Pfitzner, Bost are fit to be tied after Mother Nature intervenes in tourney for Boys Golf

FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS • Eighteen holes of regulation golf  and one playoff hole couldn’t decide what Mother Nature ultimately decided  Tuesday afternoon.

Edwardsville sophomore Michael Pfitzner and Collinsville senior Jordan Bost  each shot a 75 and then carded a bogey on the playoff hole before a thunderstorm  moved in to put a halt to things at the Southwestern Conference boys golf  tournament at Stonewolf Golf Club. Thus, Pfitzner and Bost were declared  co-champions.

“You’d like to have your own medal. But, still, first place is first place,  right?” Bost said. “He had to play just as good to get there. We both came out  of here with first-place medals. You can’t be mad about that.”

Said Pfitzner: “We both played well, so we both deserved to win.”

Meanwhile, Pfitzner’s Edwardsville squad shot a 310 to beat Collinsville by  five strokes for the team title. The Tigers have now won or shared the title in  13 of the past 14 seasons.

“The main goal of the season was to try and finish undefeated in duals and  then try and win the conference,” Edwardsville coach Dene Schickedanz said. “I  couldn’t be more proud of them. We played some of our best golf today overall.  You know, 310 is one of our lowest scores of the season, and we did it on a  tight golf course, which is something that we’ve struggled with all season.”

It appeared as though Pfitzner’s 75 was gonna hold up, but Bost’s score was  one of the last ones posted on the board. It didn’t, however, put a damper on  his day. And it was a day in which he could erase his past few matches, where  his score wasn’t even counted among his team’s top four.

“I went through a swing change right before the season, so that was tough  getting through that,” Pfitzner said. “But everything is starting to get into  gear.”

Bost had a rather rough start with a double-bogey and a bogey on his first  two holes.

“So then I made probably 12 pars in a row after that and then a birdie,” he  said. “I was reading the greens pretty well. I didn’t one-putt very often. It  was just fairway, green and two-putt. I just tried to get out with par. I mean,  par wins high school golf, right?”

On the playoff hole (No. 9), Bost hit a solid drive, but Pfitzner was even  better with a 300-yard tee shot on the 402-yard, par-four hole.

Bost’s second shot found some bushes to the right of the green and behind a  bunker, but he saved himself with a nice chip shot onto the green and then a  two-putt for a bogey.

“I can’t even explain what just happened,” Bost said. “I just wanted to cut  back to the pin, and I just sliced it. I had to keep my club actually under that  bush, or I would have got caught up in it. Luckily, it carried that bunker and  released right at the hole.”

Pfitzner, meanwhile, was on the green in two shots but had to settle for a  three-putt and a bogey.

“It had been about a half an hour since I hit a ball,” he said. “I hit a good  drive and a decent second shot, but I just didn’t really hit the best of putts.  I knew I needed to make it. It just didn’t happen.”

While both players were on the green, the skies opened up for one of the few  times since earlier in the morning before the meet. That, coupled with thunder  and lightning lurking close by, forced officials to stop things right there and  award a co-championship.

The other six individual medalists were Belleville West junior Cade Dibadj  (76), Collinsville senior Zac Warner (76), Edwardsville senior Connor Bradley  (77), Edwardsville senior John Schmidtke (78), Belleville East junior Michael  Fuehne (79) and Edwardsville senior Drew Curtis (80).

In the Southwestern Conference, points are awarded for performance in league  matches as well as the conference tournament. Edwardsville ended up finishing  first overall, followed by Belleville West, Collinsville, O’Fallon, Alton,  Belleville East, Granite City and East St. Louis.

“Winning the conference championship means you have to play well all season.  It’s not just on one day because of the points system,” Schickedanz said. “I  think it says a lot about our program.”