There weren’t any particular fireworks to speak of in Chris Gotterup’s opening round of the Jones Cup Invitational on Friday, but a round of 4-under 68 at Ocean Forest Golf Club in Sea Island, Georgia was enough to leave the Rutgers junior with the reins on the opening day of the first major amateur event of 2020.
Gotterup mixed six birdies in with two bogeys to navigate his way to the top of a field loaded with the top collegians, juniors and mid-amateurs in the country. The Little Silver, New Jersey native got hot in the middle of his round, logging five of his six birdies from Nos. 6 to 14. A bogey at the par-3 15th condensed his lead from two shots to one.
Leaderboard: Jones Cup Invitational
Julien Sale, a senior at Arkansas State, opened with a birdie but immediately gave it back with a bogey at his second hole. He ended the day with 3-under 67, good for solo second.
Sale led the Red Wolves in scoring this fall as they charted a rise to the No. 39 spot in the Golfweek/Sagarin College Rankings.
Only seven other players broke par on Friday at Ocean Forest, making it a relatively tight squeeze at the top of the leaderboard. Perhaps none of those men has unfinished business at the Jones Cup quite like Davis Thompson, a St. Simons Island, Georgia native – and the University of Georgia’s leading scorer this fall. He opened with 2-under 70.
A year ago, Thompson was tied with Akshay Bhatia after 36 holes when torrential rain wiped out the final round. He and Bhatia went to the par-4 first hole for sudden death, but Bhatia made quick work of him when Thompson put his drive in the water and made bogey.
In the year since, Thompson has won an NCAA Regional, finished at the top of Western Amateur stroke play, won another college title and played the RSM Classic on the PGA Tour, finishing in the top 25.
The group of seven men tied for 10th at even includes several notables, among them U.S. Amateur runner-up John Augenstein, a Vanderbilt senior. Oklahoma senior Quade Cummins, winner of this summer’s Pacific Coast Amateur, is also on that number as well as 2018 Jones Cup champion Garrett Barber and U.S. Amateur semifinalist Cohen Trolio, a high-school junior from West Point, Mississippi.
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