play in his first Vermont Golf Association state amateur championship, win the Vermont Junior Match Play title to make his second state am field and guide the Hurricanes to their first Vermont Principals Association high school golf crown in 25 years. Coronavirus pandemic-willing, Hathorn’s next destination is the men’s golf team at Franklin Pierce University this fall.
He’ll have better days than Tuesday. Putting woes netted a 13-over-par 85 in the first round of the Vermont Am at Stowe Country Club, leaving the 18-year-old unlikely to make Wednesday’s cut. There were lessons learned, and Hathorn will attempt to apply them both this week at Stowe and down the road with the NCAA Division II Ravens.
“The greens were really fast today and really hard,” Hathorn said afterward. “I actually wasn’t that disappointed with how I hit the ball. I just putted terrible and kept missing in places you couldn’t miss on the greens. Hopefully, I’ll shoot a decent round tomorrow.”
Hathorn comes from a golfing family — his father, Mike, is the Hartford coach and the defending champion at Hanover Country Club — and much was expected from Brady as he moved into high school golf.
As a freshman in 2017, Hathorn helped the Canes make states for the first time in seven years in the VPA’s final season of spring golf. When the sport transitioned to a fall schedule, Hathorn kept Hartford qualifying regularly and shot the senior-laden team’s low round at the Quechee Club last October when the Canes won D-II states, ending a drought dating back to 1994.
The championship gave Hathorn an added boost of confidence on the heels of last summer’s Vermont Junior Match Play triumph.
“I was playing with golfers who were a lot better than me at the time,” noted Hathorn, who is representing Lake Morey Country Club this week. “It showed that I could mentally pull it off when it mattered.”
Hathorn admitted he needs to improve his putting as he progresses. Tuesday’s round featured 12 bogeys and one double, many of them the product of three-putts once on Stowe’s hard, fast and undulating greens.
“Definitely hot and cold; some days I’ve been really happy with it, and some days like today are frustrating,” Hathorn said. “I know it’ll come back. I’ve actually been really happy with the way I’ve been hitting the golf ball. I need to work on my short game because, in order to shoot decent scores out here, I have to be able to putt.”
Not that others didn’t find Stowe a tricky test on Tuesday. Kimball Union Academy graduate Evan Russell left himself tied for fourth place after a 2-under 70, aided by a sharp-breaking birdie putt on the par-4 ninth hole. He finished with five birdies but three bogeys as well.
“I kept finding ways to lose my momentum and hit a couple of loose shots, loose putts,” Russell said. “But it was pretty solid.”
Rocky Ridge’s Nicholas Murphy, a former all-conference player at Northern Vermont-Johnson, fired a 7-under-par 65 for a three-shot lead. Rutland’s Garren Poirier, one of Russell’s playing partners, birdied five of his last six holes for a 4-under 68.
The top 40 golfers and ties after Wednesday’s second round will advance to Thursday’s 36-hole final day.
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Pleat storms to medal: Former Dartmouth College golfer James Pleat followed Monday’s 6-under-par 65 with a 7-under 64 on Tuesday to easily win the New Hampshire Amateur stroke-play medal at his home Nashua Country Club.
Starting on No. 10, Pleat eagled the par-5 11th hole and added seven birdies — five on Nashua’s front nine holes — to lock down the top seed for the 64-golfer match-play portion of the championship at 13-under 129, five strokes better than the Golf Club of New England’s William Huang. Pleat will meet Nashua clubmate D.J. Petropulos in Wednesday’s opening match at 7:30 a.m.
Carter’s Pat Pelletier shot a second-round 70 for a two-day tally of 4-under 138 and will be the fourth seed in match play. He’ll take on the defending state am champ, Passaconaway’s John DeVito, at 8:50 a.m.
Montcalm’s Ben Peters (155), Carter’s Andy Hunnewell (156) and Claremont’s Zach Melcher (156) missed the match-play cut.
Chip Shots: The Vermont Open at Lake Morey CC was canceled on Tuesday. The tournament, originally set for late June, had been rescheduled to July 27-29 in hopes that the pandemic would be under control. “Many of our players come from points outside New England, and it has become clear this virus is not contained throughout much of the country,” director of golf Justin Bonnett said in an email. It’s the tourney’s first cancellation in its 65-year history. … The Vermont Am champion this week will, for the first time, receive the Dave Pfannenstein Memorial Trophy. The VGA’s executive director from 2012-18 and a longtime teaching pro in Vermont, Pfannenstein died on April 5 in Florida of complications from COVID-19. He was 60. … Vermont Am officials made several rules concessions to the virus. They included no rakes for the sand traps, free drops in bunkers for shots hitting some unsmoothed place, inserts in the holes to limit personal contact with the cups and no touching of the flag sticks.
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.