The UNF player is on a roll heading into Thursday's city amateur tourney.

Sean Dale has waited all his life for a significant areawide tournament to be played at the golf course where he learned the game and grew into a nationally ranked college player.

The University of North Florida junior-to-be gets his wish beginning Thursday in the first round of the Jacksonville Area Golf Association Amateur Championship at the Jacksonville Golf and Country Club. It's the first JAGA Amateur to be played at the Clyde Johnson-designed course since it was built in 1989.

Dale and 83 other amateur players will tee it up beginning at 8 a.m. for the first and second rounds Thursday and Friday. The field will be cut to the low 45, plus ties, for the weekend rounds.

Dale is not only coming off a sophomore season at UNF in which he was the Atlantic Sun player of the year and a second-team All-American, but he's only three weeks removed from winning the Florida State Amateur at Bay Hill in Orlando.

Does playing the JAGA Amateur on a course where his father, Bob Dale, first put a club in his hand give him an edge?

"Yeah, I would say so," Dale said earlier this week during a break in a practice session at the Jacksonville G&CC range. "I've played here all my life, and we're finally getting a tournament like this here. I wasn't going to miss it."

If Dale sounds confident, he has good reason. Since transferring from Ole Miss in early 2009, Dale has not finished lower than 25th in a tournament for the Ospreys. During the spring season, he finished among the top 10 in five consecutive starts, capped by a 10th-place finish in the NCAA South Central Regional.

The Opsreys qualified for the NCAA Tournament, where the team finished 14th among 30 participants. Dale placed 25th, the low individual in the tournament for UNF.

Dale finished 11th in the nation with a stroke average of 70.94, according to GolfStat.com, and was 19th among individual college players in Golfweek's final 2010 rankings.

Dale won't be alone in his age group at the JAGA Amateur. The field includes other college players such as Chris Bray and Joel Dahlenburg of Flagler, Jamey Salmon of Jacksonville, Pete Kellermann of Ole Miss, Greg Carrier of Furman and Dale's UNF teammate, Major Forbess.

Veteran amateurs such as Underwood Cup match players Duke Butler IV, John Lobb, Mike Ellison, Billy Clements, Alan Henderson, Larry Lunsford, Chad Wade, Jim Ross and Mike Bodney also might have a hand in the final outcome.

But few are on Dale's roll.

"What Sean is doing well right now is staying level-headed and knowing exactly what he needs to do to play well," said Nicky Martin, Dale's swing coach and, like his pupil, a past Florida Amateur champion. "Sean's strength is that he doesn't really have a weakness. His bad drives are on the edge of the fairway. He doesn't hit wild shots, and his putting has been phenomenal. He's just a heckuva talent, and he wants to keep getting better."

Dale's head also has been in a good place since he returned to the area after one semester at Ole Miss, where he had one top-five finish and was second on the team in stroke average during the fall season of 2008. It took one cold winter in Oxford, Miss., for Dale to realize he might be better off, in more ways than one, back home.

"We couldn't be happier he decided to transfer to UNF," Bob Dale said of his son. "The combination of the environment the coaches there create for the team and having his family and friends close to him has given him a comfort and confidence level on the course. UNF, clearly, is the best place for him. He loves the coaches and his teammates, and he has thrived there."

Dale combined with UNF teammate Kevin Phelan to keep UNF golf in the state and national spotlight beyond the college season. Phelan qualified for the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and last week reached the semifinals of the U.S. Public Links.

"The way we finished the spring in college has given us a lot of momentum for these [summer] events," said Phelan, the A-Sun freshman of the year. "Any attention we can get for the program will help, and also will help attract new players."

"The confidence we had [in the college season] kept running into the summer," Dale said.

With Dale's success in college and amateur golf in 2010, is it too early to begin thinking of his future beyond college and amateur golf?

"We want him to complete his education first," Bob Dale said. "Sean has a lot of desire to be the best and believes he can be. But he will have to develop the next level of work ethic to take his game to a peak. He's naturally a good player and has all the shots, but the person who works the hardest will be the one to beat."

Martin said Dale has two other important attributes.

"He's willing to listen and he's very even-keel," Martin said. "Sean will never get too far up or too far down."

Lately, Dale's time on leaderboards has been mostly up.

garry.smits@jacksonville.com,

(904) 359-4362

(NEXSTAR) – Bed Bath & Beyond has announced another round of store closures after the company warned last week that it may need to file for bankruptcy.

Bed Bath & Beyond announced its plans to close 150 namesake stores in August, with now-President and CEO Sue Gove calling it a “back to basics” philosophy aimed at allowing the company to focus on better-serving customers and driving growth.

Last week, Bed Bath & Beyond cautioned that it may need to file for bankruptcy protection as it struggles to attract shoppers. It then said that it’s considering options including selling assets or restructuring its business in bankruptcy court. But the chain acknowledged that even those efforts may not be successful.

The company, which has already been cutting costs, said Tuesday it will slash an additional $80 million to $100 million across the company, including an unspecified number of layoffs.

In September, Bed Bath & Beyond released a list of 56 namesake stores that were set to close. The company updated that list Tuesday, adding more than 70 additional locations, including Bed Bath & Beyond, Harmon Face Values, and buybuy BABY stores.

Here are the newest locations added to the store closure list by state (unless otherwise noted, all stores are Bed Bath & Beyond locations):

Alabama

Arizona

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Illinois

Indiana

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maryland

Michigan

Missouri

Mississippi

Montana

North Carolina

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Jersey

New York

Ohio

Oklahoma

Pennsylvania

South Carolina

Texas

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin

For the list of 56 store closures announced in September, click here.

A spokesperson for Bed Bath & Beyond tells Nexstar that “store closing sales will commence and continue over the next few months.” All currently planned store closures have now been announced.

Gove said in a prepared statement on Tuesday that the company is working on adjusting its merchandise and strategy, which has moved away from shoppers’ preferences.

“We want our customers to know that we hear them and are charging ahead every day to meet their needs,” she said.

The Associated Press and Jeremy Tanner contributed to this report.

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