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MIke Demko - Pub Championship winner
The 2007 Golden Tee LIVE Regional Championships recently got underway, with the 2007 Midwest Open held August 3-4 at Harrah's Casino in Joliet, IL. To qualify for the main event of the Midwest Open, players had to have played at least 50 games of Golden Tee LIVE during the six week qualifying period. Throughout the six week period starting June 1st, over 850 qualifiers played 100,000 games of Golden Tee LIVE.
The first part of the Midwest Open was the Pub Championship, an event designed for the top qualifiers from every Midwestern pub. The event gathered a total of 113 local Pub Champs each vying for the $1,000 prize money and the coveted Pub Championship mug. The players were blindly drawn into two 64-man brackets, and after some fierce competition, the field was whittled down to just two players. Mike Demko from Allen Park, MI was eventually crowned the Midwest Pub Champion, with Jade Johnson placing a close second.
"The Pub Championship puts a local spin on the Regionals," said Gary Colabuono, Incredible Technologies marketing and tournament director. "It allows our operators the chance to more closely connect with their players and locations. We had a 40% increase in the number of contestants in this year's event and we attribute that directly to our operators helping to promote it in their locations."
The next part of the event was the Team USA Shootout – a newly structured 50-man contest designed for the top Midwestern qualifiers, with the top three players in the event earning a spot on Team USA and an all-expenses paid trip to the Golden Tee World Championship in Las Vegas. The region's top 50 Golden Tee players each played a cycle, which involved playing on each of the five 2007 courses, with the top 3 players earning a spot on the team. Jeff McClellan from Grand Rapids, MI, Jason Matkovich from Madison Heights, MI and Marc Muklewicz of Naperville, IL each distanced themselves from the crowd to become the newest members of Team USA.
With the Pub Championship and the Team USA Shootout out of the way, all eyes were on the Main Event, where 190 players of all skill levels assembled to compete for a share of $25,000. The format consisted of a five-course qualifier, with the individual scores tallied to generate a leaderboard. The player who qualified #1 was to be crowned "King of the Hill" and receive a bye to the final round, while those who finished 2-9 would playoff in an 8-man, single elimination tournament to face the "King" in the final round.
This year's King of the Hill was Chris Thorbrogger,with the next eight highest shooters facing-off in a single-elimination, head-to-head bracket to advance to the finals.
World champion Graig Kinzler and last year's Midwest Open champ Matt Estepp couldn't stop Jimmy Parker of St. Charles, MO from blazing his way through the bracket to face Thorbrogger in the final match. However an early 2-stroke deficit was too much for Parker to overcome and Thorbrogger was named champion and took home the $5000 prize money.
"I'm shocked that I won with the field as tough as it was," Thorbrogger said after he was named champion. "It feels great being on top. It totally felt like I was at home. I can't thank IT and everyone enough for the wonderful job they did to make this weekend happen."
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