The RDGA Match Play Championships
Now in its 30th year as one of the Rochester District Golf Association’s top annual championships, the RDGA Match Play Championship returns in 2026 as one of the RDGA’s top major championships.
Each year, the starting field for the RDGA Match Play Championship is filled by invitees based on the top point leaders from the RDGA’s Player of the Year Award points list from the previous season – a list that incorporates points earned based on performance by players in certain local, state and national events.
Through the years, the RDGA Match Play Championship has produced many memorable champions. Jim Scorse – the four-time RDGA District Championship John H. Ryan Memorial winner from Stafford Country Club – leads all past Match Play champions, having won the title nine times since 1998 and finishing as runner-up in 2008. Monroe Golf Club’s John Kircher – another four-time RDGA District Championship winner – has won the Match Play Championship title twice.
In recent years, three of the RDGA’s top younger players – Gavin Hall, the three-time District Championship winner from Mendon Golf Club; Oak Hill Country Club’s Trevor Sluman, winner of the 2014, 2015 and 2016 District Championship; and former Locust Hill Country Club member Dominic Bozzelli (now a touring professional on the PGA Tour) – have each won the District Match Play title.
The RDGA Match Play Championship also has a unique connection to the RDGA District Championship, dating back to the earliest days of the RDGA in 1930. For the first 38 years of the RDGA District Championship, the event was conducted as a match play competition – until 1969, when a 72-hole stroke play format was adopted, which has continued to be used to this day. When the RDGA Match Play Championship was added to the District schedule in 1997, it restored the tradition of top match play competition that had been absent from the RDGA for nearly 30 years.
Between 1997 and 2015, the RDGA Match Play Championship featured a starting field of 32 players, with the top 31 RDGA Player of the Year point winners from the previous season joining the defending champion to form the starting field. Beginning in 2016, the size of the starting field was reduced to the top-24 point winners (including the defending champion), due to the growing popularity of the RDGA Senior Match Play Championship and the need to accommodate a larger number of players competing for the two Championships on the same host course. By 2020, however, the starting field for both Match Play Championships was increased to 32, with players in the Men’s Match Play Championship being invited to enter based on the top-32 points list leaders from the previous season.
In 2024, the RDGA Men’s Match Play Championship finals witnessed Aiden Spampinato – a senior on the Methodist University men’s golf team – go head-to-head with one of the RDGA’s most consistent competitors in Yaroslav Merkulov, who entered this year’s Championship with not only three Match Play titles in the past four years but also two RDGA District Championship titles (2019 and 2021) over the same time span.
The two Men’s Championship finalists battled back-and-forth early in their match – but eventually Spampinato took a 1-up advantage late into their round. By the time the match got to the 18th hole, the two competitors were all square – although Merkulov later admitted that he had lost count of the match status and thought that he needed to win the 18th hole in order to get to extra holes.
Facing a mid-length putt for birdie on 18, Merkulov drained his putt – and celebrated with a Tiger Woods-like fist pump, thinking that he was going to a playoff…until he was informed that the putt was for the Championship.
With the victory, Merkulov now has Match play titles in 4 of the last 5 years – winning the Championship in four consecutive years that he has played in it (he did not enter the 2022 Match Play Championship).