Blake Tomlinson wins SLC Amateur thanks to rare hole-in-one on a par-4

SALT LAKE CITY — Starting the day in a tie for 12th place, four shots off the lead, Blake Tomlinson wasn’t exactly thinking he was going to win the Richard C. Kramer Salt Lake City Amateur Sunday afternoon. He especially wasn’t thinking that as he stood on the No. 8 tee at Bonneville Golf Course after making back-to-back bogeys and was being pelted by rain that was coming down sideways at that point.

With some help from a north wind behind him, the University of Utah junior hit his driver at the 359-yard par-4 hole and watched it head towards the green.

“It was right on the flag and my playing competitors were saying it was really good and telling it to go in and I was like, ‘there’s no way it’s going in.’” he said.

But when he and his fellow golfers reached the green, Tomlinson’s ball was sitting in the cup for a rare hole-in-one on a par-4 hole.

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  David Timmins competes in the Salt Lake City Amateur Championship on June 7, 2020.
  
  
  Fairways Media/Randy Dodson
  
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  Blake Tomlinson competes in the Salt Lake City Amateur Championship on June 7, 2020.
  
  
  Fairways Media/Randy Dodson
  
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  David Timmins competes in the Salt Lake City Amateur Championship on June 7, 2020.
  
  
  Fairways Media/Randy Dodson
  

Picking up three strokes to par with his double-eagle, Tomlinson had new life and at the next hole, he drained a 60-foot uphill birdie putt on the two-tiered green and suddenly he was 4-under-par on the day. He played the back nine in 2-under par for a 66 and when the dozen golfers playing in front of him couldn’t break 70, Tomlinson was the winner of the tournament, considered the second biggest amateur in the state behind the State Amateur.

“I’m very excited, unexpected, but very nice,” he said, an hour after his round, still wearing his red Utah winter beanie cap. “I tend to play well in bad weather — whenever it gets bad I guess I just turn it on. I didn’t think I’d end up winning, but I played as well as I could and left it all out there today.”

The 21-year-old Tomlinson, who won the Salt Lake City Open at Bonneville in 2016 with a final-round 64, finished at 139 and two shots better than Skyline High golfer Tyson Shelley and Westminster College golfer David Timmins.

Shelley and Timmins had begun the day in a tie with David Jennings and Zach Jones, but none of the four could break par…