Three shots back with one round to go at the 2022 Ontario Junior (U19) Boys Golf
Championship last Friday at Timberwolf Golf Club, Oscar Feschuk saw no reason to deviate from an approach that was working.
In the end, the 18-year-old member of the Weston Golf & Country Club was well served by his patience, overtaking leader Cameron Pero (Picton Golf & Country Club) and capturing the 100th edition of the prestigious event with a four round score of 12 under par (276), an effort that included a 67 on Thursday.
“My first round was really wet, pouring rain, so I just tried to get through that one,” said the Toronto native, who opened with a 71 and will be heading to Texas A & M International in the fall. “After the second round (69), I knew that I was hitting it well so I tried to keep the same game plan for the last two rounds.”
Meanwhile, Pero was showing few signs of faltering, stringing together three consecutive efforts of four under par (68), sitting atop the leaderboard each and every day, with the pair joined by Matthew Javier (Scarboro Golf & Country Club) as the final trio on the course mid-afternoon on Friday.
With Pero coming back to the pack on day four – he finished with a 76, good for second place at 280 – and Javier only matching the 69 shot performance of the hard charging Feschuk (Javier finished at 282 in third place), it was Feschuk who would slide in thanks to a game that matched up well with the stiff test that is the Timberwolf course.
“I’m pretty long off the tee – I hit it far,” he said, noting that this was easily the biggest win of his golfing career to date. “And I would say that I’m a good iron player. My proximity to the hole this week was very good. You’ve got to hit it straight off the tee here; there’s a lot of places to lose balls.”
“I was really accurate off the tee this week. When I play my best golf, I like to hit cuts. I hit cuts all week and it was working for me.”
All of which really left only the issue of how to deal with a leader who was absolutely rock solid through three rounds of play. “I really just wanted to play as I had played the past three days,” said Feschuk. “I knew that if I did that, I would have a chance to win.”
Ironically, there was not a whole lot to garner from his play the past four to six weeks that might have predicted this historic victory. “I hadn’t played great coming in,” said Feschuk. “I was making a ton of birdies but I would make a couple of mistakes every day.”
“I was close to putting a couple of good rounds together; it all came this week, which was great to see.”
Interesting Sidenote: Feschuk may want to make visits to Sudbury a more regular part of his itinerary. In 2016, he was in town as a member of the Don Mills Flyers squad that captured the All-Ontario Peewee AAA Hockey Championships at Countryside Arena.
Ben Fowke of Timberwolf would earn local bragging rights, in spite of a tough round of 82 to close. His four-day score of 309 was good for a tie of 45th place, 10 shots better than Johnny
Svalina (Idylwylde), as the pair were the only two Sudbury golfers to make the cut, with Vince Palladino Jr. missing the mark by just a single stroke.
Though six Sudbury golfers opened play last Tuesday, only half of that group played the final two rounds, with Fowke emerging in pretty good shape, in spite of the elements. “I can't complain with how I played," said Fowke late Tuesday evening, the recent graduate of St
Charles College set to attend Laurentian University this fall, looking to compete with the Voyageurs golf team.
"The first 14 holes, it was pouring rain. Every single shot, my grips were soaked. To grind out a 75 like that, even though it's my home course, I think I put myself in a good position moving forward for the rest of the week."
And while he acknowledged that it could have gone worse in terms of losing his footing and such, the elements did force Fowke to play his round a little more differently than usual on a course that he knows all too well.
"There were some holes where I hit my driver pretty well but I was hitting in to the greens from these weird distances that I never used to see," said Fowke. "Some clubs I hit today were definitely not the norm."
"It was a little interesting."
