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32nd Utah Senior State Amateur final: Darrin Overson vs. Stuart Wallin

Stuart Wallin took up golf long after Jon Wright, Gregg Oliphant and John Owen played for the University of Utah and went on to other achievements in the game.

Yet when the finalists tee off Thursday morning in the 32nd Utah Senior State Amateur Championship, Wallin will be the player representing that side of the bracket against Darrin Overson at Bonneville Golf Course.

The two remaining players in each of three divisions will play 18-hole matches. The Super-Senior (60-over) pairing is defending champion Rick Lloyd vs. Mark Gardiner; the Legends (70-over) matchup is defending champion Michael Hacker vs. Rob Bachman.

Concluding a back-and-forth second nine in the semifinals, Wallin parred No. 18 to pull ahead of Owen, the No. 1 seed. Wallin, a firearms business owner who plays out of Glenmoor Golf Club, upset Wright, the defending champion, in Tuesday’s round of 16. And then he was credited with a front-nine 32 on Wednesday morning, going 6 up vs. Oliphant in an eventual 7-and-6 victory.

Wright and Oliphant have combined for three State Amateur titles; Owen was a semifinalist in that event in 2022 at age 49.

When he ran for an Alpine Country Club board position in 2018, Wallin said he had started playing golf only nine years earlier. This month, he qualified for the Senior State Am with a 74 at Lakeside GC and then shot a 71 at Bonneville to earn the No. 5 seed Monday.

Overson, of Provo, went to No. 18 in each of his matches Wednesday, taking 1-up wins over two-time champion Brigham Gibbs and 2023 runner-up Shane McMillan. In the semis, Overson won three of the first seven holes with birdies. He didn’t win another hole the rest of the way, but McMillan never caught him.

At age 50, having once pursued professional golf, Overson is trying to join Todd Barker as the only Utahns with State Amateur, Mid-Amateur and Senior Amateur titles. He competed in the U.S. Senior Open in June and advanced to match play in the State Amateur in July.

SUPER-SENIOR

After playing 26 holes Tuesday in the round of 16, Mark Gardiner reduced his workload considerably. He needed a total of only 28 holes to win two matches Wednesday,

Gardiner made six birdies in 13 holes vs. 2024 runner-up Randy Hicken, resulting in a 7-and-5 semifinal victory that included five straight wins on Nos. 3-7. Having recently moved to Washington, Utah, Gardiner is a two-time Super-Senior winner of the UGA’s Senior Stroke Play competition.

Gardiner’s final opponent is defending champion Rick Lloyd, who also won this division in 2022 (when it was a 65-over competition). Lloyd advanced with a 5-and-4 defeat of James Renick, who was a 1-up winner over 2023 champion Craig Wilson in the quarterfinals.

LEGENDS

If not for missing a short putt on the first playoff hole and losing to Rob Bachman in the 2024 Senior Stroke Play event, Michael Hacker might have already won three straight titles in the UGA’s senior major tournaments.

As it is, Hacker will get a shot at a third consecutive victory, and he’ll have to go through Bachman to do it.

In the semifinals, Hacker trailed Kurt Bernhisel until winning Nos. 12, 13 and 14 to go 2 up, and that was the final margin. Bachman started quickly vs. Doug Marriott, going 4 up through seven holes, then absorbed Marriott’s comeback. A winning par on No. 17 gave him a 2-and-1 victory.

Hacker defeated Barker in last year’s Legends final of the Senior State Am at Hill Air Force Base’s Hubbard Memorial GC. The St. George resident then won his division of the 54-hole Senior Stroke Play by six shots over Bill Probst at Stonebridge Golf Club in May, with Bachman finishing third.

32nd Utah Senior State Amateur match play scoring.

 

Utah Senior State Amateur semifinal matches recap written by Fairways Media senior writer Kurt Kragthorpe. Photography by Fairways Media/Randy Dodson and Garrit Johnson.