The Illinois PGA pros used to dominate their amateur counterparts in the annual Radix Cup matches at Oak Park County Club, but no more.
Though the IPGA owns a 35-19-2 overall edge the amateurs won for the 10th time in the last 18 meetings on Wednesday. The CDGA’s best took a 10-8 victory. Neither team, though, has won two in a row since 2000.
Wednesday’s competition was decided in the fourth and fifth of the day’s six matches, both swept by the amateurs against two of the professionals’ strongest teams. Kyle Nathan, of Glen View Club, and Chadd Slutzky, of The Grove in Long Grove, swept Skokie’s Garrett Chaussard, who played in a U.S. Open sectional qualifier on Monday, and University of Illinois coach Mike Small, who has won the IPGA Championship a record 12 times and the Illinois Open four times.
“It was a fun day even though we didn’t play great,’’ said Chaussard, who played for Small as a student-athlete at Illinois. “They just played better and beat us.’’
The clinching points came from amateurs Charlie Netzel, of Chicago Golf Club, and Kyle Slattery, of Mauh-Nah-Tee-See in Rockford. They dominated Medinah’s Traveis Johns, a perennial contender in the IPGA events, and Hinsdale’s Matt Slowinski, a three-time IPGA Assistants player of the year before he took his present position. Johns is the reigning Illinois PGA player-of-the-year.