Reflecting on an extraordinary match, CSGA interviews Darien's Ben Carpenter and Golf Performance Center’s Rick Dowling
Connecticut State Golf Association (CSGA) says the 120th Connecticut Amateur championship match which took place at Ridgewood Country Club between Darien’s Ben Carpenter and Rick Dowling of Golf Performance Center was one to remember.
“Still tied after 36-holes the title match went to a playoff for the first time since 2006. On the first extra hole, Ben Carpenter’s par finally sealed the deal. A few months after the epic title match Carpenter and Dowling recalled their memories from the 2022 Connecticut Amateur,” CGA explains.
Here, CSGA interviews the golfers about the extraordinary match.
CSGA: Heading into the week what were you thinking and what was the state of your game?
Ben Carpenter: Heading into that week I had taken two weeks off after a long spring season and beginning to the summer season. I was just hoping for a good ball-striking week. A week to build positives on. My goal for the tournament was to make match play and to make it as far as I could. Obviously, it isn’t completely up to me how far I make it, my opponent is a big factor too but I just wanted to play my best.
Rick Dowling: I think it was similar where I had taken a little bit of a break. I knew Ridgewood was going to be playing tougher than people thought so I was trying to go in rested. I wanted to get through stroke play as best as I could to get a good draw. Really just taking it one day at a time.
View the 2022 Connecticut Amateur Bracket
CSGA: Rick you are a two-time Connecticut Amateur champion. How do you approach the stroke play portion of the week?
RD: I think I usually try to figure out how the course is going to play which gives you some sort of moving target but you never know with golf. I think in my experiences when I did play well in match play I did have a higher seed but something tells me it is luck of the draw and it is how people are playing. When I have gone far I have had a better seed.
CSGA: Ben how do you approach stroke play?
BC: For me, stroke play is just survive and advance. Anything can happen in match play. Like Rick said, being a higher seed gives you a much better draw which definitely benefited me in the first few matches. After day one of stroke play, I didn’t have a great day and I was right on the cut line for match play and in the second round I played pretty flawless golf and was able to make my way back to the top of the leaderboard. Then I was able to piece together some good rounds in my first couple of matches and get some momentum going.