Past RDGA Mid Amateur Champions

The RDGA Mid Amateur Championship

Aaron Youngman accepts the RDGA Mid Amateur trophy from RDGA Vice President Dennis Olbrich following his victory at Mendon Golf Club in August.

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 2022, Oak Hill’s Tim Saur became just the third player (other than Scorse and Ken Starkweather) to win the District Mid Am title more than once.

Hosted by Mendon Golf Club, the 2024 RDGA Mid Amateur Championship featured two former collegiate players – Irondequoit Country Club’s Aaron Youngman and Midvale’s Joseph Feeney.

With the competition getting tighter over the the last few holes, the two competitors came to the 18th hole tied for the lead. With each player parring the last hole, Youngman and Feeney went to extra holes to decide the title. In the playoff, a clearly exhilarated Youngman came out on top, clinching his first RDGA Championship title of any kind at age 35.