For the sixth straight year, the ILH boys golf champion will not win the state tournament.
But this time there is a better reason for it than a bad day on the links.
Freshman Kengo Aoshima of Iolani followed his first-round 69 with the same score and beat Kamehameha’s Spencer Dunaway by three strokes to win the ILH championship on Turtle Bay’s Fazio course on Friday. Just as he did when he quit soccer after a league championship last year to take up golf, Aoshima has played his last high school event of the season as a winner.
He accepted a sponsor’s exemption into the Chunichi Crowns professional tournament in Japan and will have to miss his first state tournament. He left on Friday night.
"I really wanted to play states winning it is something every student athlete dreams about from when they are young," Aoshima said. "I debated it, but at the end it was my decision and I just thought that whatever opportunity comes I need to seize that moment."
Mariel Galdiano of Punahou took the girls’ title by one stroke over teammate Aiko Leong despite shooting a 76 on Friday.
The first round was played at Oahu Country Club on Wednesday. Galdiano led by four shots and Aoshima led by one.
Galdiano will certainly return to the North Shore for the state tournament at the end of the month. She won last year’s crown by seven strokes as a freshman.
Aoshima seemed to clinch the boys title on the 16th when he made a nice par putt and Dunaway hiccupped for a double-bogey. But Dunaway caught fire from there, blasting his drive on the par-4 17th into the middle of the fairway while Aoshima drove into the right rough behind a bank of pine trees. He approached his ball as Dunaway blasted a shot within 4 feet of the cup.
Aoshima had no idea what the group in front of him, which had three golfers who entered the day three or fewer strokes off the pace, had done, but the freshman knew only one way to play.
He decided to go for it even if it could possibly cost him the tournament. He said it helped his decision knowing that every time he tried to hit a straight shot on the range in the morning it banana-ed.
"I knew my coach wasn’t going to like it, and he didn’t like it," Aoshima said. "But I knew I could do it and I just believed in myself and executed the shot. I think it is my natural nature of being aggressive, even when I win I don’t want to win by one, I want to win by 10 and shoot the lowest score that is out there for me."
Aoshima hooked the ball around the obstacle and onto the green, then waited for the previous group to tee off before lagging his long putt within range to save par. Dunaway sunk his putt, then birdied 18 to Aoshima’s par but it was too little, too late.
Dunaway shed a few tears on the 18th green, knowing he came up just short after his furious closing holes.
"First of all, that was a great finish," Aoshima said. "He played well today and I guess I just had more luck. I have cried at tournaments, too; it gave me a couple of flashbacks of tournaments when my father gave me a speech on the 18th green of a loss it was very influential."
The final girls’ group hit the final green 45 minutes later and the mood was a lot lighter.
Galdiano, Leong and Iolani’s Rose Huang lined up their final putts giggling with each other and the small gallery of parents and boys competitors. But it didn’t stop Galdiano, who was third in the ILH last year, from clinching it with a tap-in. She knew she led by one when she drove the ball on 18.
"We were trying to keep it, like, not as serious because we were all, like, nervous," Galdiano said. "Keeping it cool is a lot better."
Leong moved within a shot on the 17th when she birdied to Galdiano’s bogey and has to be considered one of the favorites when the field returns to the Fazio course at the end of the month for the state tourney.
Only one girl, Punahou’s Stephanie Kono in 2006, has swept ILH and state titles. Galdiano will try to become the second, and hopes it is more like her easy win at Kaanapali last year than the grinding round she had to put together on Friday.
"It would definitely mean a lot more if I played as well as I could have," Galdiano said.
"I take today as something not to worry about because I know it wasn’t me, it was the greens. I know I can’t putt on aerated greens, I am just hoping they will recover in time for states."
