Uselton’s completes long-awaited return to winner’s circle; Fly becomes sixth to complete four-peat in Memphis

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — At the club where the Tennessee Golf Association was founded came one of the toughest tests of the season. Memphis Country Club challenged the competitors at the Tennessee Senior & Super Senior Amateur Championships.

In the Senior Amateur, it was a return to the spotlight 21 years in the making for Clay Uselton. The last time the Tullahoma native won a TGA event was the 2003 Tennessee Four-Ball Championship with James McCord. The gap between individual titles spans even longer, a stretch of 39 years between Uselton’s victory at the 1985 Tennessee Match Play at Stones River Country Club.

“I get emotional thinking about how I played in my first TGA event 50 years ago when I was 12,” Uselton said. “Plus, this is my first time in an individual event in about 20 years, so to come out and win it is just special.”

The win didn’t come easy for the now 62-year-old as Memphis Country Club proved to be quite the test. Fast, firm, undulating greens challenged the top senior golfers in the state throughout the week with only a single round of even-par or better from the entire field. Uselton played steady golf throughout on the par-70 Donald Ross course, firing a three-day total of 218 to win with 8-over-par.

“I've played all over. I played Oak Hill, the Crump Cup in Pine Valley. But these have to be the fastest greens I’ve ever played,” Uselton said to The Chattanoogan. “But it's a ball striking course, so that's where I always felt like it was an advantage whenever I played a really hard golf course.”

Pressure during the final round came from both the greens and the rest of the field. As Uselton worked to stay atop the leaderboard, a challenger in the form of the defending champion Steven Mann worked his way up. The Franklin resident was 3-under through 12 holes in the final round to put him to at 9-over-par and right in the mix. But over the next six holes, Mann made four bogeys to drop back and finish tied for third.

Uselton had to keep his eye on Hubie Smith, Zeb Patten and Todd Burgan, who all started the day tied for the lead. The name of the game was to stay afloat and avoid any big numbers. Bogeys were not such a bad thing on the course that week as hard as it played. At the turn, Uselton held a one-stroke advantage over Smith, a five-shot lead over Burgan and a six-shot lead over Patten. A birdie and two bogeys on the back nine was enough to hold a three-shot lead on 18 where he was able to soak it all in: a TGA champion again at long last.

In the Super Senior division, it looked as if the title would finally change hands after Buzz Fly had won the previous three iterations. The Memphis native started four strokes back of 36-hole leader David Apperson and it would not be an easy feat given the arduous conditions. But the 7-time TGA champion knew what it would take to defend his title for a third consecutive year.

“I just had to let the field come to me,” Fly said. “As tough as Memphis Country Club was playing this week, I knew I could play my game and if I kept it around even that the top of the pack would probably drop a bit.”

Fly rattled off six straight pars before a stumble on 7 cost him two strokes and moved him five back of Apperson. He responded two holes later with back-to-back birdies on 9 and 10, meaning Fly had made two of the 12 total birdies amongst the Super Senior field on those two holes. In seemingly an instant, Fly went from four back to a four-way tie for the lead as Apperson’s 4-over front nine dropped him into a tie at 14-over with Fly, Tennessee Golf Hall of Famer Danny Green and Memphis’ Barry Stafford.

It was Fly, however, who responded best over the final stretch. He finished the final eight holes at 1-over-par with two bogeys and a birdie to win by two and complete the four-peat.

With the win, Fly became just the sixth player in TGA history to win an event in four straight years. He joins Tennessee Golf Legends Lew Oemig, Cary Middlecoff, Maggie Scott, Judy Eller Street and Margaret Gunther Lee.

For the second year, the championship also featured a Legends division featuring players 75 and older competing in a 36-hole championship. Germantown’s Jack Ramsey was able to hold on to the lead with an 81-82, 23-over-par finish after Franklin’s Gary Pierce mounted a comeback with a second-round 76 to finish one shot back of Ramsey.