The Walter J. Travis Invitational Tees Off at Garden City: A Loaded Field for One of Mid-Am Golf’s Crown Jewels
Chris DeJohn returns to defend his Walter J. Travis title and chase a third Garden City crown at one of the most prestigious match-play events on the mid-am calendar. A look at the field, the format, and the names to watch.
The Walter J. Travis Invitational kicks off this week at Garden City Golf Club, and there are few events on the mid-amateur calendar with the history, prestige, or feel of this one. Named after Walter J. Travis, the British Amateur and three-time U.S. Amateur champion who called Garden City home, the event sits at one of the most exclusive and historically significant venues in American golf. The club, founded in 1899, has been part of the heartland of competitive amateur golf for more than a century, and the Travis is the kind of invitation that mid-amateurs spend years working to receive. The format is what makes the event different. Friday is a single round of stroke play, and after Friday’s scores are in the field is cut and divided into flights. The top 16 advance to the Championship Flight, with the remaining qualifiers placed into additional flights, and the rest of the tournament plays out as match play. Roughly a third of the field does not advance beyond Friday, which adds real consequence to the opening round and makes qualifying day a tournament unto itself. Stroke play tests scoring; match play tests competitors. Over multiple rounds of head-to-head golf, players are forced to make decisions, manage pressure, and execute under conditions that look nothing like a standard scorecard, and that makes the Travis as much a measure of competitive character as of pure ball-striking.
Headlining the field is the defending champion, Chris DeJohn out of Arcola Country Club in New Jersey, who returns to defend the title he claimed at Garden City a year ago and looks for his third Travis crown overall. The deepest threat on paper alongside DeJohn is Christian Cavaliere, the Mahopac (NY) golfer currently ranked 195th in the world among mid-amateurs on amateurgolfinfo.com with a strokes-gained-vs-field of +3.53 over 17 counting events. Cavaliere has been one of the most consistent mid-ams in the country this season and arrives at Garden City with as much momentum as anyone in the field. Matt Parziale, a past U.S. Mid-Amateur champion playing out of Thorny Lea Golf Club in Massachusetts, brings one of the deeper resumes in the bracket. Trip Kuehne, the longtime Texas mid-am and former USA Walker Cup player out of Vaquero Golf Club, returns to an event whose match-play format suits his pedigree as well as any in the field. Stephen Walsh of Portmarnock Golf Club brings the international representation, and TJ Shuart, fresh off a T12 finish at last week’s Jupiter Invitational, arrives with a productive opening stretch of the season behind him.
The Met-area presence is, predictably, deep. Joe Saladino out of Huntington Country Club, Greg Shuman from Deepdale, Bradford Tilley from Sleepy Hollow, Brian Williams and George Boudria from Winged Foot, Pat Wilson at Hamilton Farm, and Patrick Knott from Merion all enter as legitimate threats to play deep into the bracket. Garden City itself is well-represented by a strong contingent of member players, including Andrew Lane, Turner Hopkins, Sean Byrne, Reed Kern, John Malicki, David Lowe, Tanner Owen, Brian Falk, Chris Thompson, John Finn, and Griffin McQuilling. Knowing the greens and the prevailing wind at Garden City is a real advantage in match play, and the home club has historically punched above its share in this event.
A few additional names are worth watching from the rest of the field: Matthew Naumec, the New England standout out of Boston; Matthew Mattare of Saucon Valley, who has been competitive in major mid-am events for years; Nico Donaldson of Deepdale, one of the more notable young mid-amateurs in the Met area; and Connor Casey, who plays out of Somerset Hills in New Jersey. With match play, the bracket can change overnight if a single mid-seed gets hot, and the Travis has produced exactly that kind of run before. Live scoring and bracket updates can be tracked on the Walter J. Travis Invitational tournament hub. midamgolfHQ will be tracking the action all week from Garden City.