Friday, August 16, 2013

U.S. Amateur Golf Update

One hundred years ago, in 1913, American golf introduced itself to the rest of the world at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, where an American amateur named Francis Ouimet upset the best British professionals to win the U.S. Open championship.  To celebrate that momentous occasion, the USGA is hosting the 2013 U.S. Amateur championship at The Country Club.  The results underscore the decline in American golfing prowess that has become so obvious.  Of the four golfers to reach the semi-finals, none is from the United States.  Here are your semi-finalists:

Corey Conners, 21, is a Canadian from Listowel, Ontario who is a senior at Kent State University.  He is ranked number 39 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.

Matt Fitzpatrick, 18, is an Englishman who is ranked number 2 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.  He was the Low Amateur at this year's British Open, and he is an incoming freshman at Northwestern University.

Brady Watt, 22, is an Australian who is ranked number 9 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.  He was the runner-up in the 2013 Australian Master of the Amateurs tournament, and the Aussies think he is likely to be a future PGA star.

Oliver Goss, 19, is an Australian majoring in kinesiology at the University of Tennessee.  He is ranked number 13 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.  Last year, he reached the quarter-finals of the U.S. Amateur.

By the way, Justin Thomas of Goshen, Ky., was the only Kentuckian in the field for the U.S. Amateur.  He was a decent threat, as he is ranked number 6 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.  But he shot 75+72=147 in two rounds of stroke play, leaving him in a tie for 108th place.  Only the top 64 players move onto match play, so Thomas was eliminated.

The defending champion, Steven Fox of Hendersonville, Tenn., shot 72+74=146 to finish in a tie for 88th.  He also failed to make the match play rounds.

Last year's runner-up, Michael Weaver of Fresno, Calif., was beaten in the first round of match play by Greg Eason of England.

8 comments:

  1. By the way, 20-year-old Jordan Spieth of Texas is currently in second place at the PGA's Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C. So we do have at least one pretty-good young American golfer.

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    1. That's fantastic news. He's this weekend's "C List" starter for the Ginger Reeves in the HeathPostdotcom Yahoo! Fantasy Golf league (#HPonYFG). My Gingers trail Matthew's Siler City Samurai, 16 tournament wins to 15 tournament wins, in the head-to-head standings as the season has reached its home stretch of post-majors tournaments. Jordan and my boys are off to a strong start this weekend, and they need to be--the Gingers trail the Sams by 3,986 to 3,826 in the less-prestigous-but-still-monitored total-points race.

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    2. Spieth came very close to becoming the youngest man ever to win two events on the PGA Tour. But he lost in a playoff to 23-year-old Patrick Reed of Baton Rouge, La. Reed became the first player since 1996 to win a tournament with his wife as his caddy.

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    3. The combined age of Spieth and Reed is equal to Phil Mickelson's age.

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    4. Meanwhile, the Gingers and Sam are now tied with 16 tournament wins, and the Sams' season-points lead was shaved by 40 to 120 after this weekend's tournament. #GingerCollar!

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  2. Emma Talley is ranked 15th in the World Women's Amateur Golf Rankings. She is the 5th-highest American in those rankings. She beat two of the women ranked above her -- Su-Hyun Oh (2) and Alison Lee (7) -- in last week's U.S. Women's Amateur.

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  3. Going into the U.S. Women's Amateur, Emma Talley had been ranked number 65. So she moved up 50 places in a week.

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  4. Matt Fitzpatrick ended up winning this thing without too much trouble, beating Oliver Goss in the final by a score of 4 & 3. Fitzpatrick was also Low Amateur at the British Open, so he had a pretty good summer.

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