BY JACK MURRAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Like father, like daughter.
Bill Dorece won the Greater Cincinnati Golf Association's Senior Metropolitan Championship in his first try last week at Sharon Woods, a month after his youngest daughter, Christi, won the Greater Cincinnati Women's Association Met Championship at Kenwood.
"That's a little unusual," Dorece said of two city golf champions being from the same household in the same year.
His wife, Rosemary, won the Ivy Hills match play women's crown. The Doreces, who have three other children, moved here from Racine, Wis., in 1987.
"Christi was as excited for me winning as she was for herself," said Dorece, 56, a former Wisconsin high school state champion and Greater Milwaukee champion.
Dorece defeated, among others, three-time winner and defending champ Ed Heimann and 1995 U.S. Senior Amateur champ Jim Stahl.
"Wouldn't that be neat if we could both be champions," Christi told her father prior to the senior event.
Dorece never would have thought this could happen a decade ago. "I tried to push Christi into golf at a young age," he said, "but she resisted."
Christi preferred swimming and volleyball. It wasn't until she was cut from the St. Ursula volleyball team as a sophomore six years ago that golf became her game and dad became her primary teacher. Christi, 21, who won the Met Junior Girls championship in 1994 and was on St. Ursula's state championship team the same year, will be a senior at the University of Toledo, on golf scholarship and majoring in sports marketing. She qualified for championship flight in match play at the recent Women's Western and will play in the Ohio Women's Amateur in Canton the first week of August.
FRONT NINE:
Jim Redwine of Shawnee Lookout and George Schroer of Neumann defeated Don Sexton and Mike Morgan, both of Hidden Valley, 65-67, in an 18-hole playoft for the Met Senior Handicap best-ball team championship Thursday at Miami View. Redwine's handicap is 18, Schroer's 8, Sexton's 10 and Morgan's 5.
The 41st Metropolitan Handicap will draw more than 300 teams and 600 players today and Tuesday at four different courses: Kenwood's Kendale and Kenview, Heritage and Wetherington.
Bill Dickey, president of the National Minority Junior Golf Scholarship Association, was impressed with the hospitality of the Hamilton County Park District, which hosted the 43rd annual Midwest National Junior Golf Championship last week at the Mill Golf Course and Meadow Links and Golf Academy.
Brady wrote, in part, in a letter to park director Jon Brady: "In over 40 years of involvement with minority junior golf I have never seen anyone step up and provide the kid of support that the Hamilton County Park District provided."
Tony Yates and Tom Kendrick were also praised.
BACK NINE:
Ohio State University-bound David Wagenseller, Enquirer Prep Golfer of the Year at Wilmington High, won the 81st Western Junior at Exmoor Country Club in Highland Park, Ill., July 18, defeating Brady Stockton 3 and 2 in the championship match.
Wagenseller is ranked fourth in the latest Golfweek - Titleist national amateur boys rankings.
The annual pro-am matches will be at Traditions in Burlington Aug. 21 instead of the usual venue, Crest Hills, which is playing host to a GCWGA event that day. The amateurs won last year's matches for only the fourth time in 30 years since the competition for the Mashburn Trophy began in 1968. Former Red Chris Sabo won the Claude Rost Memorial Cup Outstanding Player Award.
Other members of the select winning Amateur team: Kyle Elfers, Tom Elfers, Doug Hutchins, Pete Kelley, Tee McCabe, Russ Ratterman, Pete Samborsky, Andy Sanders, Chris Straley, Carl Tuke, Jim Volpenhein, Kyle Voska, Kevin Weidenweber, Heimann, Wagenseller. Senior Division: Denny Gallagher, Karl Heffner, Bruce Rotte, Denny Straley, Stahl.
Pros qualify by accumulating points through their local Cincinnati PGA Chapter tournaments. The top 14 players plus the stroke play champion (Gene Samborsky) and and match play champion (Sam Arnold) qualify.
With two events to play before selection, the top 16 SOPGA Cincinnati point-getters are: Stan Bickel, Larry King, Dan Gage, Bob Hauer, Paul Hobert, Arnold, Tom Bach, Zach Fink, Paul Rooney, Mark Welage, Dick Plummer, Andy Horn, Ken Kaiser, Mark Yingling, Gil Gusweiler, Dennis Wells.
Natalie Tucker of Lawrenceburg added a fourth-place finish in the Indiana PGA Women's Open at Prestwick Country Club in Avon to her fourth-place finish in the Indiana Amateur. Her 145 for 36 holes was five strokes behind winner Stacy Orschell of Connersville. Earlier, Tucker, a Memphis State sophomore, won the GCGA's inaugural Women's Stroke Play Championship.
FORE:
The Star Bank LPGA Classic in conjunction with the Children's Medical Center Aug. 7-9 at Country Club of the North in Beavercreek is offering a $100,000 bonus to any 1998 tournament champion who wins the Classic.
Seventeen champions this year are eligible for the first-place $190,000 (including the bonus), the largest paycheck on the LPGA Tour with the exception of the U.S. Women's Open. Colleen Walker is defending champion. Middletown's Marianne Morris, winner of the 1986 Women's Met Amateur but a non-winner in seven years on tour, is the local favorite.
