Past RDGA Mid Amateur Champions

The RDGA Mid Amateur Championship

Bobby McCartney captured his first RDGA Championship title in 2021, winning the RDGA Mid Amateur Championship at Shelridge Country Club.

One of the more recent additions to the annual lineup of Rochester District Golf Association championships, the RDGA Mid Amateur Championship is open to all amateur male golfers age 25 and over (as of the beginning of each year’s tournament) who are members in good standing at RDGA clubs. All contestants must have a RDGA/USGA® Handicap Index® supplied by the RDGA.

Patterned after the USGA’s Mid Amateur, the first RDGA Mid Amateur Championship was held in 2007 as a way to provide a formal competition for local post collegeiate-age amateurs, for whom the game is an avocation, rather than a stepping stone to a professional career. The format of the event is a two-day, 36-hole, stroke play competition, conducted as two 18-hole rounds held on consecutive days.

To say that Stafford Country Club member Jim Scorse has dominated this championship is an understatement. In 2019, the five-time RDGA District Championship John H. Ryan Memorial winner captured his eighth RDGA Mid Am title in the 13-year history of the competition. In 2016, Ridgemont’s Ken Starkweather became just the second player (other than Scorse) to win the District Mid Am title more than once.

In 2021, Bobby McCartney – a one-time local junior standout who played golf at St. John Fisher College, then tried his hand on the professional mini-tour circuits before returning to the Rochester area to pursue a different career path and get his amateur status restored – entered the final round with a one-shot lead over 2017 RDGA Mid Amateur Champion Tim Saur of Oak Hill Country Club and quickly built up a four-shot lead on the front nine. The back nine was not as comfortable for McCartney, however, as he recorded two bogeys and a double bogey.

Meanwhile, Chris Blyth of Locust Hill Country Club was providing pressure to McCartney with his steady play. The 2018 RDGA District Champion recorded one birdie and three bogeys on the front side – but all pars on the second nine at Shelridge – to finish with a 2-over-par 74 for the second day in a row and a 4-over, 148 total for the Championship.

Despite his back nine troubles, McCartney held on for a two-shot victory over Blyth with scores of 72-74 for a 146 total for the Championship.