Dan Ellis

HARBOR SPRINGS — Negaunee High School graduate Dan Ellis and playing partner Chad Kurmel won the Adidas State Pro Am golf tournament played at Boyne Highlands on June 7-8.

The pair won this tournament — a 36-hole scratch best ball event that has been held since 1935 — for the second straight year, this year by three strokes over the duo of George Bowman and Harrison Bowman of Clarkston.

Ellis and Kurmel held on for a two-round total of 15-under-par 129 on Boyne’s Heather and Ross courses, according to statistics available at the Michigan PGA’s BlueGolf website, www.mipga.bluegolf.com.

They shot a sizzling 11-under 61 in their opening round on the Ross course, then held on for the win with 68 on day 2.

Brian Cairns and Jeff Champine were the only pairing among the 119 competing teams to stay within two strokes of Ellis and Kurmel in the first round with 63, but they slumped to 70 to finish in a four-way tie for third.

Bowman and Bowman shot a runner-up score of 67-65–132, while also joining the third-place tie was Matthew Zavadil and Chad Johnson with 69-64–133, Steve Brady and Coalter Smith with the same rounds, and Matthew Shalhoup and Mark Schoenborn with 68-65–133.

Ellis is listed as the amateur on the team as he is associate head golf coach at Michigan State University. He is also a former Negaunee High School and Spartans’ golfer who won the Upper Peninsula Golf Association annual tournament in 2008 and 2011 and MHSAA Upper Peninsula Division 1 high school boys individual title in 2007.

Twin brother Dave Ellis also played golf at NHS and MSU, while father Dean Ellis was the longtime head men’s basketball coach at Northern Michigan University.

After graduating from MSU in 2013, Dan Ellis coached a season at Coastal Carolina before coming back to his alma mater as an assistant coach in 2014 and promoted to associate head coach in 2018.

Kurmel is the pro in their Adidas Pro Am pairing as he is the PGA professional at MSU’s Forest Akers Golf Course, along with being a volunteer golf coach at MSU. He is listed as having played in several national PGA events over his 19 years as a professional.

The BlueGolf site also listed a number of statistics for teams at the Adidas event.

A little surprisingly, Ellis and Kurmel only led outright in one category that wasn’t directly related to scoring, though they tied for the top spot in several.

Their outright leading statistic was a tourney-long streak of six straight holes with a birdie or better from holes 4 to 9 in their first round. Those holes were birdie, birdie, birdie, birdie, birdie, eagle.

They tied for the best scoring average on par-5 holes at 8-under par over a total of eight holes, while they “only” tied for seventh on both par-4 and par-3 holes.

And they also tied for most eagles with two.

Ellis and Kurmel were second in the longest bogey-free streak with 34 holes out of a total of 36 played — their only bogey of the two days was on the 17th hole of day 2 — and they tied for second in most par-breaking holes with 14.

And they were all the way down in a tie for 69th for most pars with 21, certainly because of all the birdies they made.

Information compiled by Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee. His email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.