Chadwick Outlasts Cassetta to Capture Tournament of Champions  

By STEVE WILLIAMS

SUMMERFIELD – After he shot an opening-round 78 in the Triad Golf Today Tournament of Champions at Greensboro National, Todd Chadwick starting looking ahead to the next event on his schedule.

After all, he was tied for 17th place, some seven shots behind first-round leader Chris Logan. Too many good golfers to get past, he thought.

“Are you kidding me?” he said when asked if he thought he was in contention after the April 6 round. “I told Greg Earnhardt (a member of his foursome the second day) that I was just trying to play a good round to get ready for the (North Carolina) Mid-Am.”

Even after firing a three-under-par 69 – the second best score in the tournament’s six-year history – he never entertained thoughts of winning.

“When we got in, I was getting ready to leave and Greg said ‘you better stick around. That might be good.’ We started hearing that the guys behind us were backing up and having trouble on the greens and so forth. I was surprised, to be honest with you.”

Chadwick’s 78-69 was good enough to tie Chris Cassetta (73-74). The two then hooked up in a six-hole playoff that didn’t end until the next day with Chadwick winning with a par.

Chadwick becomes the fourth winner in the six-year history of the event. Logan has three titles and Chadwick, Richard Shackleford and Mike Roshelli one each.

The field’s 42 players – all winners of events in 2001 – were put to the test in both days of the tournament. A biting wind made first-round conditions difficult and, despite better weather for round two, some nasty pin placements had many of the players begging for mercy.

But Chadwick, a Clemmons resident and the Tanglewood club champ, got around the 7,072-yard, par-72 course without a hitch.

“I played so solidly,” Chadwick said. “I didn’t have a bogey.”

Chadwick, playing four groups ahead of the leaders, used the steady play for the unexpected sneak attack up the leaderboard.

Cassetta, a 28-year-old Kernersville resident who qualified by winning the Cardinal club championship, had finished tied for second three shots behind Shackleford in 2001. He left the 18th green after Sunday’s round knowing he had gotten past the others in the lead group.

“I felt like at the worst I would be in a playoff,” he said. “I knew how tough the course was playing. It thought it might be good enough, but Todd played a hellava round.”

Earnhardt, the 2001 Keith Hills Amateur champion, finished third playing his home course. Like Chadwick, he made a large leap up the leaderboard in the final round, firing a two-under-par 70, but he fell one stroke short at 148.

Shackleford (77-73) and Logan (71-79) tied for fourth at 150 and Floyd Green (77-74) and Scotty Mounce (73-78) tied for sixth at 151.

In the Chadwick-Cassetta playoff, both parred the first four holes (Nos. 1, 9, 10 and 11) and suffered darkness-induced bogeys at the par-4 12th.

Neither really looked to have an advantage in the playoff until the fourth hole (the par-3 11th) when Chadwick missed the green and Cassetta was safely on within 20 feet.

“I hit a terrible 4-iron left of the front bunker and I had a terrible lie,” Chadwick said. “But I hit a lob wedge up there about two feet. I probably couldn’t hit that shot again if I put a hundred balls down there. But that kept me in it.”

By the time the playoff reached its fifth hole, the par-4 12th, it was dark. Cassetta missed the green and made a bogey but Chadwick three-putted to also suffer a bogey.

“I had two puts to win, but I couldn’t read the green,” Chadwick said. “It was pitch dark.”

The playoff resumed at 9:30 Monday morning and was pretty much decided by the first swing at the par-4 No. 1 hole as Cassetta mis-hit his tee ball.

“I just tried to steer that shot down the fairway and I hit a poor shot,” Cassetta said. “I then tried to hit a great shot over the hazard and it just didn’t quite make it. I felt I could get that shot onto the green. It was about 225 yards, but it didn’t carry for whatever reason.”

Chadwick found the fairway with his tee shot and hit a 9-iron to the green about eight feet from the cup.

“I had 130 yards to the middle and I knew I wasn’t going to be short so I choked down on a nine iron and just made sure it got past the pin.”

When Cassetta’s bogey bid missed, Chadwick needed just three putts to win. He took only two, ending the tournament’s longest-ever playoff with a routine par.

Chadwick grew up as a member of the Cardinal Country Club but never played golf seriously while living there; instead working on his jump shot that made him a deadly shooter while at Northwest Guilford High School.

He was still playing basketball for recreation after he moved to Richmond, but two broken wrists finished him with hoops.

“I started playing a lot of golf when I was living in Richmond and I really started working on my game after I moved to Clemmons about four years ago.”

He first qualified for the Tournament of Champions by winning the Pudding Ridge Amateur in 2000. He played in the 2001 T of C and shot 74-75 to tie for sixth.

“This is the first big tournament I’ve won,” Chadwick said. “There were a lot of quality players here. I’m tickled to win it.”