Lamey Cup Returns After Two-year Hiatus And B.C. Players Can’t Wait To Compete
Mid-Amateur Champions Craig Doell & Shelly Stouffer Head Up BC Golf's PNGA Lamey Cup Team
By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf
The PNGA Lamey Cup is named in honour of Dr. Jack Lamey, a former president of the Pacific Northwest Golf Association who started the Ryder Cup-style team competition featuring players representing the Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia golf associations 16 years ago.
Kelowna’s Norm Bradley, a former B.C. Senior Men’s champion, considers it his good fortune to have played in nine of them. He’ll make his 10th appearance in early May when the Lamey Cup resumes after a two-year Covid-induced hiatus at Bellingham Golf & Country Club.
Bradley says the Lamey Cup has had a profound effect on his golfing life and credits it for making him a better player. “It’s been incredible,” Bradley says of his Lamey Cup experiences.
“In terms of my development as a player it has been absolutely remarkable. It’s a chance to play against the best players in the Pacific Northwest in very competitive situations, but very fun situations. It’s just a complete honour to play with the B.C. team, be a member of the B.C. team and play against the best.”
This year’s event will be played May 4-5 and features 12-member teams (eight men and four women) from each of the four associations. It’s a match play competition with four-ball and foursomes matches played on Day 1 and 12 singles matches contested on Day 2.
The competition was named the PNGA Cup for its first 13 years and renamed in honour of Dr. Lamey shortly before his death in 2019. Bradley sent an email to Lamey not long before his passing to thank him for creating the competition. “I told him that without this event I don’t think I would be half the competitive player that I am now,” Bradley says.
“This event has taught me so much, it has given me an opportunity to play against the best and to be able to understand what golf is all about in a competitive sense. I just thanked him for that. It’s sad that he has passed away, but the legacy of Jack Lamey is that he has created an event for amateurs in the Pacific Northwest to become better players. That is what it is all about. From participating in this event you become a better player, there’s no question.”
Victoria’s Craig Doell has played in all but one of the previous 14 Lamey Cup competitions and is once again on the B.C. team. Like Bradley, Doell has fond memories of his Lamey Cup experiences. “It has been a lot of fun,” says Doell, a former B.C. Mid-Amateur and Mid-Master champion. “It is such a unique team format. You don’t get a chance to play in a lot of golf team competitions, so to have that opportunity to play for B.C. is a nice honour. And it’s a fun format to play as a team because you have teammates to pull for and hopefully as a team you have success.”
Doell has particularly enjoyed what he called the special camaraderie of the event, where friendships have been forged with members of opposing teams. “You develop some great relationships and friendships through these team matches and that is part of why the event started, to build these regional friendships and alliances across Washington, Oregon, Idaho and B.C.,” Doell says. “I have created a lot of good friendships. Funnily enough, you run into people from these matches at other tournaments and develop a good bond and friendship.”
Each Lamey Cup team is comprised of four Mid-Amateur men (age 25 and older), two Mid-Master men (age 40 and older), two Senior men (age 55 and older), two Mid-Amateur women (age 25 and older), and two Senior Women (age 50 and over).
Besides Bradley and Doell, the B.C. team includes Shelly Stouffer of Nanoose Bay, Jackie Little of Proctor, Nonie Marler of Vancouver, Christina Proteau of Port Alberni, Saare Adams of Victoria, Mike Aizawa of Richmond, Brent Wilson of Cobble Hill, Nasheel Kassam of Vancouver, John Robertson of Courtenay and Mike Kennedy of North Vancouver. New British Columbia Golf president Greg Moody will be B.C.’s non-playing captain.
Stouffer, who last year repeated as B.C. Senior Women’s champion and also won the Canadian Senior Women’s championship, is especially excited about this year’s Lamey Cup. Last summer, Stouffer made it all the way to the semifinals of the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur, where she just missed out on an opportunity to meet Oregon’s Lara Tennant in the championship final. Tennant has won three straight U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur titles.
“I am really excited because I know we are playing against Oregon on the singles day and I am hoping to play Lara Tennant,” Stouffer says. “So I am pretty pumped about that.” B.C. has won the Lamey Cup on three occasions, but has not hoisted it since 2014. Bradley hopes that can change at Bellingham Golf & Country Club, a highly regarded old-school layout that he first played as a member of the Simon Fraser University Golf team.
“Of course we have a chance to win,” Bradley says. “That’s the thing about the Lamey Cup. You never know what is going to happen. One match, you are down and get a tie and that one half point makes a difference. It’s unpredictable what is going to happen, you never know who is going to get hot and it usually does come down to slim margins in the end.”
Bradley has helped organize a Zoom call for members of the B.C. team that he hopes will galvanize the team. “I thought that rather than just showing up and not everyone knowing each other, we have the ability now to connect through Zoom. So I thought why not use Zoom to connect the whole team together. So at least we come together once before competition and get to know who we are and know a little about what the Lamey Cup is all about and know a little about what goes on in competition. I thought that would help.”
Live scoring will be available on the event portal under the Results & Team Standings tab. Click HERE
CHIP SHOTS: Washington won the last Lamey Cup when it was contested in 2019 at Crosswater Golf Course in Sunriver, Ore. . .Oregon has taken home the Lamey Cup seven times, British Columbia and Washington have won it three times and Idaho’s lone win came in 2017.