Stefan Cronje, Kevin Roberson reigning champs in season-opening Reese Partnership
The Reese Memorial Day Partnership, which annually kicks off the schedule of Lubbock golf major events, starts this weekend with a little more than 100 teams in eight flights.
Stefan Cronje and Kevin Roberson, former Midland College players who won last year, are back to defend their title. Nine of the 16 teams in the championship flight have at least one player with a Lubbock major championship on his resume.
"The field's awesome," tournament director Ramiro Rodriguez said. "In the last four or five years, I've had better teams every year. I've had some drop, some add on. I've got a stellar championship flight and a great presidents flight. I've got some great teams playing this year. It's just top to bottom, teams have gotten better the last few years."
The tournament runs Saturday through Monday at Reese Golf Center.
The mood figures to be dampened. The Reese golf community was shaken on April 28 when longtime course owner Evan Matlock died unexpectedly at age 68. He suffered a heart attack, Rodriguez said.
"He wanted to kind of unite people to come in, build a community in that little section," Rodriguez said. "It's not so much a private golf course, like memberships. He still had an open mind to keep it public to let everyone play out there, because he cared about everybody. That's the kind of person he was.
"He didn't try to do a big uppity-up private golf course and push people away. He kept it all pretty real."
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The tournament field is missing some of the names who have had the most success in the annual Memorial Day weekend event, among them six-time champion Michael Pruitt, four-time winner Matt Nolasco and Jason Toelle, the playing partner with whom Nolasco won three times.
In addition to the defending champions, however, are four other players who captured Lubbock majors in 2023: Brady Shivers and Thumper Galyean, who won the LakeRidge Stampede by six strokes, and Mason Couch and Taylor Arreola, who prevailed in eight holes of sudden death at the Hillcrest Swinger.
Couch is playing this weekend with two-time city major winner Blake Ashcraft, and Taylor Arreola is paired up with Lubbock Christian University golfer Tres Arreola.
Three-time Men's City champion Beau Burgess is teamed up again with LCU coach and former Chaps player Jeff Maciejewski. They lost last June's epic Swinger playoff in the dark, one carried on to 9:59 p.m. by spectator carts illuminating tee boxes and greens.
Former tour pro Shawn Savage from Midland is entered with Robert De La Cruz, and former Texas Tech golfer Erick Willcoxon will read greens with former Coronado player Aidan Willcoxon.
Tyler Ware, one-half of the winning twosome in the 2022 Stampede, will share a cart at Reese with Leyton Hiebert, a UIL state-tournament player two years ago with Frenship.
The Reese field has been strengthened of late by current and recent college golfers, including Jakeb Mikel and Ty Houtchens, former Western Texas College teammates. They'll try to add a second Reese title after winning in 2020.
Tucker Tovar, who played at Arkansas-Fort Smith, will study putts alongside Jackson Drake, an All Saints Episcopal graduate who was second-team all-Summit League this year as a senior for Oral Roberts.
The youthful contingent also includes teammates Hayden Bowman and Tiaan de Jager, lineup regulars for LCU, as well as Ashton Aranda and Rial Williams, New Mexico small-college golfers who were Class 4A state-tournament players in high school for Lovington.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Stefan Cronje, Kevin Roberson reigning champs as Reese Partnership begins
