William Hoffer

Illinois resident William Hoffer, 33, of Elgin won the Mid-Amateur Championship, played at the Knollwood Club in Lake Forest, Ill. He defeated Jeffrey Ellis, 30, of Oak Harbor, Wash., 3 and 2, in the final match.

Hoffer, vice-president of sales for his family's plastics business, drove the 100-mile round-trip each day from Elgin to Knollwood Club. This was the second consecutive year that the champion won in his home state. In 1981, Jim Holtgrieve of St. Louis, Mo., won at the Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis.

The starting field of 150 included three members of the United States Team that had won the World Amateur Team Championship at Lausanne, Switzerland, in September. They were Jay Sigel, who established a Mid-Amateur qualifying record with scores of 71-66-137; Bob Lewis Jr., who was the Mid-Amateur runner-up in 1981; and Holtgrieve.

Sigel and Holtgrieve both lost in the quarterfinals. Sigel, despite a round of 71 that included 17 pars and one bogey, lost to Barry Terjesen, an Akron, Ohio, lawyer, 1 up. Holtgrieve lost, 1 up, to David Oglesby, an insurance company systems analyst from Jacksonville, Fla. Lewis lost in the second round to Bill Harvey on the 19th hole.

In the 18-hole final, Hoffer and Ellis halved the first two holes with pars, although Ellis had to roll in a delicate 10-footer on the second for his. Ellis took his only lead at the third with a routine par. Ellis three-putted the par-3 fourth hole to allow Hoffer to square the match.

Hoffer went 1 up at the sixth hole with a par 4 as Ellis struggled to a double-bogey 6. Ellis came right back at the seventh with a par 3 while Hoffer took three to get down from the right fringe of the green. Hoffer took the lead for good with a par at the eighth hole. Hoffer was again 1 up.

On the ninth hole, a long par-4 guarded by a lake on the left, Ellis hooked his tee shot, ending up in the grass a few inches from the water and inside the boundary of the hazard. As he planned his second shot, Ellis reached over and picked up a leaf near his ball, violating Rule 33-1, which prohibits a player from moving loose impediments within a hazard. The penalty was loss of hole, and Ellis was 2 down. The match ended on the 16th.

Surprisingly, there were no birdies in the match. It took a 36-hole score of 155 to reach the match-play portion of the championship. Although only 2 years old, the Mid-Amateur has established itself as a popular national competition, as evidenced by the 1,779 entries received this year.