This Season: Amateur golf tournament to tee off

CEDAR RAPIDS — What began as a Field-of-Dreams notion — build it and they will come — quickly gathered steam, and now Eastern Iowa has an amateur golf tour to call its own.

Beginning next weekend, Brown Deer Golf Club in Coralville will kick off the first of four events in the inaugural CRANDIC (Cedar Rapids and Iowa City) amateur golf tour, which will give area golfers the opportunity for monthly tournament competition closer to home.

'We're giving these opportunities to people who would typically say, 'I'm not good enough to play tournament golf,'' said Steve Koepke, who serves on the tour's board of directors. 'This tour is made for you. It's built from the bottom up, not from the top down.'

The tour was largely the brainchild of Koepke, who coaches golf at Jefferson High School in Cedar Rapids. At the Aug. 30 Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Ryder Cup at Brown Deer Golf Club last year, Koepke approached Brian Wernimont, the club's assistant PGA golf professional, who now serves as vice chairman.

Other board members today include golfers Mason Linn and Justin Leas.

Tour commissioner is Matt Taylor, who was instrumental in the development of the website www.crandictour.com, which houses the tour schedule, sign-up and a state-of-the-art results page.

'It was kind of the Field-of-Dreams idea,' Koepke said. 'You build it and they'll come. ... If we build this tour, if we give something to the golfer, not just the competitive scratch golfer, but to the golfer in the Corridor, and they will come ...

'Where we are now, we were hoping to be at in Year Three.'

The age minimum for tour membership is 23, and the yearly fee of $10 gives a player access to all four events. Membership also grants the player discounts on greens fees for practice rounds and select items in the host pro shop.

The first three events will be flighted tournaments with no cuts, meaning the $85 registration fee guarantees a player two days of golf. Friends can pair up and play together for the first round, while second-day golfers will be grouped based on first-day scores. Each flight winner will be awarded a cash payout.

The final two stroke-play stops on the tour will include the second-annual Cedar Rapids Mid-Amateur at Ellis Golf Course on June 4 and 5, then to Iowa City July 16 and 17 at Finkbine Golf Course.

With no tour event in August — many of the players compete in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Ryder Cup and City Amateur events — the inaugural season concludes Sept. 25 with the Cedar Rapids Two-Man tournament at Jones Golf Course.

Instead of stroke play, 36 teams of two will play nine holes of better ball and nine holes of alternate shot before a flighted nine-hole scramble.

'The relationships that can potentially build out of an experience like this, we're hoping, are profound,' Koepke said. ' ...

It's about bringing the Corridor together through golf, and I think that this is something that has maybe been talked about before, but has yet to be done.'

CRANDIC AMATEUR GOLF TOUR SCHEDULE

May 14-15

Mid-am Tour Opener

(Brown Deer Golf Club, Coralville)

June 4-5

Cedar Rapids Mid-Amateur

(Ellis Golf Course, Cedar Rapids)

July 16-17

Finkbine Invitational

(Finkbine Golf Club, Iowa City)

Sept. 25

Cedar Rapids 2-Man

(Jones Park, Cedar Rapids)

l Comments: douglas.miles@thegazette.com