Brice Bergesen Wins 2003 Texas Tournament Players Championship
31 August 2003 - Webster, TX - By the time the Tournament Players Championship started the course at Webster was starting to play back into form and it looked like the sloppy play during the morning was behind us. The amateur division saw last years state champion, Neal Armstrong, starting as the ninth seed charge through the field defeating Doug Austin, Dave Blalock, and Rhet Wylie to advance to the finals. He would face Mickey DeLucca who defeated Adam Sahmel and Jason Sheffield to get there. In the Pro Division in would Lee Messinger versus Brice Bergesen for the title. Brice won over Steve Armstrong, Joel Baker and Dave Lynch while Lee defeated Steve Tanton and Jon Drexler.
Just before the final matches (36 holes) started a brief but heavy rain fell. All four of the remaining players knew this would greatly affect play. Brice was able to better handle the change and jumped to a three hole lead by the time he and Lee had reached the sixth hole. While Lee was unable to close the gap over the back nine neither was Brice able to increase it and Brice still held a three hole lead as the players went into the second eighteen. It was Lee's turn over the first six holes this time through, he managed to close the gap and tie Brice over the same holes Brice had originally created it on. Lee started strong on the back nine. He made 3 of 4 aces on holes 9 through 12 but Brice topped him each time. A bad bogey by Lee on the 13th hole gave Brice a one hole lead, Brice then proceeded to make the next two hole's while Lee lipped out both. Brice continued his run by making the 16th hole to close out the match and take his fifth title of the year.
The amateur division saw a tight back and forth match between Mickey and Neal with neither player able to gain more that a 2 hole advantage. It came down to last hole but Mickey prevailed 1up to take his first title of the year.
Article and scores provided by Lee Messinger.
2003 PPA Texas Tournament Players Championship
(Webster, TX - 31 August 2003)
