Luke Potter – Syndication Server

Is this the best amateur golf event you’ve never heard of? The second East West Matches should bring fireworks

The East West Matches bring together some of the best amateurs, mid-ams and senior amateurs in the United States.

In its infancy, the East West Matches is maybe the best amateur golf event you’ve never heard of.

The second playing of the event is set to tee off this weekend, Nov. 4-6.

The brainchild of two-time USGA champion and former Walker Cup participant Scott Harvey, the East West Matches combine some of the best amateurs, mid-ams and senior amateurs in the United States. The Ryder Cup-style event features two amateur players, six senior amateurs and 10 mid-amateur players per side.

The matches are back at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas, where the inaugural Cup was won in dramatic fashion by the West in 2020. In fact, the man that clinched the winning half-point for the West, Patrick Christovich, is back to help the West defend their title.

Captained by 2005 U.S. Mid-Am champion, Kevin Marsh, the West has experience under pressure on its side. Returning Skip Berkmeyer, Derek Busby, Patrick Christovich, Brad Nurski and Robert Funk, the West is armed with a crew that went 9-9-1 and was a large part of the West’s monstrous 23-22 comeback win back in 2020.

In addition, the West has two amateur players ranked inside the top 110 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings — Pepperdine’s Derek Hitchner and Arizona State’s Luke Potter are ranked Nos. 105 and 38 in WAGR, respectively. The two should give a spark of energy to their mid-am and senior-am teammates.

The West celebrates its 23-22 comeback win over the East at the inaugural East West Matches (2020) at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas.

On the East side, there’s a sense of hunger and redemption. The East is also returning five players from their 2020 team. A murderer’s row of amateur golf talent that had a combined 2020 record of 15-4-1 but left Maridoe empty-handed.

Joe Deraney, Jeronimo Esteve, Scott Harvey, Doug Hanzel and Bob Royak look to take down the West this year and stake claim to what they came so close to having two years ago. The strength of the East team lies in both seniors and young gun amateurs.

Both Hanzel and Royak went 4-0-0 in the 2020 Matches. Now they bolster their lineup even more with the addition of Golfweek’s No. 1 ranked senior amateur Rusty Strawn. Tried and true, the colts in the East’s stable of talent are Alabama’s Nick Dunlap and Tennessee’s Caleb Surratt.

Dunlap was Golfweek’s No. 1 ranked recruit in the 2022 class and the 2021 AJGA Boys Golfer of the Year. Surratt is currently ranked No. 15 in WAGR and is the 2022 U.S. Junior Amateur runner-up.

Who’s running the stable for the East, you ask? That would be two-time Walker Cup captain Nathaniel Crosby.

The East has brought out the big guns, but will they be able to redeem themselves after such a disappointing finish in 2020?

Time will tell and if we learned anything from the inaugural East West Matches, we know that anything can happen over the course of three days at Maridoe Golf Club.

Full Rosters

Mid-Amateurs

East: Andrew Bailey, Evan Beck, Chip Brooke, Mark Costanza, Joe Deraney, Jeronimo Esteve, Scott Harvey, Matt Mattare, Tug Maude, Chad Wilfong

West: Jason Anthony, Skip Berkmeyer, Denny Bull, Derek Busby, Patrick Christovich, Nick Guyer, Colby Harwell, John Hunter, Brad Nurski, John Swain

Senior Amateurs

East: Doug Hanzel, Steve Harwell, Billy Mitchell, Bob Royak, Rusty Strawn, Matt Sughrue

West: Tommy Brennan, Jon Brown, Robert Funk, John McClure, Mike McCoy, Mike Rowley

Amateurs

East: Nick Dunlap (Alabama) & Caleb Surratt (Tennessee)

West: Derek Hitchner (Pepperdine) & Luke Potter (Arizona State)

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Luke Clanton’s magical U.S. Junior run ends as Cohen Trolio, Nicholas Dunlap advance to final

Luke Clanton was the breakout star of the week at the U.S. Junior, but Cohen Trolio and Nicholas Dunlap will play for the title.

At USGA amateur championships, there’s always the realization that good things must come to an end. On Friday afternoon at the Country Club of North Carolina in Pinehurst, North Carolina, Luke Clanton met his end short of a trophy but with a big bag of wins regardless.

Clanton, the 17-year-old from Miami Lakes, Florida, tore through the match-play bracket mid-week and downed three top players to score a semifinal pairing opposite Cohen Trolio, himself a semifinalist from the U.S. Amateur at Pinehurst in 2019. Trolio proved to be the buzzsaw that Clanton couldn’t get past.

“It just didn’t go my way today,” said Clanton, who at No. 33 had the highest seed of any semifinalist. “I can’t really say anything else. I just didn’t perform nearly good enough. Congrats to Cohen; Cohen played really well. I hope he pulls through and wins the championship match. He deserves it, as good as he played today.”

Scores: U.S. Junior Amateur

Clanton, who has committed to Florida State, birdied the first hole but found the tables turning when Trolio, who will play for LSU, birdied Nos. 3 and 5. Trolio extended his lead by winning Nos. 7-9 then 11 and 12. The match was over by No. 14.

Still, for Clanton, head-to-head victories over top-seeded Kelly Chinn, CCNC member Jackson Van Paris and two-time Alabama State Amateur champion Gordon Sargent made him arguably the breakout star of the week on a bracket loaded with talent.

“It was an awesome learning experience, but it’s a tough one to really handle,” Clanton said. “I really wanted to win this one.”

Luke Clanton reacts to a missed putt on hole seven during the quarterfinals at the 2021 U.S. Junior at The Country Club of North in Village of Pinehurst, N.C. on Friday, July 23, 2021. (Chris Keane/USGA)

As for Trolio, the 18-year-old seems to find his flow in Pinehurst. His breakout performance came two years ago at the U.S. Amateur. He played the Southern Amateur at Old Waverly Country Club in West Point, Mississippi, where his dad V.J. is the head of instruction, last weekend before immediately hopping a plane to play this event, which started Monday.

“Yeah, I’ve been playing super solid golf for the last couple months. This week just kind of hit the flow. I finished fourth round at the Southern, kind of literally hopped on a plane, flew here, played a practice round on Dogwood the next day. It was just kind of the same flow.”

Junior golf is a small world, and it’s not often a player catches a man on the other side of the bracket with whom he’s unfamiliar. Trolio admitted to knowing both Luke Potter and Nicholas Dunlap – the other two semifinalists – and will ultimately meet Dunlap in Saturday’s 36-hole final after the Huntsville, Alabama, native dispatched Potter, of Encintas, California, by a 3-and-2 margin.

Potter had the upper hand for much of the front nine, with Dunlap 2 down entering the back nine. But Dunlap fought back and ultimately closed out Potter when he birdied Nos. 14 and 15 then won No. 16 with a par.

“It’s unreal,” Dunlap said of his spot in Saturday’s final. “I’ve played the last six or seven weeks on the road, and I want to win everything I play in, obviously, but I’ve been trying to get my game ready for this week and for the next week for the U.S. Am. To be able to do it, it feels great.”

The winner of Saturday’s final will earn, among other things, an exemption into the 2022 U.S. Open.

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Luke Potter, 16, is the last man standing after marathon week at Maridoe Amateur

Juniors Luke Potter and Preston Summerhays put on a shot in the 36-hole final of the Maridoe Amateur. Ultimately Potter left with the title.

Luke Potter likes to go it alone on the golf course. When the 16-year-old made his U.S. Amateur debut in August, he carried his own bag. He did the same for the past six days at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas, this week.

When the formula works, you stick to it. Potter got himself through three rounds of stroke play and six more rounds of match play this week at the marathon Maridoe Amateur, a new event for the nation’s top amateurs that unfolded under the watchful eye of U.S. Walker Cup captain Nathaniel Crosby.

“I just like to work alone on the course,” said Potter, from Encinitas, California. “Maridoe is not that hard of a walk so I thought I could do it. I kept my energy and I did just that.”

The field for the event was selected based primarily on rankings, with priority given to U.S. players. It was an overwhelmingly college-age field, with just a handful of juniors. As it turned out, Potter and 18-year-old Preston Summerhays were the last two players standing for Sunday’s 36-hole final.

And they’d had plenty of sparring practice leading up to the title match.

Scores: Maridoe Amateur

Potter recently spent a week at the Summerhays home in Phoenix. They played three or four competitive rounds, which was motivation for each of them. Summerhays, who won the 2019 U.S. Junior Amateur, will arrive on the Arizona State roster next fall. Potter will be there a year later.

It’s good and bad to play a friend under such high stakes, Potter said. He faced the same situation in the Round of 64 against Alexander Yang. Yang conceded Potter few putts.

“I knew Preston’s strengths and weaknesses, same with my buddy Alex’s strengths and weaknesses,” Potter said. “It’s good to play against your buddies, in my opinion. I beat them both so at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter.”

In the final match, the first 18 holes went back and forth with Summerhays getting an early 1-up lead. Potter fought back to lead by as many as three holes and then the two hit the halfway point tied. Potter surged in the afternoon and was 5 up by the time the match hit the back nine. On the par-4 10th hole, he was in the fescue but pulled off a clutch recovery shot from 210 yards – over water, bunkers left and right, couldn’t miss long – to set up a par.

“I striped a 4-iron to about six or seven feet and then when I won that hole, I went 6 up so I kind of knew I was in full control,” he said.

He eventually won by an 8-and-6 margin.

Potter had played three tournaments at Maridoe so far in 2020: The Maridoe Samaritan Fund Invitational 2.0 in May, the Maridoe Junior in June and the Southern Amateur in July.

“Four times a charm for sure,” he said. “Experience really does matter here and this is probably the best field and so I’m happy to win this one.”

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After rounds of 73-76-73 in stroke play this week, he landed the No. 3 seed on the 64-man match-play bracket. He named his Round-of-32 match against Baylor’s John Keefer and his quarterfinal match against Oklahoma’s Jonathan Brightwell as being some of the toughest. Still, Potter loves this one-on-one format.

“You can be a little bit more aggressive and things can go against you really quick,” he said. “In that second 18, I got hot and that’s match play.”

As the field shrunk, it allowed players making a deep run to put on a show for Crosby. This isn’t the first time that a spot on the Walker Cup team has crossed Potter’s mind. In February, Potter won the AJGA Simplify Boys Championship on Carlton Woods on the strength of a 10-under 62 in the second round. His 20-under total was a new AJGA record.

“After the big win in Houston earlier this year, I was inside the top 100 in the rankings so it entered my mind there but I had a bad summer so I just kind of threw it out the door,” he said.

Sunday’s final pairing could easily be a match-up you’d find on the last day of the U.S. Junior Amateur, the title many juniors covet. After all, it comes with a U.S. Open exemption.

Both of those events make Potter’s 2021 goal list. He’d like a title in the former and a spot in the latter.

“A U.S. Junior win would be awesome,” he said. “I know it’s a big goal and one tournament. If I can just keep improving, I think I can reach that goal. The U.S. Open being at Torrey Pines in 2021, I’m making that a premium on trying to qualify and hopefully make the cut.”

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