If not for a shift in focus, Jack Pepin may have exited the 120th New Hampshire Amateur Championship early instead of winning the tournament.
Pepin, a Plaistow resident and junior on the Southern New Hampshire University men’s golf team, trailed Shane St. Onge through 11 holes in their round-of-64 match at Manchester Country Club.
On the 12th hole, Pepin focused on his own game, he said, and stopped worrying about how well St. Onge was playing.
Then Pepin, an Atkinson Resort and Country Club member, stormed back to win the match in 20 holes on the way to capturing his first State Am crown.
The tournament title earned Pepin the July New Hampshire Union Leader Apple Therapy Services/Bedford Ambulatory Surgical Center/Express MED Athlete of the Month award from the Union Leader Board of Judges.
“In the end, I just tried to focus on my own game and see what happened,” Pepin said.
Pepin, the No. 7 seed after the opening two stroke-play rounds, extended the match with a par and clinched the win over 58th-seeded St. Onge with a birdie on the par-5 second hole.
Pepin, 20, advanced to the round of 32 in the six-day tournament against Manchester CC’s Griffin Connor.
Again, Pepin fell behind early.
Connor had a three-stroke lead through the first or five six holes, Pepin didn’t pull even until the 12th hole.
Pepin took the match, 2 and 1, and reached the final against Lake Sunapee CC member Rob Henley after victories over notable Granite State golfers Bryce Zimmerman (5 and 4), Ryan Brown (1-up) and James Pleat (1-up).
Before this summer, Pepin, the 2019 NHGA Boys Junior champ, had advanced only as far as the round of 32 in the State Am.
“Really didn’t have too many expectations,” Pepin said of the 36-hole final match. “Obviously, I wanted to win but I was a little more comfortable knowing that it’s somewhere that I haven’t been yet.”
Pepin said his putter and iron game were strong throughout the match against Henley. The Timberlane Regional graduate said he struggled with his driver off the tee over the first 18 holes before fixing his downswing.
“We both kind of hung in there and it ended up going all the way to the end and then an extra playoff hole,” Pepin said.
Pepin won the 18th hole to extend the match to the playoff with a 6-foot birdie putt. He also birdied that same hole to win two previous matches.
Pepin then clinched the match on the par-4 10th hole, starting it with his best shot off the tee that day and finishing with a two-putt for par. Henley missed an 8-foot putt to earn par and extend the match.
Pepin said one of his career goals was to win an amateur title. Achieving that this summer was a pleasant surprise.
“It wasn’t something that I was totally expecting,” he said. “It’d been a pretty long time since I really had won anything, so I was just kind of playing.”
Other athletes considered for the July award were golfers Andrew Surprenant and Josiah Hakala, Salem Youth Baseball 11-12-year-old All-Stars baseball player Rowan Briggs, Nashua Silver Knights baseball player Shane McNamara and Sanford Mainers baseball player Ryan Dee.
Surprenant, a Boscawen resident, won both the NHGA Stroke Play Championship and Mike Ryan Memorial Junior Golf Tournament.
Hakala, a New Ipswich resident and Beaver Meadow Golf Club member, won the NHGA Boys Junior Championship on his home course after two playoff holes.
Briggs batted .571 and posted a 0.0 ERA with 11 strikeouts over 7⅓ innings in Salem’s three-game Little League Baseball state championship series triumph over Portsmouth to advance to the New England Regional.
McNamara, a Londonderry resident, batted .314 (22-for-70) with three home runs, 18 RBIs, nine runs scored and eight walks over 20 Futures Collegiate Baseball League games last month for the Silver Knights.
Dee, a Laconia resident, went 2-0 with a 0.93 ERA last month for the Mainers of the New England Collegiate Baseball League, allowing two earned runs on 25 hits and 10 walks alongside 18 strikeouts over 19⅓ innings.