GREENFIELD — Lining up his birdie putt just off the green on the 17th hole, Max Major’s eyes widened. After studying the putt with partner Brodie Conant, Major knew the path he wanted it to follow.
His veteran partner didn’t question his assessment.
“Maxie doesn’t miss many putts so I was definitely confident in what he wanted to do there,” offered Conant.
Major slammed the ball into the cup from the fringe some 20 feet out, clinching the 72nd Invitational Four-Ball Championship Flight title with a 3 and 1 victory over Derek Yvon and Brian Foley in the Sunday finals at the Country Club of Greenfield. It was the second straight title for Conant and Major, a team that became the 12th pair to go back-to-back in the history of the storied event and the first since Dave Kennedy and Don Foberg won consecutive titles in 2002 and 2003.
Holding a 2-up lead on 17, Conant and Major needed to just halve the hole to clinch the title. With a big gallery looped around the green, Foley, playing out of Springfield Country Club, stuck his approach to just six feet. With his birdie putt awaiting, however, Major pumped in his own birdie to capture the hole and clinch the championship.
“I figured we had to make birdie there because I didn’t want that match to extend any longer,” explained Major, who plays out of Rutland Country Club (Vt.). “I told Brodie the read was left edge. I loved (the read). I just had to make sure I got it there.”
The birdie capped off a string of three straight for Conant and Major. After Yvon, who plays out of GreatHorse in Hampden, had his birdie putt conceded to put the square the match on 14, the defending champs saved their best golf of the day for the home stretch.
Major landed his tee shot on the par 3 15th hole to five feet. After Yvon’s birdie putt fell just short, Major curled in a fast and tricky putt for birdie to move the pair back to 1-up. Conant’s up and down from off the green to save par was a key moment in the hole, allowing Major the opportunity to attack the birdie putt with a par already in his team’s back pocket.
“We move forward pretty well after bad holes, so we both hit bad shots on 14 and were able to rebound quickly,” Major said. “Brodie making (par) there was huge. I wouldn’t have putted it like that if he wasn’t already in with a par.”
Yvon and Foley, playing in the Invitational for the first time, saw Major sink some huge putts over the course of the championship. Major eagled No. 8 to square the match after his team trailed for most of the front 9. His birdie on 15 helped jumpstart the strong finish.
“Max hit a lot of great shots,” said Yvon, a former standout athlete at Cathedral High School and Springfield College. “A lot of the birdies that they had to make, they made. And when he was out (of the hole), his partner was in. They balanced each other out well.”
Holding the 1-up lead on No. 16, Conant sprang into action to put his team on the brink of another title. He chose a driver for the par 4 tee, which measured in at 355 yards. His blast put him just short of the green, in excellent position, and he chipped to about eight feet with a good look at birdie.
“Driver’s not really the play for me there, normally, but we tried to make something happen so I decided to just grip it and rip it,” explained Conant.
Yvon and Foley made par, with Major also getting in for his par. That left Conant with a chance to put his team dormie with two holes remaining, and he rolled in the birdie to put the lead at 2-up with a second win in as many holes. Major’s birdie on 17 finished off the run of three straight victories to seal the deal.
“These guys did a great job closing the match out,” lauded Foley, who is the varsity ice hockey coach at Pope Francis High School, of Conant and Major.
Yvon and Foley took a 1-up lead early in the round, as their par on the par 3 second hole put them ahead quickly after Conant’s short par putt lipped out.
The teams matched pars until both sides birdied No. 7. Major came through with one of his better putts of the day, snagging a halve of the hole thanks to a 12-footer after Foley had chipped to three feet and tapped his in.
Major’s eagle on No. 8 was set up by a monster drive. His midrange putt hung around the hole, going around 360 degrees before falling to put tie the match.
Conant and Major added wins on the ninth and 10th holes, as Conant’s par was good enough to capture No. 9 and he birdied No. 10 after pushed his tee shot right into the 11th fairway. From there, he stuck his approach in tight, and bent his birdie putt in for a 2-up lead.
Foley slowed the momentum with a badly needed birdie for his team at No. 11. His tee shot on the long par 3 (185 yards) landed about 15 feet from the hole, and he slammed in the putt center cup to cut the deficit to one. It remained that way until Yvon’s birdie on No. 14 made things even with the home stretch approaching.
Yvon and Foley’s march to the championship match saw them play some lengthy matches along the way. In the Round of 16, the third-seeded pair, which shot 64 during the qualifying round on Thursday, needed 19 holes to edge Tim Rice and Dave Donoghue. In the quarterfinals, things went all the way to 18 before they were able to dispatch Chris Bourbeau and Garrett Cousineau.
That set up a wild semifinal match against second-seeded KC Finley and Cody Booska. While Booska missed his Round of 16 match with a back injury, Finley handled the duties alone and managed to get his team to the weekend. In the quarterfinals, with Booska back in the saddle, the team held off familiar foes Dave Kennedy and Nate Burdick, putting them into the semis with Yvon and Foley.
That match saw both teams get red-hot on the back 9. Between the two teams, every hole was birdied on the back, and Foley and Yvon wound up 8-under for their round to squeak out a 1-up victory.
“That was an unbelievable match,” recalled Foley of the semifinal. “We played a lot of great matches here. The field was great, the atmosphere was great. Every match was tough for us.”
In the other semifinal, Conant and Major managed to get past No. 5 Jeremiah Bayer and Jay Spofford, 4 and 3.
“The one-seed was nice to have for us,” explained Major. “We got to have a nice practice round on Thursday to get back into it and then from there, we took it one match at a time. We got a decent draw and took it one step at a time.”
For Conant, winning the event steeped in tradition at his home club for the second year in a row was quite an honor.
“It’s incredible,” he said. “This is the pinnacle of golf for me. Some of these younger guys play in some bigger tournaments, but for me, this is as good as it gets.”
Should the pair go for a historic third consecutive title in a row, they would aim to join elite company. Just two tandems in the history of the event have won three straight Invitationals: Fred Kask and Bill Brew (1969, 1970, 1971) and Bill Kufta and Pete Zaccagnino (1959, 1960, 1961).