Luke Slaymaker proves he still has game

CEDAR RAPIDS — Welcome back, Luke Slaymaker.

Last year, the 43-year-old Cedar Rapids golfer competed in the Men’s City Amateur tournament for the first time in more than two decades. His early years in the event yielded a tournament championship in 2002.

Now he has a second.

“Great group of guys, makes it a lot of fun,” Slaymaker said after finishing the three-day tournament at 15-under par to claim the trophy Sunday at Ellis Golf Course. “Played well yesterday and today. The old guy has still got it on some days.”

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It was evident early Slaymaker indeed “had it” on this day. He began the final round in second place — one stroke behind former UNI golfer Dustin Atkinson — and proceeded to blister the course with seven birdies in the first 12 holes for a third round score of 7-under.

“Just confidence,” Slaymaker said. “You see one go in, you see two go in, your confidence grows. It’s easier to swing, but also you’re playing against those guys. … You just know that you’ve got to keep hitting good shots. You’ve got to keep making putts because they are going to. You get pushed and you get the confidence from making a few and it just snowballs into a good thing.”

Atkinson, who won the tournament in 2023, finished second at 12 under, while Justin Pansegrau was third (-10) and six-time champion Chris James was fourth (-9).

“It’s a great group of guys and it makes it fun to play,” Slaymaker said. “And when it is fun, it is easy to play well.”

In his high school and college days, Slaymaker helped Center Point-Urbana win the 1998 boys’ golf state championship, before becoming a four-time all-conference honoree at Mount Mercy University. In 2016, Slaymaker returned to Mount Mercy as head coach of the men’s and women’s golf teams, a position he held for four years. Last season, he served as a volunteer assistant coach for the Mustangs.

“It’s fun to help the college guys,” Slaymaker said. “Because the ones that I have gotten to know, they want to get better, they want to try, they want to be the best they can. So passing on any knowledge that I have that this great game has provided is a blessing.”

Slaymaker took his swings at professional golf from 2004-10, then played just for fun while he assumed direction of his grandparents’ farm in Central City. In 2020, he reclaimed his amateur status.

“I got my amateur status back so that I could play in more events,” Slaymaker said. “And then for whatever reason, I just didn’t have the opportunity, didn’t work in my schedule to play the first couple of years. And then last year it did. It probably will going forward.”

The Cedar Rapids Men’s Senior City Am also concluded Sunday at Ellis. Rob Dickerman — who won the event in back-to-back years in 2019 and 2020 — claimed his third trophy by firing a score of 2-under par in the third round, which elevated him to even par for the tournament. Runner-up Tim Ingwersen was three strokes behind.

Finkbine Golf Course in Iowa City hosted the final round of the Iowa City Men’s City Am, where North Liberty’s Coby Thompson rallied with a 6-under par 66 in the final round to force a sudden-death playoff against Michael Canfield. Thompson eliminated Canfield on the third playoff hole to repeat as the tournament champion.