Goulet’s Mettle on Display

By Bob DiCesare BUFFALO NEWS SPORTS REPORTER

 By Sunday morning Julien Goulet will be in Sherbrooke, Quebec, a two-hour drive away from home, because there’s another golf tournament to play, another title to chase, more improvement to be made. The process of honing his game continues, perhaps more purposefully now than ever, because Goulet’s victory at the International Junior Masters on Friday confirmed what his coach Martin Morency felt all along — the young man’s a talent with a fierce will to win.

John Hickey/Buffalo News Julien Goulet hits from a bunker on the 10th hole during Friday’s championship match.

Goulet, 16, from Montreal, lacked his “A” game at East Aurora Country Club on Friday. He wasn’t nearly as sharp as he was Thursday, when he dismantled two competitors en route to reaching the match-play semifinals. Indeed, he nearly was ousted from the tournament Friday morning, receiving a governor’s reprieve when Brendan Leonard of Cambridge, Ont., slid a 3-footer past the hole on the 21st hole of their match.

“I thought it was the end,” Goulet said. “But he missed it.”

Goulet would go on to win on the 23rd hole.

But upon reaching the final against Bryce Edmister, a self-declared upstart, Goulet seized immediate control while winning, 2 and 1, with relatively little anxiety. He was given 15 minutes to eat and report to the first tee after his marathon semifinal but he was back five minutes early, eager to get about the business of winning the tournament in which he was medalist last year before falling in the first round of match play.

Goulet steadily built his lead, going 3-up through the eighth hole. Edmister, 16, the two-time Central New York Junior Player of the Year, was undeterred. He was playing with house money, having already exceeded by miles the personal expectations he carried into the tournament.

“I just wanted to get in the championship flight,” he said. “That was my first goal for myself. I’ve never played match play in a tournament, so it was a lot of fun and different than stroke play. Once I got through the first match, barely, then I wanted just to win the next match to prove that it wasn’t a fluke. Once I got by that everything else was just bonus.”

Edmister, a 1-up semifinal winner of Luke Shaughnessy of Peterborough, Ont., will be back. He’s the son of a golf teaching professional, a lefthander with prodigious power. Short game and putting were his undoing in the final, particularly misses from 3 to 4 feet on the fifth and eighth holes.

“He was in for par on both those holes so I was just trying to firm them in the back because it didn’t matter if they missed,” said Edmister, of Painted Post.

Goulet stumbled with the putter as well, with short misses on Nos. 12 and 13 dropping the match back to even. But he responded by winning the next two holes as Edmister was forced to scramble after an errant approach on 14 and a missed green on the par-3 15th. The two halved the short par-5 16th with birdies before Edmister’s errant tee shot on 17 gave Goulet the IJM title he’d coveted since winning the medal last year.

“It’s an honor,” Goulet said. “When I look to the board and see all those great names [of past competitors], it’s really an honor to win this tournament.”

What effect will this have on his development as a golfer?

“It proves that he can win,” Morency said. “You have to learn how to win and learn that you can win.”

Goulet’s on a path that points to a playing career in golf. He spent much of the past winter in Florida working on his game and has made special arrangements to keep up with his studies at school. He’ll be age-eligible to defend his IJM title next summer, but you have to wonder if that’s part of the master plan.

“I’ll be back,” he insisted. “I’ll be back to try to defend my title.”

John Hickey/Buffalo News Bryce Edmister of Painted Post, right, congratulates Julien Goulet of Montreal after Goulet won the match on the 17th hole.