Denman etches name in history with first back-to-back State Amateur titles in nearly 50 years

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The 110th State Amateur Championships hosted by the Holston Hills Country Club was a special event for players and spectators. Last year’s winner, Payne Denman, cemented his name into the Tennessee golf history books, going back-to-back, becoming the fifth player to do so in tournament history and the first since George Creagh’s successful title defense in 1977.

Denman led much of the way through the first two rounds, with Bennett McNabb trailing closely behind. The Lee University senior opened with an impressive 64, tying Denman’s first-round score. But Denman maintained momentum in round two with another outstanding day on the course, scoring a 65, as he began to pull away from the rest of the field. 

Following the second round, the 144-player field was cut to the top 60 and ties, putting 67 players through to the final two rounds. Round Three brought major shifts to the leaderboard. Denman stumbled and saw his five-shot lead vanish. After only carding one bogey over his first 36 holes, the Riverwatch native saw two bogeys, a double bogey and a triple bogey mar his third round. 

The field took advantage of Denman’s lackluster third round, with University of Tennessee-Chattanooga sophomore and Holston Hills member Ethan Whitaker with a 6-under-par 65 to catapult up the leaderboard into first place. Clarksville’s Patton Samuels provided another steady performance to get to 8-under through 54 holes and put him in the lead group for the third straight Tennessee State Amateur.

As the previous 54 holes had shown, the Martin Condon Trophy was still very much up for grabs.  Denman and Samuels seemed determined to put the pressure on Whitaker for the final 18 holes, gaining a stroke on Whitaker in the first nine holes.

It was Samuels who first put the pressure on Whitaker at the turn. With Whitaker making two bogeys and Denman making one in the first three holes of the back nine, Samuels went one under during that stretch to take the outright lead through 13 holes. A clutch par putt on 13 preserved that lead before the defending champion began to make his move.

Denman rattled off three birdies in a row between 14 and 16, making two long-range putts on 14 and 15 to roars of his “bucket hat brigade” of friends following the action. While he did this, Samuels kept pace, making birdies on 15 and 16 and a par on 17 to hold a one-stroke lead heading to 18.

The crowd surrounded the group and pressure kicked in as the group headed to the final hole. 

On 18, Samuels drove his tee shot far left into a tree and short of the bunker in the left rough. Meanwhile, Denman found the fairway with a perfectly placed drive to reach the par 5 18th in two. Samuels went for the green and ended up in the tall fescue left of the green leaving a tricky pitch into the green. Denman’s second shot found one of the few flat spots in front of the final green and didn’t roll down the hill to give a chip for eagle. 

Needing to knock it close, Samuels pitch from the high grass sailed the green, now lying three and still away. His downhill chip shot went past the hole and off the green, stopping on the fringe. He stood and waited to see how Denman would handle his third shot, knowing the best the Austin Peay senior could do was save par.

Denman chipped it to two feet for a tap-in birdie, meaning Samuels would have to make his putt from off the green to force a playoff. His putt burned the edge and left Samuels in disbelief as the final-hole two-shot swing and a runner-up finish at the 110th Tennessee State Amateur.

Just as shocked, it seemed, was Denman, who, after carding a 76 in the third round, believed he was out of contention for a title defense. Instead, he stood on the 18th green, tapped in a putt, and was once again the State Amateur champion.

With Denman and Samuels setting the pace, Toby Wilt crept up four spots to place third after his 2-over-par performance in round 1 and finished the tournament impressively, going 9-under-par. In a tie with Wilt, Ethan Whitaker fell down the board after leading after round 3, going 2-over-par in round 4. 

In a 3-way tie for fifth, Bennett McNabb bookended his tournament performance with two sub-70 rounds and his best finish at a Tennessee State Amateur. Griffin Law, an incoming freshman at UT-Chattanooga, was impressive throughout the week, firing four rounds of even-par or better. Lucas Armstrong joined Samuels as the only player at the Tennessee State Amateur to record four rounds of under-par golf to earn his first Top 5 finish at the event.