For the first 16 holes at the WPIAL Class 3A boys individual golf championships at South Hills Country Club on Tuesday afternoon, Moon senior Justin Scally could do no wrong.
Then, with Scally nursing a four-shot lead with only two holes to play, his near-perfect round appeared to be unraveling. Scally hit his tee shot into a bunker on No. 17 and came away with a double bogey, cutting his lead in half to two strokes going into the final hole. Scally recovered though, nearly making a birdie putt on No. 18 and settling for a par to finish with a 2-under 69 for the day.
Then came the hardest part — the waiting game.
Scally spent the next two hours pacing around the clubhouse area, fine-tuning his swing and working on his putting on the practice green in case he had to go back out for a sudden-death playoff. Although he was the leader in the clubhouse, a pair of golfers in the afternoon’s final pairing — Shady Side Academy senior Adam Lauer and Central Catholic sophomore Rocco Salvitti — were breathing down his neck as they came down the back nine.
Lauer and Salvitti remained tied for second place at even par until Lauer made a birdie on No. 16, bringing him within one stroke of Scally with two holes to play. He made par on No. 17, then hit a perfect approach shot from the fairway on No. 18 to set himself up for a birdie putt about 10 feet away from the hole.
“I was nervous, but I knew I had a lot of momentum going in, so if he did make it, I could definitely pull something off,” Scally said.
Scally and his coaches and teammates watched from above on the practice green as Lauer’s birdie putt went wide by only a few inches, officially crowning him as the 2020 WPIAL Class 3A boys golf champion after a nail-biting ending.
“I just felt like I put the pressure on them,” Scally said about the final pairing. “They were the ones who had to watch my score. I didn’t watch their score until I was done. I didn’t even look.”
Lauer finished in second place with a 1-under 70 for the day, while Salvitti took home third place with an even-par 71. The top 10 finishers each advanced to the upcoming PIAA individual championships, to be held Oct. 19-20 at Heritage Hills Country Club in York, Pa.
Scally comes from a family whose name is synonymous with golf in Moon Township. His father, Phil Scally, is a co-owner of Scally’s Golf and Training Center, home of one of Western Pennsylvania’s most popular Par 3 courses.
“I try not to put pressure on myself for the name,” said Scally, who still plays at his family’s pitch-and-putt course with his teammates every day.
Going into Tuesday’s championship finals, Scally wasn’t high on the list of top contenders to win the tournament. His qualifying-round score of 78 was tied for 25th-best out of the 36 competitors taking the course. Still, he knew he was capable of much more than what he showed during the qualifier, while the rest of the field may have underestimated his potential.
“You don’t have to bring your best golf for that [qualifying] round,” Scally said. “You try to win the WPIAL finals, so you have momentum going into the last round [at states].”
Scally will now carry that momentum over into the final tournament of his high school career with a chance to double up by winning both a WPIAL and PIAA championship.
“It definitely means a lot,” Scally said. “I definitely put it together under pressure.”
Steve Rotstein: srotstein@post-gazette.com and Twitter @SteveRotstein.
First Published: October 6, 2020, 11:51 p.m.
