Tuesday marked the first day of the Manitoba Mid-Amateur Championship being held at Quarry Oaks Golf Course, and after 36 holes, Steinbach’s Doug Penner is in the hunt, with 18 holes left to go on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“It’s exciting,” Penner said after his day was done while speaking with Brian Munz, the Director of Communications with Golf Manitoba, sharing the moment with his son by his side. “It’s nice it’s a local course. I grew up playing here as a junior, and I play not far down the road at the Steinbach Fly In. I know this track well.”<\/p>\n
Going low in round 2<\/p>\n
After posting an opening round of 70, Penner followed that up by shooting a 69 in his second round of the day, putting him at -5 and just four shots back of the lead. “I stuck to my strategy off the tee, and that was just keep it in play,” he says with a smile. “My caddy, my son, was on the bag, and he gave me a lot of advice, so that was special. Stay out of the bush and go from there.”<\/p>\n
Full attack mode<\/p>\n
Being aggressive was also part of the game plan for Penner, who says the course gave opportunities throughout the day and he took advantage where he could. “You can basically fly to the hole, and it will stop. Sometimes it will suck back because it’s soft greens.”<\/p>\n
The humble star managed to post an eagle during his round, posting a 3 on the par 5 9th hole, something he said was thanks in large part to some good advice from his trusted sidekick. “That was a good hole,” he says with a grin. “I was going to take out a 4 iron, but my caddy said I should rip driver. Took driver and put it to about 190, then a 6 iron in, put it to about 12 feet and drained a putt. That was pretty exciting.”<\/p>\n
Keeping his focus<\/p>\n
Toward the end of the day, Penner was still on the course while the others in contention were done, but he says he wasn’t thinking about them, and that he was focused on his own game. “I didn’t look at the leaderboard much, or think about my score too much. Just think about my shot, make a good swing and commit to it. I did check it on the first par 3, and I was in second, but other than that, I just tried to stick to my strategy.”<\/p>\n
The final round<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Penner says he’ll be leaning on his course experience, using that to put him in a position to fight for a first-place finish. “I think it should help a bit,” he says with a grin. “There are a lot of good players here, and I’m only four shots back. Just stick to the same strategy. Keep it in play off the tee, attack the pins, and do my best.”<\/p>\n
Local scores<\/p>\n
Penner is the top local at -4.<\/p>\n
Tyson Ehnes, representing Lorette Golf Club, is at +3.<\/p>\n
Jon Schroeder of Quarry Oaks is at +5.<\/p>\n
Jamie Roy with the Steinbach Fly-In is at +14.<\/p>\n
Matt Fatouros of Quarry Oaks is at +14.<\/p>\n
Ron McLean of Quarry Oaks is at +19.<\/p>\n
Russell Trudeau with Golf Canada Club- MB is at +22.<\/p>\n
Jody Fenton with Quarry Oaks is at +25.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tuesday marked the first day of the Manitoba Mid-Amateur Championship being held at Quarry Oaks Golf Course, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-818851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}