Michael Lugiano wins 74th Delaware Amateur

Plantation Lakes Golf & Club hosted the 74th annual Delaware Amateur June 23-25. The 72-hole tournament required the golfers to play 18 holes Monday, 18 holes Tuesday and 36 holes Wednesday in brutally hot and humid conditions.

Nonetheless, Michael Lugiano of Huntsville Golf Club in Dallas, Pa., rose to the challenge. He shot 67-65 Wednesday to win the tournament by seven strokes. The win qualified him to play the USGA’s U.S. Amateur, held Aug. 11-17, at the Olympic Club in San Francisco.

Blake Micholas of Kings Creek Country Club played well the first two rounds, leading all others at that point. Unfortunately, his 76-73 on the last day dropped him into a tie for 11th, best among Cape Region golfers.

Aaron Williams of Bayside Resort tied for 23rd, the only other Cape Region golfer to finish the event.

Newton golf shafts

Places like Golf Galaxy offer plenty of clubs to buy right off the shelf, but even those companies recognize golfers’ now-common desire to tweak the clubs to suit their swings.

Shaft companies offer hundreds of options. However, the industry follows no uniform standards for shaft characteristics such as flex designations. With no consensus on what is a regular or stiff shaft or what that means for their own games, golfers can make expensive and mistaken guesses if they don’t use a good club fitter to help make that decision. 

Newton Golf took a different approach when it issued its new line of driver and fairway wood graphite shafts, by abandoning the Ladies, Regular, Stiff and X shaft labels for the dots displayed on its models.

At the 2025 PGA Show Demo Day in January, I spoke with Angelo Papadourakis, the Missouri company’s executive vice president for sales.

“Players get very focused on what stiffness they have in their shaft, a lot of times to their detriment. They’re playing a shaft that’s too stiff for them, it’s not giving them the performance because they really can’t load it and unload it,” he said. 

“We said, let’s take that focus and take the gender aspect out of it also because there’s Ladies flex. That’s not important. It’s how you swing the club. It doesn’t matter what your gender is, it’s how do you swing that club. Let’s just put a dot on it. The dots have significance as to what the stiffness is, so a one-dot is our most flexible and then we go up to now our seven-dot, which we’re using on the PGA Tour,” Papadourakis said. 

“You gradually go up in we call CPM, the measure of stiffness in the shaft. That gives people the ability to really get the perfect shaft for their swing. You get better performance out of it,” he said. 

Newton’s new shaft designs also differ from the competition in how its shafts produce the whipping action golfers rely upon for performance. 

Most shafts have a distinct kick point, a spot on the shaft where the shaft bends the most during the swing. The location of the bend point affects the ball’s initial launch angle. 

Newton designed its shafts to spread the kick point across a larger length of the shaft, which it says leads to improved results.

Papadourakis said, “You have this entire lever. Why not take advantage of the volume of the lever that you have? We came up with what we call elongated bend profiles, rather than a concentrated kick point. We give you a very efficient means to store your potential energy and then to release that potential energy. The result has been people are picking up ball speed and their dispersion is tightening up.”

“We always tell people, if you don’t like to hit it long and straight, our shaft isn’t for you – but otherwise, this may be something you really want to try,” he said.

PGA Champions Tour golfer Ken Duke was an early adopter. His success drew several others on that tour to join him. At the PGA Show, the company unveiled its new Fast Shaft model. Papadourakis said these shafts feature a different torque to weight ratio than the base models and are aimed to appeal to the faster swingers among us.

Compared to other shaft companies, the Newton models are not high-end models, retailing for $275 for driver shafts and $250 for fairway wood models. Adapters for the main club models come with the shaft, along with a choice of grip sizes if desired. The Fast models sell for $325. Hybrid shafts remain under development, Papadourakis said.

The company’s website includes a fitting guide. He said, “It’ll take you through various questions about your game, how you swing it, whether you have a lot of action in your downswing or if you have a very smooth tempo, and then it’ll give you an idea of which shaft you should pick out for yourself,” he said. “We have some great fitters out there that shaft people up with the new Newton. Either way, get yourself fitted properly. It’s really going to make a difference in your game.”

Dots okay with me.

Local club competition results

The Kings Creek CC 9-Holers played a Cha-Cha game June 26.

Denise Hills, Brenda Schilli, Hope Lavachia and Deborah Chase won first place. Sherry Schaffer, Sandy Singer, Pamela Cranston and Terry Barrera took second. Christine Emery, Kathy Casey, Leslie Ludwig and Berrara as a blind draw finished third.