A year ago, Shawn Lu blew in with the gusty wind to erase a five-shot deficit on the final day and win the Oahu Country Club’s Men’s Invitational.
The wind blew again — hard and hardly consistent — in Saturday’s final round. This time, Lu went into the last day with a nine-stroke lead.
The wind is his friend. The Moanalua High School graduate blew away the field to become just the sixth to successfully defend in the 55-year history of the tournament.
The first three are Hawaii Golf Hall of Famers Casey Nakama (1983, ’84 and ’85), Allan Yamamoto (1975 and ’76) and Owen Douglass (1971 and ’72). In the past 11 years, Alex Ching (2007 and ’08) and Matt Ma (2011 and ’12) have done it.
Ma was second Saturday and 15-year-old Noah Koshi shared third with Zachery Kaneshiro. Ma and Koshi’s 70s were the day’s only sub-par rounds and they didn’t come close to catching Lu.
He closed with a 73, 10 strokes higher than Friday but still good for a 54-hole total of 203 — seven better than Ma and eight ahead of Koshi and Kaneshiro. Ma and Lu were the only golfers to finish the tournament under par.
Lu was two shots off the tournament record set by Parker McLachlin in 2001 and those can be traced to one swing. Lu went out of bounds on the 15th (his sixth hole of the day), took double-bogey and never blinked.
“Honestly, I hit my drive really good I thought,” he said. “I swear a wind gust took it straight right. I didn’t expect it to go OB. I was pretty surprised.
“At that point, I figured I had to play some solid golf. I can’t be swinging easy now. But it was not too bad, just one bad hole.”
That was an aberration this week. He collected 34 birdies in five rounds since Monday, 13 in two rounds while qualifying for the U.S. Amateur Championship in Oregon, then 18 more the first two days at OCC.
There would be just three Saturday, to nullify his three bogeys and keep everyone at a distance.
Ma played four years at Oregon after graduating from ‘Iolani in 2002. He still talks with the coach there and, “believe it or not,” John Reehoorn, who coaches Lu at Oregon State. Reehoorn compared Lu to Jordan Spieth in a text to Ma the other day.
“I was kind of shocked,” Ma grinned. “What he meant was, Shawn makes a lot of intermediate putts — 10- to 15-footers, scoring putts. He said he’s not as good a short putter, but you saw him at 10 to 15 feet. If you play out here, you’re going to have a ton of those for birdie and par. And he’s hitting it good. He just qualified for the U.S. Amateur, so he’s gotta be playing pretty well.”
Lu will play in the Canadian Amateur next month before flying to California for the U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach. Two weeks later, he plays another tournament in California, then drives back to Corvallis for the start of his junior year. He made the the Pac-12 All-Academic second team last spring with a 3.51 grade-point average in business, and made 11 starts for the Beavers.
Friday, Chad Umetsu and Mike Kawate captured the Mid-Am and Senior championships, played over two days from the same tees as the open flight. All golfers in the top 30 play Saturday and Umetsu (76—219) took ninth overall. Kawate (76—222) was 13th, a shot ahead of Carl Ho, last year’s senior champ.
