Low scores, beloved Chambers Bay greens as 10-under sets early pace at U.S. Amateur 4-Ball
Frankie Capan looked like he’d just played the track of his life.
“This course is awesome!” he said, eyes as bright as the sun glistening over Chambers Bay and off neighboring Puget Sound.
“The greens are sweet!”
The 21-year-old Florida Gulf Coast University golfer from North Oaks, Minnesota, is instantly taking to Pierce County’s jewel links course and its remade, poa annua greens. In their first competitive round at Chambers, Capan and Hong Kong native Shuai Ming Wong of Southern Methodist University combined for a 9-under 63 on Saturday. The 2017 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball champions had the second-best score of the first round of stroke-play elimination at the 2021 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Chambers Bay, and at The Home Course in DuPont.
One of four champion sides from the previous five U.S. Amateur Four-Balls playing here this week, Capan and Wong were one stroke behind opening-round leaders Brendan Macdougall and Sam Meek. The Canadian side and teammates graduating from the University of Nevada birdied two of the first three holes Saturday, including the 569-yard par-5 first to begin the tournament. They are at 10-under 62.
After Nevada failed to advance to the NCAA championships in Scottsdale, Arizona, Macdougall and Meek flew to Seattle this week and began practicing at The Home Course and at Chambers Bay.
“Our games have been good,” the 22-year-old Meek said. “Brandon has been playing well, so it’s kind of easy to be his partner.”
Their 62 ties the six-year-old Four-Ball Championship’s 18-hole scoring record, achieved six times before Saturday. Macdougall’s and Meek’s 28 on the back nine Saturday matches the low nine-hole scoring mark at a U.S. Amateur Four-Ball set in 2018 by Cole Hammer and Garrett Barber, the event’s champions that year.
Eighteen-year-old Kelly Chinn and David Ford also shot 62 Saturday. They birdied three of the final five holes at The Home Course to rally into the second-place tie at 9-under.
Par at The Home Course is 71.
Ford and his identical twin Maxwell are both playing in the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball. They graduated from high school in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, Thursday night, and boarded a plane at 4:45 a.m. Georgia time/1:45 a.m. Tacoma time Friday to fly west for their practice round Friday afternoon at Chambers Bay.
Maxwell Ford and partner Bruce Murphy shot even par 71 on The Home Course. They are tied for 107th.
Four sides are tied for second at 9-under following a Saturday of play that began at 7 a.m. in cool fog. Some early players from outside the Pacific Northwest were wearing knit caps.
High schoolers Preston Summerhays, the 2019 U.S. Junior Amateur champion who played in last year’s U.S. Open at Winged Foot, and 17-year-old Luke Potter also combined to shoot a 63.
So did defending U.S. Amateur Four-Ball champions Scott Harvey, a 42-year-old self-employed property manager from Kernersville, North Carolina, and Todd Mitchell, 42, an insurance agent from Bloomington, Illinois. They won the 2019 Four-Ball at Bandon Dunes, another links-style, coastline course on the coast of southern Oregon.
Fifty-five sides shot 67 or better on the cool, mostly windless Saturday.
Danny Woodhead and his fellow Nebraskan and partner Michael Wilhelm shot even par 71 on The Home Course. Woodhead is a former Super Bowl running back and nine-year NFL veteran of the New York Jets, New England Patriots, San Diego Chargers and Baltimore Ravens.
After another round of stroke play at Chambers Bay and The Home Course on Sunday, the top 32 sides advance to Monday’s match-play elimination round at Chambers Bay. The semifinals and finals are Wednesday at Chambers.
Each side will switch courses and play an additional round of stroke play Sunday,. Sunday’s round will begin with the cut line sitting between 5 and 4 under par, to be settled by the end of the day’s play.
In four-ball, matches are played in pairs, with a player and a partner, called a side, against another player and partner. Each golfer plays his own ball on each hole—as opposed to foursomes, where each side plays only one ball. In four-ball, the player with the lowest score wins that hole for his side. In stroke play Saturday and Sunday, the low score is the side’s score for that hole.
The USGA started the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship in 2015 “to ensure that a spirited team dynamic would be featured at the game’s highest level.”
This story was originally published May 22, 2021 at 8:42 PM.
