Tag: Maridoe Amateur

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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Maridoe Amateur bracket down to eight, including medalist and a USGA champion

Medalist Will Holcomb and Sunnehanna Amateur champion Preston Summerhays will face off at the top of the Maridoe Amateur bracket Saturday.

Five days and six rounds into the Maridoe Amateur, the quarterfinals are set. Half of the remaining field was seeded inside the top 10, and that includes Will Holcomb.

The Sam Houston State fifth-year senior is channeling some of his Pinehurst magic on this bracket. Twice in the past year and a half, Holcomb played his way deep into match play at that resort’s famed No. 2 course – at the 2019 U.S. Amateur (semifinals) and the 2020 North & South (finals).

On Friday at Maridoe Golf Club, Holcomb got past Coastal Carolina’s Zack Taylor in the morning but needed an extra hole to do it. He then defeated Oklahoma’s Logan McAllister by a 4-and-3 margin in the afternoon. It doesn’t get any easier from here. Holcomb will face Preston Summerhays, the 2019 U.S. Junior champion, in the quarterfinals. Summerhays also won the prestigious Sunnehanna Amateur over the summer.

Summerhays, a Class of 2021 player bound for Arizona State next fall, dispatched two college players in Oklahoma’s Patrick Welch and SMU’s McClure Meissner, the latter having the distinction of winning the Southern Amateur at Maridoe over the summer.

Down the bracket, No. 45 seed Benjamin Shipp, who won the South Beach International Amateur to end 2019 continues a gritty run that included victories over Santa Clara’s Matthew McCarty and SMU’s Noah Goodwin on Friday. Now he faces Christopher Gotterup, who had a similarly tough road. Gotterup, a Rutgers senior, barely got past stroke-play star Frankie Capan, of Florida Gulf Coast, on Friday afternoon.

Sam Choi, the New Mexico player, and Ryan Grider, a Baylor junior who won the 2019 Texas Amateur, will meet on the bottom of the bracket. The winner of that match will face the winner of a showdown between Luke Potter, a high school junior verbally committed to Arizona State, and Jonathan Brightwell, a fifth-year senior at Oklahoma who got past U.S. Amateur medalist Wilson Furr and Arizona State’s David Puig on Friday.

After a double-round day of matches on Saturday, two finalists will play a 36-hole final on Sunday to determine a champion.

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Medalist Will Holcomb survives and advances at Maridoe; all-Texas battle on tap

The medalist survived in the first round of match play at the Maridoe Amateur, and a grueling week in North Texas continues.

The medalist survived in the first round of match play at the Maridoe Amateur, and a grueling week in North Texas continues.

Twenty-four hours after Will Holcomb earned medalist honors at the inaugural event at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas, he eeked out a close victory over Noah Woolsey. Holcomb, a fifth-year senior at Sam Houston State, finished 54 holes at 2 over (the best score by three shots) to claim the No. 1 seed. On Thursday morning, Woolsey, a senior at Washington, was among six players who had to come back and play off for two remaining spots in the bracket. He took the No. 64 seed while Devon Bling took the No. 63 spot.

Neither advanced.

Holcomb is notoriously tough in match play, having made it to the semifinals at the 2019 U.S. Amateur and the finals at the 2020 North & South Amateur. But Maridoe is a different animal.

Scores: Maridoe Amateur

After claiming medalist honors on Wednesday, Holcomb said the key would be to take it one match at a time. If that’s the case, one down and five to go.

Holcomb was 2 down to Woolsey by the fifth hole, squared it by the time the match reached the back nine, and narrowly outlasted Woolsey after he won the par-3 15th with a double to Woolsey’s triple and the two tied the final three holes.

Holcomb faces Zack Taylor, a fifth-year senior at Coastal Carolina, in the next match.

Down the bracket, Preston Summerhays, the 2019 U.S. Junior champ, outlasted USC freshman Shane Ffrench, 4 and 3. Below that, Michael Thorbjornsen, who won the 2018 U.S. Junior, and McClure Meissner, who won the Southern Amateur (at Maridoe, no less), both advanced and will meet in the next round.

SMU’s Noah Goodwin, a winner at the Maridoe Collegiate earlier this fall, knocked off Arkansas’ Julian Perico. N.C. State senior Benjamin Shipp, the South Beach International Amateur winner a year ago, went an extra hole in defeating Oklahoma fifth-year senior Garret Reband.

Frankie Capan, who led stroke play much of the week, defeated Matthew Sharpstene, a semifinalist at this year’s U.S. Amateur. He now faces Segundo Oliva Pinto, the Arkansas player who famously bowed out of the U.S. Amateur because of caddie error.

Notably, Texas star Cole Hammer failed to advance, falling at the hand of Arizona State’s Cameron Sisk, though his teammates Parker Coody and Travis Vick both did. Now they meet in the next round.

On the bottom of the bracket, Jonathan Brightwell, who authored a brilliant 69 in the second round (the only number under par that day), defeated Stanford freshman Karl Vilips and now gets Wilson Furr, the U.S. Amateur medalist, in the next round.

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Maridoe Amateur medalist Will Holcomb ready to tackle match play

Will Holcomb has an impressive resume when it comes to head-to-head golf. He’ll take the No. 1 seed into Maridoe Amateur match play.

It isn’t all that unusual for a Tour player to avoid venues that don’t seem to suit his game. After missing the 36-hole cut at the Southern Amateur in July, Will Holcomb decided to take that approach with Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas.

As it turns out, the seeds were planted for this week’s Maridoe Amateur during the week of the Southern. Holcomb later received an invitation and found himself having to go back on his plan.

“I found out it was match play and I love match play,” he said.

Holcomb finished a brutal 54 holes at Maridoe with rounds of 73-76-69, good for medalist honors at 2 over and a navy cashmere sweater emblazoned with the Maridoe patch to commemorate that. He noted that his wife Graycie, who was on her way to Carrollton to watch the match-play portion of the tournament, might be a bit angry with him.

“She says the No. 1 seed never wins,” Holcomb noted.

Will Holcomb, Maridoe Amateur medalist
Will Holcomb, Maridoe Amateur medalist

Standing off the 18th green waiting for his medalist photo opp, Holcomb was at a bit of a loss for words at the accomplishment. In a tough field full of the country’s best-ranked amateurs (Holcomb checks in at No. 73 in the World Amateur Ranking), the player from Crockett, Texas, rose to the top.

Scores: Maridoe Amateur

“It’s every bit as hard as any golf you want on a calm, sunny day,” Holcomb said of playing Maridoe in this week’s cold and windy conditions. “The first day was 35 degrees and freezing cold. That wasn’t easy. Yesterday was a little better. Ever since it warmed up, I’ve been kind of warming up myself.”

Holcomb is perhaps most well-known for his deep runs in match play at Pinehurst No. 2. He was a U.S. Amateur semifinalist in 2019 and finished runner-up to Tyler Strafaci, the eventual 2020 U.S. Amateur winner, at the North & South Amateur earlier this year.

It bodes well for him that six rounds of match play are to follow – just like a USGA championship.

“Just keep doing what I know how to do in match play and just fight – that’s really what I love doing,” Holcomb said of his match-play mindset. “I don’t play golf because it’s fun, I play golf because I want to win. When you get to play golf in the purest form, like one-on-one basketball, that’s really fun.”

Holcomb, a self-described “corona year senior” at Sam Houston State, can banter on the course as well as anyone. He marks his ball with a smiley face with the tongue sticking out in homage to a high school golf buddy who used to make that face when he’d drop a putt on Holcomb in a friendly match. He’s walking the course this week with caddie Marcus Jones, Maridoe member who works for College Golf Fellowship.

Holcomb’s final-round 69 on Wednesday helped him overtake 36-hole co-leaders Leo Oyo, who ultimately got the No. 2 seed, and Frankie Capan, who landed the No. 12 seed.

Seemingly everyone in this field has a Maridoe war story to tell, particularly as the North Texas wind howls and temperatures hover near 40 degrees.

Capan, a past U.S. Amateur Four-Ball champ who plays for Florida Gulf Coast, had two-time Korn Ferry Tour winner Davis Riley on his bag on Wednesday. Riley has played Maridoe frequently and helped Capan with some local knowledge before the event.

Julian Perico, an Arkansas junior, said Maridoe doled out plenty of punches. Perico snuck into match play as the No. 61 seed, calling Maridoe the hardest course he’s played. That’s from a player whose home course at college is Blessings Golf Club, a notoriously difficult, hilly layout.

“If I had to compare Maridoe to Blessings, this one is way tighter, the greens are way harder to hit, it’s way more penal off the tee, the greens are way harder to put on. It’s also faster, firmer and the wind feels 20 mph harder,” he said.

Perico was paying close attention to the leaderboard on Wednesday afternoon – excitedly shouting to another player at one point during his post-round interview when he learned he was safely on the bracket. He’ll face No. 4 seed Noah Goodwin, an SMU player who won a college event at Maridoe this fall, in the first round.

Thursday can’t be as adventurous as Perico’s previous 24 hours. Perico didn’t finish his second round, but realized once he left the golf course he had forgotten about a project and an essay due on Wednesday. He spent most of the night on the project, which was for an entomology class he’s taking.

He went to bed at midnight and woke up at 5:30 a.m., to finish the final three holes of his second round. Two hours later, he was off for his third round.

He’s used to balancing golf and schoolwork, he said, but not firing tournament rounds in the 80s.

“I think it’s so cool we get to play three rounds. At least you get to stay three days out here,” he said when asked about the format. “…I would have been done by a long shot. They gave me a chance and I took advantage of it.”

The bracket had only two holes in it on Wednesday night as a playoff was still needed to determine the Nos. 63 and 64 seeds.

Let match play begin.

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Jonathan Brightwell set himself apart with a red number at the Maridoe Amateur

How tough did Maridoe Golf Club play in the second round of the Maridoe Amateur? Only one player posted a number under par.

Jonathan Brightwell thought he was pretty adept at controlling his golf ball. Then the 22-year-old from Charlotte, North Carolina, moved to Oklahoma for a fifth year on the Sooner golf roster. He had never even been to Oklahoma (or Texas) until then.

“You gotta adapt and I think I’m getting better and better at it,” he said. “Playing it every day is definitely helpful. There’s some type of wind every day back home. The East Coast you get plenty of days where it’s just perfect. No wind.”

Wind control is key this week at the Maridoe Amateur, a new event at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas, that pits the top amateurs in the country against each other in a similar setup to a USGA championship (plus one extra round of stroke play).

After an early round of 3-under 69 in Tuesday’s second round – an 11-shot turnaround from his opening 80 – Brightwell climbed the leaderboard with every refresh. If you don’t know where you’re trying to place it at Maridoe, Brightwell said, you’re going to struggle. Experience helps. Brightwell saw this course in October when he played the Maridoe Collegiate with his team. He finished T-13 that week.

“This place can kind of make you look silly,” he said. “It’s just that tough.”

Scores: Maridoe Amateur

Temperatures have hovered in the high 30s and low 40s so far this week, with winds gusting as high as 30 mph in Round 1. Brightwell – who had climbed inside the top 10 by mid-afternoon – needs to remain inside the top 64 through one more round of stroke play, which seems likely at this point. You might say he’s sneaky good in that format.

In his past four years at North Carolina-Greensboro, Brightwell saw little match play in the regular season. That was a summer thing. But this fall, two of his three starts with the Sooners included head-to-head play. He was 4-1 at Big 12 Match Play – losing only to Baylor’s Johnny Keefer – and won both matches at the East Lake Cup (the only Oklahoma player who can make that claim).

Brightwell was unaware of that stat entering the Maridoe Amateur, but appreciates the format mostly because growing up in North Carolina, it meant playing against his buddies. As has been his story this fall, match play rewards good play.

“Very rarely someone wins if they don’t play the best in a match-play event,” he said.

His surroundings helped him in that respect. At Oklahoma, which finished a shortened 2020 season atop the Golfweek/Sagarin College Rankings (and remained there after the fall season), if you don’t play well, you don’t play. Brightwell knew that it would test his game when he transferred in to use the fifth year the NCAA made available to college seniors after the 2020 spring season was canceled.

“Being in that fire and having to play against these guys that are really, really good all the time made me uncomfortable, but it was a good uncomfortable because I had to play well,” he said of team qualifying at Oklahoma. “I had to constantly constantly play well.

“I think that translated into some of our fall events because you play well and you know you’re supposed to be there and then you go out and you play well for your guys and your team when you’re traveling. It’s like this recurring you gotta play good golf.”

No other player had a red number on the Maridoe leaderboard on Tuesday, with many players going in the reverse direction. Brightwell, at 5 over, was three shots behind co-leaders Frankie Capan and Leo Oyo (who both went 70-76) by the time they finished their rounds in near darkness.

As the field thins out, the competition gets more intense.

With U.S. Walker Cup captain Nathaniel Crosby on property this week, selection to that team becomes a talking point – especially with the matches moved up from September to May. Brightwell hasn’t spent much time thinking about it. Once again, good play takes care of itself.

“This is a pretty unique event but stout competition, match play,” Brightwell said in noting the theater in North Texas this week. “The last three or four matches coming down to quarterfinals and on will be probably some incredible golf on a really tough golf course.”

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A freed-up Frankie Capan has the clubhouse lead after a brutal opening day at the Maridoe Am

Monday was cold at windy at Maridoe Golf Club, but Frankie Capan took it in stride to open the Maridoe Amateur with a share of the lead.

As soon as Frankie Capan received his invitation to play the Maridoe Amateur, he knew he wanted to be there. Over the course of 2020, as the club in Carrollton, Texas, hosted tournament after tournament, it built a reputation for attracting strong fields at every level of the game.

Starved for tournament starts, like many players, Capan watched from afar.

“I saw the other tournaments going on at Maridoe and kind of wished I was playing,” he said.

Capan, who grew up in North Oaks, Minnesota, saw Maridoe for the first time the day before this event began. He arrived for his practice round with just enough time to register and snag a yardage book. He didn’t even get a chance to warm up. Capan usually isn’t the kind of guy who likes to play practice rounds, but at Maridoe, you have to know where to place it.

Scores: Maridoe Amateur

Despite the limited reps, Capan returned for Monday’s opening round and fired a 2-under 70. He birdied the final three holes of the back nine (he started on No. 10), and after a long day of brutal North Texas wind and temperatures near 40 degrees, Capan came out with a share of the lead.

Leo Oyo, who transferred from San Diego State to Oklahoma State, is also 2 under through 16 holes. Oyo was among a handful of players who didn’t finish the first round on Monday. Those players will wrap up their final holes Tuesday morning before the second round resumes. After 54 holes, the 92-man field will be reduced to 64 men, who enter a match-play bracket that will play out much like a USGA championship – with a 36-hole final on Sunday and all.

Capan said he expected the conditions at Maridoe to be British Open-like this week, though quickly corrected himself to say U.S. Open-like. Perhaps both are true.

“I ended up bogeying the first hole but I’ve been playing pretty well the past few weeks so I wasn’t really beating myself up too much because I knew everyone was going to make some bogeys out there,” he said.

Capan’s only start since a match-play run at the U.S. Amateur in August was a College Golf Fellowship-sponsored event at Trinity Forest, just south of Maridoe in Dallas. He finished 12th. After COVID cut short his sophomore season at Alabama last year, Capan entered the transfer portal. While Alabama was a special place, he knew it wasn’t the best fit for him.

Fellow Minnesotan Van Holmgren had recently transferred from North Dakota State to Florida Gulf Coast. Holmgren stayed with Capan during quarantine and Capan picked his brain about the Florida school.

Even though Capan has been based in Fort Myers, Florida, this fall, he’s only been to the library and to team workouts. It’s a funny feeling after leaving Tuscaloosa.

“It was weird not being on campus at all after coming from one of the biggest campuses,” he said.

Since making his decision to transfer in July, Capan won the Minnesota Amateur and finished second at the Minnesota Open. He also played the Sunnehanna Amateur and the Western Amateur, barely missing the 16-man match-play bracket in the latter. In 2019, Capan played his way to the quarterfinals of the grueling Midwest event.

Capan admits to feeling a bit more freed up since making a major change in his golf life.

“I think there’s something about being excited for a clean slate somewhere and I think that subconsciously might have freed me up a little bit,” he said.

Asked for his match-play record, Capan put it this way: He thinks he’d win seven out of 10 matches. His history in the format certainly backs up that thinking.

“I just really like the fact that it’s me versus you,” he said of match play. “The golf course is standing in between us. I’ve always been a fan of other sports and in football, I used to play defensive linemen when I was young. It was always me versus the guy in front of me. I think it’s such a cool concept especially in the game of golf.”

More on the Maridoe Amateur…

The Maridoe Amateur came to fruition after the club hosted the Southern Amateur in July. It was a way for Nathaniel Crosby, the U.S. Walker Cup captain, to see the nation’s best amateurs play a match-play event at Maridoe.

The field, which started Monday at 96 players, was selected mostly by ranking and with priority given to U.S. players. The top 150 players in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (after the U.S. Amateur) were invited in addition to any player inside the top 200 in the Scratch Players World Amateur Ranking. Players who made the Round of 32 at the U.S. Amateur or the Sweet 16 at the Western Amateur – who weren’t inside that top echelon of the rankings – were also invited, and so were all Palmer Cup players.

With six rounds of match play coming later in the week, the Maridoe Amateur certainly will provide a telling look at the nation’s top talent in a head-to-head format. Last week, the USGA announced its 16-man Walker Cup practice squad that would meet at Bay Hill in December. The Walker Cup will be played May 8-9 at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Florida.

As for the Maridoe Amateur? It will be played annually and is expected to return in the summer of 2021 with the field likely doubling in size.

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