Anderson and Schlicher Win 2025 Tournament of Champions Titles

Mike Anderson, Lori Schlicher Win Season-Ending Tournament of Champions Titles

  COMMERCE TOWNSHIP – Mike Anderson, a Meadowbrook Country Club member from Novi, and Lori Schlicher, a Garland Lodge & Golf Resort member from Lewiston, finished the golf season with victories.

  Anderson won the men’s title and Schlicher the women’s title in the season-concluding 2025 GAM Senior Tournament of Champions presented by BOYNE Golf Tuesday at Edgewood Country Club.

  Anderson, who earlier this season reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. Senior Amateur Championship, won in a one-hole sudden-death playoff with Tom Gieselman of Commerce Township and the Oakland University Golf and Learning Center.

  They each shot 5-under 66 rounds in regulation play, and Anderson won on hole No. 1 of the playoff with a par.

  David LeVan of Ann Arbor and Barton Hills Country Club shot 70 for third place. Greg Zeller of Jackson and the Michigan Publinx Golf Association and Rick Crandall of Fenton and the Flint Elks Golf Club each shot even-par 71.

  Schlicher, the Michigan Women’s Senior Amateur winner and GAM Women’s Senior champion this summer, birdied the 18th hole to shoot 75 and it provided the margin for her one-shot win over Donna Tepper of Grosse Pointe Park and the Country Club of Detroit, who shot 76.

  Julie Massa of Pentwater and Lincoln Hills Golf Club shot 79 for third place, and Shelly Weiss of Southfield and Plum Hollow Country Club and Colleen Degaynor of Bloomfield Hills and Oakland Hills Country Club each shot 81 to tie for fourth.

   Anderson, 56 and the managing director of investments at Stifel Financial, played in the same group as Gieselman and they were in the half of the field that teed off on No. 10 and played the back first. He said it was fun watching Gieselman shoot a 5-under 31 on that side to charge into the lead.

  “I was hitting it well enough, just needed to see some putts drop and that’s what happened,” Anderson said of the turn to their second nine, the club’s front nine.

  “I birdied 18, then I made two long putts for birdie on 1 and 2 and then I birdied 3, too,” he said. “So, I birdied four in-a-row and then we battled back and forth the rest of the way.”

  Anderson said the birdie putt on No. 1 was from 25 feet, and the birdie on No. 2 was from 20 feet. He made bogey on hole 4 after the streak, then birdied hole 5 and holed a bunker shot for birdie at 6 and shot 31 on the front side.

  “You know we have played against each other for so many years, we had a great group with (David Vaclav), so it was fun,” he said. “We were all pulling for each other. Watching him get off to that start was fun, but I just kept plugging away, had some good fortune, one thing led to another on the back nine, and I snuck into the playoff.”

  Schlicher, 64, said it was nice to end the season with another win. It’s the second consecutive year she has won the Senior Tournament of Champions title.

  “Donna gave it a go so that birdie I had on 18 was big,” she said. “I didn’t hit it all that great, had a few putting woes, but I found ways to get it on the green, got lucky here and there and it was good enough today.”

  She said the birdie at 18, one of two birdies on the day, was produced via a wedge shot to eight-feet.

  “It came at a good time,” she said. “I was wet and tired, and I missed big putts on 15 and 16 and needed one to go in.”

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