Youth wins at Chambers Bay: College players advance to semifinals of U.S. Amateur 4-Ball
From 128 sides down to a final, youthful four.
From golfers aged 15 to 53, to a semifinal involving five college and one graduating high-school golfer. Plus, one final side still to be determined.
The sixth U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Chambers Bay ended just after 8:30 Tuesday night. The last quarterfinal match had Canadians and University of Nevada teammates Brendan Macdougall and Sam Meek 1 up through 15 holes over Saint Mary’s University of California teammates Blake Hathcoat and Michael Slesinski.
They will finish their match just after sunrise Wednesday.
Then, the semifinals in the morning and finals in the afternoon of the USGA’s return to Chambers Bay for the first time since the 2015 U.S. Open.
Competitors and visiting USGA staff members have been raving since the practice rounds Friday through stroke play Saturday and Sunday and now elimination match play about the remade, poa-annua greens on Chambers Bay’s links holes. The momentum from this U.S. Four-Ball has already produced the 2022 U.S. Women’s Amateur coming to Chambers in 15 months.
The course and its owner, Pierce County, intend to parlay getting awarded the Women’s Amateur into hosting the two other and biggest of the USGA’s original open tournaments, the U.S. Women’s Open perhaps in 2026 or ‘27, and a return of the U.S. Open in 2028 or later.
The winners from the first three matches of the quarterfinals who advanced to Tuesday morning’s semifinals get exemptions from qualifying into the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball the next two years. They are:
- Portugese native and 2021 Florida high-school graduate Kiko Francisco Coelho with University of Central Florida freshman Leopoldo Herrera III, who’s been a member of the Venezuelan national team.
- Notre Dame teammates Davis Chatfield and Palmer Jackson
- Loyola of Chicago teammates Tyler Anderson and Devin Johnson
No mid-amateurs (age 25 or older) advanced past Tuesday morning’s round of 16. The average age of the eight quarterfinalists was 19.8 years.
Francisco Coelho and Herrera took an early lead, increased it to two holes up with a birdie on the par-4 10th then finished a 3 and 1 win over 18-year-old pair David Ford of Georgia, who graduated from high school last week and is heading to play for North Carolina, and Duke-bound Kelly Chinn from Virginia.
Chatfield and Jackson needed three sudden-death playoff holes to defeat Luke Potter and Preston Summerhays, the 2019 U.S. Junior Amateur champion and 2020 U.S. Open teen player. Chatfield used a pitching wedge downwind on par-3, 151-yard 15th hole to get within 8 feet of the hole, then birdied from their to send him and Jackson to Wednesday’s semifinals.
“The one guy hit it in the bunker and Preston hit it to about 15 feet,” Chatfield said. “Shortened story, Preston missed his 15-footer and I had 8 or 9 feet to win. And I made it.”
Jackson and Chatfield have eliminated five of the eight USGA champions in the 256-person field. They have trudged up and down, and back up again, the 7,475 yards Chambers Bay is playing at for this tournament four times in the last three days.
And they want to do it twice more to win it all on Wednesday.
“It’s been super long. We’re both exhausted,” Jackson said.
“But right now it’s all worth it, and we’ve got to do the same thing (Wednesday). We’re going to be playing for a lot more, I guess, so it’ll be exciting.”
Anderson, 21, and Johnson, 22 who graduated from Loyola three weeks ago, were either tied or 1 up on Brent Ito and Patrick Sullivan for their entire, tense quarterfinal match. A birdie on the par-5, 581-yard 18th hole sent Anderson and Johnson into the semifinals of their first USGA championship of any kind.
“It’s pretty surreal for our first time to go this far,” Johnson said.
“(It) is pretty spectacular, in my opinion.”
This youthful U.S. Four-Ball is shaping up for a spectacular finish, if the last few days are any indication:
- a match-play comeback inspired by a train passing by the 16th tee
- a sudden-death playoff win in a downpour
- a big upset of defending champions Scott Harvey and Todd Mitchell, by Chatfield and Jackson
- identical twins David and Maxwell Ford from Georgia advancing to the match-play rounds after coming here straight from high-school graduation
- a former Super Bowl-touchdown-making running back, ex-New England Patriot Danny Woodhead, competing in the Four-Ball
- the awarding of the 2022 U.S. Women’s Amateur to Chambers Bay
The round of 16 began at 7 a.m. Tuesday and didn’t finish completely until well into the afternoon. That’s because Hathcoat and Slesinski went seven extra, sudden-death-playoff holes before they finally beat Cole Berman and Michael Davis. Hathcoat, playing in the round of 16 for the second consecutive U.S. Four-Ball Championship, and Slesinki birdied the par-5 first hole to advance to the quarterfinals.
The 25-hole win was the longest sudden-death playoff in the six-year history of the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship. The previous long was 24 at the 2018 Four-Ball.
The USGA record for a sudden-death playoff is 30 holes, at the 2017 U.S. Women’s Amateur at San Diego Country Club.
Their all-college round-of-eight match against Macdougall and Meek was supposed to begin at 1:45 p.m. It started at 4:45.
This story was originally published May 25, 2021 at 10:06 PM.
