Kent resident Oakley Murphy captured the Golf Channel Am Tour national championship on Wednesday in the championship flight on the PGA West course in La Quinta, Calif.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Murphy followed up a disappointing opening-round of 82 with rounds of 71, 68 and 73 to win his first national title in the flight (handicap 3.9 or less).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A clutch five-foot par save on his final hole on the Palmer Private course forced a playoff with defending champion Paul Erdman, of Erie, Colo., and Murphy prevailed on the first extra hole.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“I like the pressure,” said Murphy. “I like playing the game. It’s hard to go low when it’s windy, so I just tried to hang in there and make par.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Murphy, who credits his grandpa for introducing him to the game while he was in high school, called his national victory his top golf achievement this far.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Nearly 650 players made up the largest field in Am Tour history, representing 47 states, Puerto Rico and Canada.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The 72-hole national championships served as the tour’s culminating event and were contested on four PGA West courses.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kent resident Oakley Murphy captured the Golf Channel Am Tour national championship on Wednesday in the championship flight on the PGA West course in La Quinta, Calif.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14829"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14829"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}