By Jay Plotkin

Lakeway resident Steve Termeer hopes to play the part of Paul Azinger to his friend Michael Cooper’s Nick Faldo.

Termeer and Cooper are the captains of the professional and amateur teams in the upcoming Hannon Cup Matches. The matches honor former University of Texas golf coach George Hannon and are known as Austin’s version of the Ryder Cup. The 2008 matches kick off with a dinner on Sunday, Oct. 19 and follow with two days of competition Oct. 20-21 at Spanish Oaks. The opening day includes foursomes and four-ball matches. The second day is singles.

Both Cooper and Termeer played college golf at the University of Texas. Termeer went on to become a teaching professional and is now the general manager at the University of Texas Golf Club. After his college career, Cooper has continued to play golf and is one of the area’s top amateurs, winning the 2008 Firecracker Open this summer. Termeer will captain the pro team in the upcoming matches without picking up a club, but Cooper will both rally his troops and lead them on the course as a playing captain.

Both are Hannon Cup veterans and have been involved in nearly every match in the Cup’s first 11 years, which have seen the amateurs take a 6-5 lead. Termeer served as captain before, in 2000, his team suffering a narrow 15-13 defeat to the amateurs captained by John McDonald, also a Lakeway resident.

“That was a fantastic finish, where the amateurs ended up flipping that last match and won it on the last hole,” Termeer said.

If the loss still bothers him, he doesn’t let on. Instead, he’s focusing on making sure his team of pros is comfortable and confident heading into the matches, which will be played at Spanish Oaks.

“I think I learned a lot last time,” he said. “I think I did all the right things then. I had dinners for the players and we talked about strategy. But this time I’m doing it a bit differently. Our guys know what to do. They just have to go out and play golf.”

Fresh off last month’s memorable Ryder Cup that saw the Azinger’s U.S. team stun Faldo’s European squad, Termeer said he admired the way Azinger handled things.

“I really liked Azinger’s style,” Termeer said last week of the victorious U.S. Ryder Cup team captain. “He was very low key and the guys went out and did their jobs. I would love to have heard what he told them in the locker room.”

If he could replicate Azinger’s final words of motivation, Termeer would use them to inspire his group to even the 12-year competition by winning for the third straight year. If he is successful, a professional win would complete a comeback following a run by the amateur side that saw them win six of seven matches from 1999-2005.

“We went through a pretty long drought,” Termeer said. “This is big year for us. Now it’s time for us to even this up.”

Termeer’s team is a mix of area golf pros – to be Hannon Cup eligible, pros must have an affiliation with clubs in Travis or its neighboring counties – from the various tours and clubs in Central Texas. Termeer’s veteran players include Lonny Alexander (Onion Creek), Ricky Arnett (Great Hills), Joe Beck (Austin Golf Club), Brent Buckman (Spanish Oaks), Dale Morgan (Austin Country Club) and Wes Skaggs (Crystal Falls). Touring professionals Wes Short (PGA Tour), Steve Veriato (Champions Tour) and Matt Dobyns added top-notch talent to the roster, as do some of the newer club pros who will be making their Hannon Cup debuts this year. They include David Hardwick (Spanish Oaks), John Sosa (Greyrock), Jesse Horner (Horseshoe Bay) and Shawn Strohman and David Von Hoffman, both of Escondido.

“The amateurs have no idea how good some of our guys are,” Termeer said. “Those new guys will be very hard to beat.”

They can’t be any harder to beat than the pros Termeer’s predecessors ran out in the competition. In 2006 the pros ended the amateur’s streak with a 23-5 win. In contrast to this year’s roster which includes one PGA Tour player, the 2005 pro team included five players who were either active on tour or former tour players. Rich Beem, Joe Oglivie, Short, Omar Uresti and Brad Lardon all joined the matches in 2005 and dominated play, winning 12 of the 13 points they competed for, with only Lardon suffering a one-up loss in singles play. The 2007 pro team included fewer tour players, but Tom Jenkins led the way to an 18-10 win with three wins in three matches.

Cooper was among the amateurs who felt the sting of the added tour presence. Regarded as the top amateur player, he entered the 2006 matches with an overall Hannon Cup record of 10-3-2. In 2006 he went 0-3, falling to Uresti and Lardon in team matches and Oglivie in singles. Last year he managed a draw in three matches, teaming with Greg Meserole to halve a four-ball match against Termeer and Henrik Simonsen. Matched up with Jenkins in the foursomes and singles, he wasn’t as fortunate.
Termeer acknowledged the increased professional influence on the past year’s results but thinks his club professional-oriented group can keep the momentum going.

“We did have what seemed like half the PGA tour with us in those matches helping out,” he said.

Cooper’s amateur side will include plenty of Hannon Cup veterans who have more than held their own with many of their own club pros. Along with Cooper and Meserole, both of whom are members at both Austin Country Club and the UT Golf Club, the amateurs feature three other UT Golf Club members: Michael Board, Steven Bright and Jay Legg. Woody Englander, John Pigg, Billy Claggett and Dean Lundquist are also part of Cooper’s team. They have all been mainstays on the amateur side, especially when it was in the midst of its streak to take a lead in the series.

The two friends know what’s at stake, and they also know it’s a friendly competition honoring the coach who gave so much to Austin junior golf while leading the Longhorns to back-to-back NCAA titles in 1972 and 1973. Termeer spent much of last week both talking about his team’s strengths while also pointing out that his group should be the underdog despite the fact that his pros don’t have nearly the time to play golf that the amateurs do.

“I’d say that we probably play about a third of the golf that the amateurs play,” he said. “Just because we have ‘professional’ after our name doesn’t mean we have a lot of time to practice our games.”

Cooper would disagree, but one thing they both agree on is the cause, raising money for junior golf, a passion of Hannon’s that continues today. The Hannon Cup Society – an invitation-only group of 100 Central Texas golfers, each of whom donate at least $500 – gives out scholarships and helps promote the cause of junior golf in Central Texas.

“The Austin Junior Golf Academy was Coach Hannon’s baby,” Termeer said. “When we were forming the society, it was the one charity he asked that we donate to.”

Before the matches begin, the teams will come together for the annual Hannon Cup Society dinner, this year set for Oct. 19 at the Renaissance Hotel. Each year the dinner features a guest speaker, and this year’s speaker is David Feherty, one of golf’s best on-course analysts and a legendary storyteller.

For more information on the Hannon Cup Matches or the Hannon Society, visit www.hannoncupsociety.com.