Sudden-death playoffs, a big upset — and train fun — in U.S. Amateur 4-Ball at Chambers Bay
David Ford was standing on the tee looking out at Puget Sound under gray clouds to his immediate right.
Looking, it seemed, for a pick-me-up.
The teenager from Georgia and his fellow graduating high-school side partner Kelly Chinn were playing their worst of their otherwise shining week at Chambers Bay. The top-seeded pairing after two blistering stroke-play rounds Saturday and Sunday hadn’t won a hole since a three-hole run into the lead over the first six holes of this match-play test. That was in the morning. Now, it was well into Monday mid-afternoon.
Ford and Chinn and the pairing of Ryan Eckelkamp and Tony Gumper were tied through 15 holes. To beat the two men more than twice their age and advance to Tuesday’s round of 16 in this U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship, the 18-year olds needed a jolt.
Then a Burlington Northern freight train came roaring down the track immediately west of the 16th tee box, toward Ford. The kid playing like a man became a kid again.
He turned away from his ball and tee, toward the train. Then he pumped his left arm in the universal, up-and-down motion for train engineers and big-truck drivers to honk their loud horns.
The guy in the train’s cab didn’t oblige.
No matter. Mission: accomplished.
“Comic relief is good,” Ford said later, smiling.
“That definitely loosened me up.”
Ford crushed his tee shot seconds later on the par-4, 287-yard 16th onto the edge of the green. Then he won the par-3 17th for his side after his exquisitely lofted tee shot plopped to within 45 feet of the hole.
Eckelkamp and Gumper rallied to tie the match by winning 18, after Ford and Chinn missed putts they felt they should have made on the final hole of regulation. So theirs became one of three matches to go to extra, sudden-death holes Monday.
Up the hill at the first hole, back where they had started the match five hours earlier, Ford mashed his tee shot well over 300 yards. His father Patrick handed him a snack bar he had grabbed at the turn between the 18th green and the first hole. Still munching on the snack, Ford drilled his second shot nearly 270 more yard from the middle of the fairway to within 25 feet to the right of the hole.
Then he sent his third shot as straight as that train back on 16. An eagle on the 19th and final hole of the match, a scream—and an arm pump that would have made a train engineer really blow his horn.
“Those are probably the three best shots of my life,” Ford said, walking back to the first tee after he and Chinn advanced to face Daniel Gratton and Zach Jecklin Tuesday at 7 a.m. in the round of 16.
The winner of that advances to the quarterfinals at 1 p.m. Tuesday.
Gratton and Jacklin, teammates 16 years ago at Northern Illinois University, beat Chip Brooke and Marc Dull 3 and 2 on Monday (they won by three shots when two holes were left to play).
Minutes after Ford and Chinn went a 19th hole to win, Canadians and graduating University of Nevada teammates Brendan Macdougall and Sam Meek went to a 19th hole with Derek Busby and Stewart Hagestad—in a downpour.
Hagestad and Busby had to win an 11-side-for-six-spot that began just after dawn Monday cut playoff just to get into the round of 32. Hagestad, a 30-year-old financial analyst from Newport Beach, California, saved and won the 17th hole with a brilliant save out of the green-side bunker to within a foot of the hole.
A middle-aged USGA rules observer watching Hagestad’s gem said: “Why can’t I do that?”
Macdougall and Meek rallied to re-tie the match by winning 18 to force the sudden-death playoff. Meek, from Peterborough, Ontario, was wearing shorts in the 58-degree rain.
With the rain pelting him on the first green, Macdougall buried a 10-foot putt on the first playoff hole for a birdie. Busby, who had saved with a deft lofted iron from a fairway hollow deep left below the green, had his 10-footer that would have sent the match to a second extra hole lip agonizingly out. That sent Macdougall and Meek into Tuesday’s round of 16 beginning at 8:12 a.m.
They will face Logan Shuping and Blake Taylor. Shuping and Taylor beat Maxwell Ford, David’s identical twin brother, and Bruce Murphy on the 18th and final hole 1 up. Murphy’s putt that would have forced a playoff, 19th hole pushed an inch right and past the hole on 18. Maxwell Ford, playing with an injured left middle finger that’s supposed to be in a splint for two more weeks but he just taped, squatted and dropped his head as he watched his partner’s putt just miss.
Monday’s biggest upset was Notre Dame teammates Palmer Jackson and Davis Chatfield surviving a 11-side cut playoff for six spots soon after sunrise, then beating defending U.S. Amateur Four-Ball champions Scott Harvey and Todd Mitchell. Jackson and Chatfield birdied 15, birdied 16 then eagled the par-5 18th hole to win 2 up.
They will face Nathan Smith, a 42-year-old investment advisor from Pittsburgh, and Todd White on Tuesday in the round of 16. Smith and White, 53 and the second-oldest competitor in this tournament, beat Justin Arcano and Justin Ngan 5 and 4.
“That’s going to be a good match,” said Jackson, a veteran of three U.S. Junior Amateurs and three U.S. Amateurs. “I’m from Pittsburgh, and I’ve played with Nathan a good bit, so we’re good friends. But it will be pure competition (Tuesday).”
Frankie Capan, playing out of Florida Gulf Coast University, and Hong Kong native Shuai Ming Wong from Southern Methodist University combined for 10 birdies, just one conceded, to beat the oldest side in the tournament, 50-year-old Kory Bowman and Jason Schultz.
In 32 holes at Chambers Bay, Capan and Wong are 20 under par.
Friday after his practice round at Chambers Bay, Capan said “these greens are sweet,” referring to the remade, poa annua putting surfaces replacing the failed fescue.
“This course is unique,” Capan said Monday. “It really brings out the creative side of both of our games. You can kind of work shots into a lot of these pins using the slopes to your advantage.”
On Tuesday morning, Capan and Wong play a round-of-16 match against 2019 U.S. Junior Amateur champion Preston Summerhays, 18, from Scottsdale, Arizona, and Luke Potter, 17, of Encinitas, California. They defeated North Carolinians Trey Broome and Conner Sock, 3 and 2.
The U.S. Amateur Four-Ball, the USGA’s return to Chambers Bay for the first time since the 2015 U.S. Open, will be go from 16 to the final four sides through Tuesday’s matches.
This story was originally published May 24, 2021 at 9:22 PM.
