Palsenbarg & Shin--Match Play Open Team Champions

Had this championship ended after 18 holes instead of the regular 36, which is the way this legendary Match Play Team Championship has been conducted for most of its 63 historic years, we would now be saluting a pair of 16-year-old amateurs from Swan-e-set Bay Resort in Pitt Meadows---Charlie Hughes and Justin Shin---for upstaging the veteran teaching professions from Northview.

Instead, however, Palsenbarg and John Shin, one-down through the opening 17 holes on a bitterly cold and blustery Spring morning, staged an afternoon comeback that culminated in a 3 & 2 victory.

It may have been that 50-foot putt for an eagle by Palsenbarg on the 18th hole just before the lunch break that ignited the veterans on their way to a comeback. Moments earlier, from 200 yards out Justin Shin had dropped a dart less than a foot from the cup for a tap-in eagle that he and Hughes expected would give their side a two hole lead. Pallsenbarg's dramatics squelched that.

Finalists Charlie Hughes & Justin Shin, Swan-e-Set Bay Resort

The 'Veterans' squared the match by shooting pars on the 21st hole while 'The Kids', both grade 11 students at Thomas Haney Secondary in Pitt Meadows and members of last season's BC High School golf championship team, bogeyed. Palsenbarg and John Shin kept their momentum going with birdies at the 22nd hole and when Hughes and Shin failed to respond the Veterans took a one-hole lead, which they never relinquished.

Team bogeys at the 25th cost the Kids another hole and when Palsenbarg, the reigning PGA of BC Assistant's champion, chipped in from 10 feet off the green the 'Kids' conceded the 28th hole to fall three-down.

Undaunted, Justin Shin began a personal putting demonstration by dropping a 40-footer from the fringe for birdie on the par-three 29th hole to get back to two-down and pulled off another 40-foot eagle putt on the 30th hole but Palsenbarg matched that eagle with another of his own from about 12-feet to halve the hole.

A Palsenbarg birdie from about 3 ½ feet on hole #33 put the Veterans back up by three and when both sides halved the 34th hole the match was over. Palsenbarg and Shin each collected cheques for $1,500 while Hughes and Shin were awarded $700 gift certificates.