The 2015 RDGA District Championship John H. Ryan Memorial concluded on Saturday, July 11 at historic Midvale Country Club, with Oak Hill Country Club’s Trevor Sluman successfully defending his title – and in record fashion.
Sluman rode a streak of 28 consecutive holes without a bogey between Thursday’s second round and Saturday’s final round and posted scores of 65 and 67 over the last two rounds to finish the Championship with a 72-hole, 12-under-par 276 total on the par-72, 6,632-yard Robert Trent Jones layout. Stafford Country Club’s Jim Scorse finished in second place with an even-par 288 total.
Sluman’s 12-shot margin of victory matched the record set by Gavin Hall in the 2010 RDGA District Championship. Sluman also becomes the eighth player in RDGA Championship history to win the title in consecutive years.
“I didn’t know that,” Sluman said of his place in the RDGA Championship record books. “That’s pretty cool, though. That’s something my uncle didn’t do.”
Sluman, 21, is the nephew of 1988 PGA Championship winner Jeff Sluman, who also won the RDGA District Championship – once – in 1977.
Sluman began Saturday’s final round with a four-shot lead over Webster Golf Club’s Shane Dobesh, but it didn’t take long for Sluman to separate even more from the rest of the field.
On the first hole of the final round, Sluman found himself having to work for par, while Dobesh had an opportunity to move closer to the lead with a birdie putt. What happened next was enough to motivate Sluman for the rest of the Championship.
“I had a 20-footer for par on the first hole and Shane (Dobesh) was pretty tight for birdie,” he later recalled. “I made mine, and he missed his. I feel like that was really the difference for me – that was a two-shot swing for me. I made some more birdies after that, so I was just able to keep it going.”
On the next hole, the 386-yard, par-4 second, Sluman carded a birdie and Dobesh double bogied. Sluman also birdied the third hole and suddenly, he had opened a commanding 8-shot lead.
Although Sluman would record three bogies himself over the remaining holes of the Championship, he also collected six more birdies on his way to victory.
Dobesh never recovered completely from that early four-shot swing and eventually fell to third place at 1-over-par 289.
Scorse, a four-time RDGA District Champion, turned in another steady round on Saturday, adding a 71 to his previous scores of 71, 72 and 74 to finish at even-par 288 for the Championship, finishing runner-up to Sluman for the second consecutive year.
The top-20 finishers and ties from the 2015 RDGA District Championship receive automatic exemptions into the 2016 RDGA Championship.
General Manager Rich Marr, PGA head professional Mike Kiel, head greens superintendent Rick Christie and all the staff and members of Midvale Country Club proved to be exceptional hosts throughout the entire Championship week – the RDGA thanks them all for their outstanding hospitality.
For Sluman, a recent graduate of the University of Louisville who will be attending graduate school in Florida this fall, winning the District Championship for a second year in a row was an even better experience than the first time.
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