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In a golf performance that was both sublime and ridiculous, Jared Sawada and Nainoa Calip rained birdies all over soggy Oahu Country Club to win the 27th annual Nike Four-Ball Championship.
The former Manoa Cup champions got a bye in Tuesday morning’s opening round. They combined to go 21-under par with opponents TJ Kua and Todd Rego in the afternoon, winning 1-up.
All three matches Wednesday ended with a 3-and-2 score, with Sawada and Calip taking the final over Pearl Country Club’s Corey Kozuma and Ka‘anapali’s Chris Shimomura.
The winners were 10 under in the final — one off their performance against Kua and Rego, but playing two fewer holes. Sawada birdied the first three — sinking two putts outside 15 feet — to give the champs a lead they would never relinquish.
“It wasn’t even just the first three holes,” Calip said, shrugging “He was like that the entire day and all day yesterday. It was the same story, but those three got us off to a great start.”
The losers were 7 under when it ended at the 16th.
“I don’t think we lost it,” said Kozuma, whose partner birdied Nos. 4, 5, 6 and 7 and still couldn’t catch up. “They just beat us today. Both teams made a ton of birdies so it was like, if you didn’t make birdie you were probably going to lose the hole.”
Earlier, he and Shimomura defeated Ed Kageyama and Matt Hall in one semifinal and Sawada and Calip ousted Juan Rodriguez and Jason Jakovac.
Sawada contributed six birdies and an eagle in that semi, where the losing team birdied four of the final six holes.
Sawada and Calip were so far under par through three rounds of OCC rain squalls they couldn’t come up with an accurate number, but “around 30” was a guesstimate.
“It just goes to show you, when you get out of your own way you get good results,” Sawada said. “When you try too hard you get in your own way.”
Along that line, he pointed to Calip’s attitude as his best attribute this week. Calip pointed, precisely, at Sawada’s extraordinarily straight drives during a wet week where golfers were allowed to lift, clean and place their ball in the fairway.
“The best thing he did was hit the driver,” Calip said. “He was on the needle all day. When you do that here it makes this course so much easier. Especially this week, hitting the fairway made a big difference because you had a clean ball every time.”
Sawada won the 2013 Manoa Cup — Hawaii’s State Amateur Match-Play Championship — and captured Nike’s Aloha Section PGA event at OCC last year with Cory Oride. They beat Calip, the 2014 Manoa Cup champ, and Shawn McCauley in the final.
With both partners away this year, the friends teamed up in the four-ball format, where each team’s best score counts in match play.
Sawada and Calip won $1,500 apiece and showed their Manoa Cup wins at OCC were no fluke. Even Shimomura’s early birdie flurry couldn’t break them.
“When we had the stretch of birdies I felt the momentum might have been switching a little,” Shimomura said. “I felt like we could have got a few more back, but we fought hard. There were a lot of birdies and it’s just the way they fell on the course.
“They played so well we had to do something.”
Kozuma prevented it from ending earlier, sinking a tough downhill putt at the 13th to match Calip’s birdie, and doing the same from 12 feet on the 15th.
“If you’re going to go down,” Kozuma said, “you’ve got to go down swinging.”
Calip put his team 3-up at the 14th, sinking a four-foot birdie putt before Sawada had a chance to convert his two-footer. Calip’s chip on the next hole hit the pin and lipped out, leading to a gimme birdie with Sawada just five feet away.
“Awesome,” Sawada grinned. “I didn’t even get to putt again.”
He was the only one to hit the green on the 16th and ended it with a two-putt par.
Calip is headed back to Asian Tour qualifying next year. Sawada will play in the Long Beach Open next week, then head to state opens in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, along with playing the new Turtle Bay Open, and the Mauna Lani Resort Hawaiian State Open in December.
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