Long Beach Open golf tournament starts Thursday

LONG BEACH >> The Long Beach Open golf touament begins on Thursday with the final round scheduled for Sunday. The first two rounds will be played at El Dorado and Skylinks golf courses and the weekend rounds and awards ceremony will be at El Dorado. The touament will be 72 holes of stroke play and the field will be cut to low 60 professionals after the first 36 holes.

American Golf has guaranteed this year’s purse at $170,000 and some of the past wiers to get a big chunk of the purse include PGA Tour players Kevin Na and Long Beach State’s Paul Goydos. The Open is open to all professionals and a minimum of six amateurs are guaranteed a spot in the amateur field of the touament.

Some of the notable exemptions that have already qualified for the Open are Wilson High junior Tyler Schafer and Long Beach States sophomore Joe Fryer and senior Agostino Milazzo.

Schafer eaed his amateur berth as the reigning Moore League champion by shooting a 6-under-par 282 at the Moore League individual finals.

Fryer is LBSU’s exemption for 2016 and Milazzo qualified for his second Long Beach Open after wiing the Long Beach Men’s City Championship last week.

After a rocky 76 in his opening round at Skylinks, Milazzo finished the weekend with back-to-back impressive rounds of 64 and 66, which put him in a tie atop the leader board. Both Milazzo and Cal State Fullerton’s Jack Ireland shot a 54-hole total of 206, forcing a sudden death playoff. Milazzo outlasted Ireland on the third hole of the playoff to claim the automatic berth.

Some other familiar names playing in the Open include former Moore League individual champions Harold Calubid (Wilson), Boris Stantchev (Wilson) and Eric Frazzetta (Poly).

Long Beach State alum Daniel Chian was the low amateur at the 2015 touament and retus after an impressive senior year at Long Beach State.

Reigning Long Beach champion Greg Bruckner will look to reclaim his title after last year’s score of 268.