The CSGA Links Volume 3 Issue 6 September 2015 | Page 39

FEATURE

At 61, Szewczul Cherishes Every Championship Start
The following article was written by Stuart Hall and appeared on the USGA website during the week of the U.S. Amateur,
which marked Szewczul’s 26th USGA championship appearance. He recently qualified for the U.S. Senior Amateur, and
will make his 27th USGA start on September 26th at Hidden Creek Golf Club in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey.

D

avid Szewczul played his first
U.S. Amateur Championship
in 1982 at The Country Club
in Brookline, Mass. So when the USGA
announced its return to Brookline in 2013,
the 100th anniversary of amateur Francis
Ouimet’s landmark U.S. Open victory on
the same course, Szewczul got an idea.

"I said to my wife that it would be a
great thing to go back,” said Szewczul, 61,
of Farmington, Conn. "I played there in
’82. [Szewczul’s son] David wasn’t born.
So with all the Francis Ouimet hoopla, I
thought it would be a neat thing for him
to go and caddie for me and share the experience."

As he had done 31 years earlier, Szewczul
failed to make the cut. But the result was secondary
to the sentiment.

Szewczul is the second-oldest player in this
week’s U.S. Amateur Championship at Olympia Fields
Country Club. Reigning U.S. Senior Amateur winner
Pat Tallent, of Vienna, Va., is the oldest at 62. Only
five players over the age of 50 are in the field, whose
average age is 22.16.

Szewczul, a director of sales and marketing
for Merrill Industries, said he will need “two perfect
rounds” to advance to Wednesday’s match-play
bracket, but that is not the overriding motivation for
playing.

“It’s testing yourself against the younger kids
and seeing where you stand,” he said. “I’m at a better
place with my game. I’m a better ball-striker and I
know the game better and am making better coursemanagement decisions and club selections. It comes
with age and experience, and knowing what you’re
capable of doing and not doing.”

It’s also about enjoying the moment. "I
don’t think these younger kids know what they’re
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going through and what they’re experiencing,” said
Szewczul, who is playing his seventh U.S. Amateur
and 26th USGA championship overall. "It just does
not get any better than this and then to have my son
with me. We don’t do this for a living, so you had
better enjoy it."

As Szewczul speaks about his passion for
this championship, tears well up, because in 2001 he
suffered a left-wrist injury so severe that doctors told
him he would never be able to play the game again.

Four surgeries, including a reconstructive
procedure, combined with 30 months of rest and
rehabilitation, had him back in time to qualify for and
play in the 2004 U.S. Senior Open alongside Arnold
Palmer at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, Mo.

"To me every day playing is a bonus when
you’ve been told something like that,” he said.

Dave Szewczul, 20, a sophomore on the
Providence College golf team, is again on his father’s
bag, but the elder Szewczul knows the roles may soon
be reversed.

“He already outdrives me by 30 or 40 yards,”
he said. “Maybe one day I can caddie for him in one
of these.”
CSGA Links // September, 2015 | 39