Local golf: Breakthrough win for Swaringen

Published 12:05 am Tuesday, June 27, 2023

By Mike London

By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — As half of three winning teams in the Grady B. McCanless Four-Ball Tournament as well as a multiple title-holder in the Dugan Aycock Davidson County Amateur, Michael Swaringen is no stranger to golf championships.

But winning the Rowan Masters at Warrior on Sunday was something of a breakout tourney for one of the area’s better players.

Nick Lyerly had won the previous four Rowan Masters. With no Lyerly in the field, the door was wide open for a statement win. It was Swaringen who embraced the opportunity.

“Of all the championships I’ve won, I think this one is my favorite,” Swaringen said. “To win a major Rowan individual tournament with a field as strong as this one and to win at Warrior, a tough golf course that I don’t play that often, it was a satisfying win. Warrior isn’t an easy course. To win there, you’ve got to hit some golf shots.”

Swaringen is a 2001 Mount Pleasant graduate who has lived in Rowan County for more than a dozen years. He’s been a frequent contender in the Horace Billings Rowan Amateur at Corbin Hills and he was part of a Four-Ball team (with Mitchell Swaringen) that reached the Labor Day semifinals at the Country Club of Salisbury last year.

Swaringen lives on High Rock Lake. That puts him in an ideal spot to enjoy other interests such as boating and fishing, but competitive golf is always a priority.

To get to Sunday’s championship match, the fourth-seeded Swaringen had to win four times, including a 1-up battle in a Sunday morning semifinal with recent Carson graduate Cade Cranfield, who had prevailed as the No. 32 seed against top-seeded William Little in the opening round.

“I’m up three holes through 14, but then he birdies 15 and 16 and my lead is down to one,” Swaringen said. “He’s a great kid and a tough player who is going to be hard to beat in these tournaments for a long time.”

Swaringen held on against Cranfield by halving 17 and putting his second shot on the par-4 18th within 12 feet of the pin for a routine two-putt par. Cranfield needed a miraculous birdie to win the hole, and that didn’t happen.

Providing the opposition in the championship match for Swaringen was seventh-seeded Brian Jones.

Jones, a 1991 South Rowan graduate, can remember being part of South’s earliest golf teams. He’s a China Grove lifer and a Warrior member who plays the course frequently. He has some home-field advantage there.

Jones, 50, beat younger guys. In a second-round match on Saturday morning, he won 1-up against Lenoir-Rhyne golfer Hank Robins, who starred at Salisbury High not long ago.

I was playing in a foursome with Robins and two high school golfers (Northwest Cabarrus’ Cooper Burris and East Rowan’s Landon Merrell),” Jones said. “The combined age of those three guys was 54, so they had me by four years.”

Jones made an against-all-odds comeback to beat Robins.

“I’m standing there on the 12th tee and I’m down 5 holes, but then I believe I was 4-under the rest of the way,” Jones said.  “After 17, I was ahead.”

Jones also won 1-up against Burris, the No. 2 seed who had shot 69 in qualifying.

In Sunday morning’s semis, Jones beat veteran Chad Frye, who had been on a serious roll.

“Chad had been walking through everyone, with a lot of very short matches, and was playing as well as anyone in the field,” Jones said. “But I played solid, played my game and I got by him.”

Jones believed he had an excellent chance to win the tournament because he had played in the Sunday morning foursome with Swaringen and Swaringen had played solid golf, but hadn’t done anything spectacular.

Swaringen agreed with that assessment.

“In the early rounds, I just made a lot of pars and let the other guys make mistakes,” Swaringen said. “But I knew in the championship match, as well as Jones was playing, I wasn’t going to win a lot of holes with pars. I needed to make some birdies.”

He made them. Swaringen got off to a quick start in the championship match with a winning birdie on No. 1.

No. 2 was a memorable hole for both competitors. Both golfers were safely on the green in regulation on the 434-yard par-4, but Jones was staring at a 4o-foot putt, while Swaringen was at least 30 feet from the cup.

“I’ve got a 40-footer, bleeding off to the right, but I rolled it right in there and I’m thinking I’m going to get that hole, but then Swaringen drops his putt right in on top of me,” Jones said.

So Swaringen stayed 1-up. Then he won No. 3 with a par and took No. 4 with a birdie for a quick three-shot lead.

Jones chipped in to take No. 6, but Swaringen stayed 2-up through nine.

Swaringen went up three holes on No. 10.

Then he drained a 20-foot birdie putt on No. 11 for a four-hole lead.

“After that putt, I knew if I could just make pars, I could hold on,” Swaringen said.

After halves on 12 and 13, Swaringen clinched the match on No. 14, a 388-yard par 4. He put his second shot inches from the hole for a 5 and 4 victory.

Swaringen played 14 holes in championship pressure and championship heat in 4-under.

“I played in the foursome with him on Sunday morning, and he actually was struggling a little bit,” Jones said. “But in our match, he was hot. I made some good putts, but it was still hard to win holes. He put it all together. He got up and down over and over.”

Swaringen agreed.

“I definitely saved my best for last,” he said.

Despite the buckets of rain — 8.5 inches — that fell on Warrior during the week, Swaringen and Jones agreed the course was in phenomenal shape and the greens held well.

Warrior pro Brian Lee said the unsung hero of the event was Warrior superintendent Mike Cagiano and his team.

“They worked overtime to provide championship conditions,” Lee said. “We had a great tournament and we had the two golfers who played the best in the tournament meeting for the championship. Michael played consistently in every match and really turned it on in the final.”

Swaringen has momentum and plans to enter three upcoming tournaments. The Horace Billings Rowan County Amateur at Corbin Hills is on his calendar for mid-July. Then he’ll try to defend his championship in the Dugan Aycock Davidson County Amateur at Lexington Golf Club in late July. Then the tradition-rich Labor Day Four-Ball at the Country Club of Salisbury will wrap up the major events in Rowan County.

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