Kugler & Schuman Win 18th Senior Four-ball Championship

For Neal Schuman, it felt great to repeat as a champion. For Adam Kugler, it was great to share a championship in his first partnership with Schuman.

Together, the Alpine Country Club representatives shot a 4-under-par 68 to win the 18thNJSGA Senior Four-Ball Championship on a match of cards over defending champions John Samerjan and Tom Avers of Neshanic Valley on Wednesday, September 18 at 6,133-yard Copper Hill Country Club in Ringoes.

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“It’s always nice to win with a friend,” said Schuman, who won in 2010 with Robert Green. “Adam really played well.”

In third place behind Schuman and Kugler and Samerjan and Avers was the Knickerbocker team of Phil Fabrizio and Dennis Slezak with a 69.

The net championship went to Steve Szmak and Jim MacDonald of Copper Hill with a 75-13-62, followed by Bernard Kelly and Fred Olt of Little Mill with a 64, on a match of cards over Dan Juffey and Tom Novellano of Colts Neck, also with a 64.

Kugler, the low amateur at the 2012 NJSGA/NJPGA Senior Open, turned 55 this year, enabling him to play in the event. He has played several times in the Four-Ball Championship, reaching the finals five years ago.

“Adam was great today. He was our birdie man. I was there if he needed me,” said Schuman, the proprietor of Arthur Schuman Inc., a cheese supplier in Fairfield.

Kugler, a retired banker, accounted for all five of the team’s birdies. He birdied the par-5 third hole by two-putting from 25 feet. He added a birdie on the par-4 seventh hole by hitting a 20-yard wedge to a foot.

Kugler gained a third birdie on the par-4 12th hole, this time hitting a wedge from 95 yards to within four feet. A fourth birdie came at the par-5 15th hole, when Kugler reached the fringe in two. He putted close from 40 feet and sank a short putt. He got his fifth birdie on the par-4 17th hole when he lofted a wedge shot from behind trees on the right of the fairway to within six feet and drained a downhill putt.

The team’s lone bogey came on the par-5 ninth hole when Kugler “had chipping issues,” he said.

The team of Samerjan and Avers came undone with a bogey on the 15thhole when Samerjan three putted.

“We didn’t have the birdie barrage like we did last year when we had seven birdies,” Samerjan said.