Coloradans Steven Kupcho and Braden Baer finished in the final four — out of 16 teams — on Sunday in the inaugural national Topgolf Tour Championship in Las Vegas.
The two Westminster residents went undefeated in alternate shot match play to win the round-robin competition in the four-team Midwest group.
Then in the single-elimination knockout stage, Kupcho and Bear defeated a team from Atlanta 140-124 in the quarterfinals (in a competition dubbed TopShot Advanced) before losing to eventual national champions Virginia Beach 169-84 in the semifinals. Virginia Beach defeated San Antonio in the finals to win $50,000.
Kupcho and Baer had won the regional Topgolf Tour title in August at the Topgolf location in Centennial. (The two are pictured above, with Baer at left.)
Kupcho, a former University of Northern Colorado golfer, was the CGA’s Les Fowler Player of the Year in 2012, the year he won the CGA Stroke Play, now known as the CGA Amateur. Kupcho is the older brother of Jennifer Kupcho, currently the top player on the women’s college golfer of the year watch list. Baer, who played his college golf at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, made it to the round of 16 at the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship in May with teammate Cole Nygren.
