If you’re a competitive amateur player (looking at you, collegians), summer doesn’t feel like summer without tournaments to play. The summer season is almost like a rite of passage for players making their way on up to a career in professional golf, a path that many players in the North & South Amateur field this week likely are on.
The coronavirus pandemic wiped out several June events. Some, like the Sunnehanna Amateur, moved to new dates. The calendar truly kicked off at last week’s Rice Planters Amateur just outside of Charleston, South Carolina. It continues this week in Pinehurst, North Carolina.
Tournament directors reported unprecedented interest in their events and subsequently, above-average field strength. Nearly 100 more players sent in applications for this year’s North & South Amateur than last year, when the tournament offered players a chance to compete on Pinehurst a month before the U.S. Amateur landed there in August.
This year, it will be just the golf showcased at the North & South, but with a backdrop like Pinehurst, you don’t need a lot of extras.
“This was our communication to the players: This is going to be golf almost in its purest form,” said Brian Fahey, Pinehurst’s director of tournament operations.
Put the U.S. Amateur, the summer finale, in the category of “things that look a little different this year,” too. Among the exemption categories announced on June 17 were a handful of spots for top finishers at the summer’s top events. The North & South is one of those, so if the winner and runner-up at Pinehurst this week aren’t already qualified for the U.S. Am, they will be courtesy of their play here.
Below are a few names to keep an eye on in what turned out to be a loaded North & South field. The tournament begins with stroke-play qualifying on June 30 and July 1 to decide a 32-man match-play bracket. The final match will be played July 4.
The defending champ
Cooper Dossey
Dossey’s 2019 North & South victory reminded us what a strong match-play competitor he is. It also launched a period of exceptional golf for the Baylor senior, who has announced he’ll be returning to Waco, Texas, for a fifth year in the fall. After claiming the Putter Boy trophy, Dossey went on to qualify for the U.S. Amateur and log five top-10 finishes in six college golf starts.
Noah Norton, runner-up to Dossey at the North & South, returns this year, too.
The quarterfinalists
Cohen Trolio, Spencer Ralston, William Holcomb V
All three of these men were among the final eight standing at last summer’s U.S. Amateur. Ralston’s run we might have seen coming, considering that he had won the Players Amateur just a month earlier. But for Trolio, 17, and Holcomb, a senior at Sam Houston State, it was a get-to-know-you kind of week at Pinehurst. It’s hard to forget the sound bites from Holcomb, a man with big personality.
The local
Jackson Van Paris
The 16-year-old Pinehurst resident logged a big win this spring at the Junior Invitational at Sage Valley. Familiar ground should make up for the age difference between Van Paris and some of the older, more experienced players in the North & South field.
The sage
Ken Kinkopf
The 58-year-old is No. 3 in Golfweek’s Senior Rankings and a seasoned competitor. He tees it up frequently on the senior circuit and is the reigning North & South Senior champion.
Mr. 57
Alex Ross
At the start of last summer, Ross, who plays for Davidson, fired a mind-numbing round of 57 at the Dogwood Invitational, a tournament that was canceled this year in light of the pandemic. But Ross’ round won’t be forgotten any time soon (in fact, Edward Toledano, tournament chairman emeritus of the Dogwood, said it comes up every time the tournament committee gathers to talk about, well, anything).
Ross won a college tournament this fall and finished in the top 5 in two others.
The road warrior
Canon Claycomb
The 18-year-old arrived at Alabama in January, a semester early. He’s truly crossing the junior-to-amateur threshold this summer and has the distinction of playing the North & South with a fresh title under his belt. Claycomb won the Rice Planters Invitational on June 25.
Like many players, he’ll be burning up the highways driving to the events he can in his Ford F150 – a vehicle purchased on a whim outside Atlanta when the engine on his Cadillac exploded halfway between Tuscaloosa and Sea Island, Georgia, where Claycomb was driving to play the Jones Cup.
The Texans
Cole Hammer, Noah Goodwin, Travis Vick
Never count out Texas sophomore Cole Hammer, World No. 7 and 2018 Western Amateur champion, in match play. The same goes for Goodwin, now an SMU player who won the 2017 U.S. Junior. Hammer’s Longhorn teammate Vick defeated Goodwin at the North & South last year to advance to the quarterfinals, where he fell to runner-up Noah Norton.
The up-and-comer
Maxwell Moldovan
Moldovan, the AJGA’s Rolex Player of the Year in 2019, is headed to Ohio State in the fall to start his freshman year. A shining moment from Moldovan’s U.S. Amateur run last summer was knocking off Walker Cupper Stewart Hagestad in the Round of 64. Moldovan displayed a wizardry around Pinehurst’s tough and tiny greens that should come in handy again this year.
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