Mateo Fernandez De Oliveira tied for 40th at the NCAA Championship, finishing his career as a Razorback in the process.
Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira shot one over par Monday afternoon, which gave him a final score of 286 (+6) at the challenging Grayhawk Golf Club Raptor Course.
The transfer senior from Argentina completed his Arkansas career in the fourth round of the NCAA Championship.
Fernandez de Oliveira had a strong start with a birdie and three pars. He lost momentum on the 16th hole but recovered with another birdie on the 17th. His back nine was more challenging, with six pars and three bogeys, resulting in a total score of +1 (71) for the round.
He was also named to the PING All-Central Region team by the Golf Coaches Association of America for the second time while he has been attending Arkansas.
“Mateo been’s great for our program,” said head coach of the golf team, Brad McMakin. “He been a great ambassador for our program the last couple of years.”
Arkansas finished 20 over par, bringing their 36-hole score to 582 (+22). After nailing 20 birdies during round one, the Hogs only finished accumulated four in round 2.
The Hogs fell to 20th after round two, but it was a rough day for everyone on the Raptor course at Grayhawk Golf Course. Illinois (-7) and Florida (-2) were the only teams to shoot under par on Saturday, climbing the standings, Illinois climbing eight spots to become the new number one, and Florida sitting at fifth.
Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira, who contributed two of the team’s four birdies, is currently sharing the 13th position after scoring a 74 in round two, resulting in a total of 140 (+4) for the 36-hole game.
Obviously this was not the result we wanted,” head coach Brad McMakin said. “We know from past years that the afternoon wave is always tough, and it is proving to be the case once again this year. Things kind of unraveled on us the last seven holes. Despite the outcome, I am proud of the guys and how they continued to fight. We know what to expect tomorrow and we will be ready. The first goal for all 30 teams is to make the top 15 after the third round and we still have that goal in our sights.”
Arkansas will play the third round on Sunday (May 28) with Oklahoma and Ohio State with tee times starting at 1:42 pm (CT) off hole 10.
When it comes to the seven amateurs teeing it up at Augusta National next week, there’s no shortage of star power.
There are numerous USGA champions and an NCAA champ. Winners of prestigious amateur events from around the world. For some, it’s their first time at the famed Masters tournament in what each hopes will be a long stretch of making the trek down Magnolia Lane every April.
The seven ams will compete for the title of low amateur. If they make the 36-hole cut, then they will battle for the Silver Cup. An amateur has never won the Masters, but the tournament has plenty of history involving ams, including the famed Crow’s Nest, the living space on the third floor of the Augusta National clubhouse, and the Monday night Amateur Dinner.
Here’s a look at the seven amateurs competing in the 2023 Masters.
Fernandez de Oliveira is the second Argentinian to win the Latin America Amateur.
Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira has knocked on the door of winning the Latin America Amateur Championship before, only to be turned away.
Just last year in Puerto Rico, he faced a pivotal par putt on the final hole which would have gotten him into a playoff for the LAAC title with eventual champion Aaron Jarvis. The putt didn’t drop, leaving the Argentinian a year to stew about what could have been.
Fast forward a year later to the Grand Reserve Golf Club in Puerto Rico, where Fernandez de Oliveira took a four-shot lead into the final round following a brilliant 9-under 63 on Saturday. Taking matters into his own hands, he closed with a 5-under 67 to win the championship that has eluded him in five previous tries.
Fernandez de Oliveira finished the tournament with a record score of 23-under par, which was four shots clear of his closest pursuer, Luis Carrera of Mexico (-19)
The victory earns the 22-year-old invitations to the upcoming Masters in April along with the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool in July. He also earns a spot in the U.S. Open, which will be held at Los Angeles Country Club in June.
With favorable scoring conditions all week at the Grand Reserve, Fernandez de Oliveira knew a four-shot lead was anything but safe. He started his final round with a birdie on his opening hole and after dropping a shot on the third, bounced right back with a birdie on four to get back to 19-under.
He preceded to play his final 14 holes at 4-under to hold off Carrera, who also shot a final round 67.
“I’m still very shocked. I think my life has changed,” said Fernandez de Oliveira. “I’m looking forward to a great year. I’m going to take advantage of the three opportunities that I’ve been given for winning this event. So I’m very happy and I just want to enjoy every second of it.”
Fernandez de Oliveira’s victory comes exactly a year after he won the South American Amateur in Quito, Ecuador.
Vicente Marzilio of Argentina carded a final round 68 to finish alone in third place at 17 under while Jose Islas of Mexico (15 under) and Argentina’s Manuel Lozado (14 under) rounded out the top five.
On a day where 26 players turned in scores under par, Brazilian Fred Biondi carded the lowest round of the day with a 65 to climb into seventh place at 12-under 276.
Defending champion Jarvis of the Cayman Islands and UNLV tied for 17th at 4-under 284.
The 2024 Latin America Amateur Championship will be played at Santa Maria Golf Club in Panama City, Panama, Jan. 18-21.
Fernandez de Oliveira’s 18-under total is a 54-hole LAAC record.
It’s safe to say Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira doesn’t want to leave any doubt.
Last year, the senior at Arkansas finished runner-up at the Latin America Amateur Championship. He barely missed out on an invitation to two majors, including the Masters.
This year, the Argentinian has taken command with 18 holes to play. Fernandez de Oliveira went low on moving day, sparked by a stretch of five birdies in as many holes on the back nine to shoot 9-under 63 and take a four-shot advantage to Sunday’s final round at Grand Reserve Golf Club in Puerto Rico. He sits at 18 under for the tournament, leading second-round leader Luis Carrera, who hails from Mexico and is a fifth-year senior at UCF.
Fernandez de Oliveira’s 18-under total is a 54-hole LAAC record. Additionally, his 9-under mark in the third round ties the tournament record set by Joaquin Niemann.
Fellow Razorback teammate Julian Perico is tied for third at 13 under. Perico fired a 5-under 67 during the third round. He’s tied with Vicente Marzillo, who shot 6 under on Saturday.
Fernandez de Oliveira had the best round of the day by two shots, but the highlight came when he birdied Nos. 11-15 to pull into the lead. He finished on a high note, too, birdieing the par-4 18th to cap his bogey-free round.
¡Qué día para @MateofdeoMateo! 😮💨 A (-17) el jugador de Argentina.
— Latin America Amateur Championship (@LAAC_Golf) January 14, 2023
The winner will receive numerous exemptions, including to the 2023 Masters, the Open Championship and the U.S. Open for the first time. In addition, they will also be fully exempt into the 128th Amateur Championship, the U.S. Amateur Championship and any other USGA amateur championship for which he is eligible.
The runner(s)-up is exempt into the final stages of qualifying for the U.S. Open and Open Championship.
Austin Greaser was close to capturing the Western Amateur title last year.
He made a run into the semifinals, losing to eventual champion Michael Thorbjornsen, but Greaser wanted more. He shot a 6-under 278 total in stroke play, at one point thinking he missed out on the 16-player field for match play. A couple of late bogeys helped push him into the 7-for-2 playoffs to get into the match-play portion. He got the 15th seed, and it didn’t stop there.
Greaser, from Vandalia, Ohio, and playing collegiately at North Carolina, came from behind in the championship match, winning four straight holes on the back side to win 1 up and capture the 120th Western Amateur at Exmoor Country Club in Highland Park, Illinois. Greaser was 2 down with eight to play against Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira, a senior at Arkansas, but he proceeded to win four straight holes with birdies and captured the match with a clutch up and down on the 18th.
He’s the fourth Tar Heel to win the Western Amateur, the first since Greg Parker in 1986.
“Just a lot of hard work. Just to see it come to fruition, it means a lot,” Greaser said. ”
Greaser’s victory came after three grueling days of golf. It started with 36 holes of stroke play plus the playoff on Thursday, then two match play rounds Friday and Saturday.
He was named honorable mention on Golfweek‘s All-America team following his junior season at North Carolina. He won twice, including the NCAA Yale Regional. He was an All-ACC selection, as well.
A week from Monday, Greaser will return to the U.S. Amateur stage at The Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, New Jersey. Last year at Oakmont, he made the 36-hole match play final last year, falling to James Piot.
The United States now leads the Palmer Cup series 13-12-1.
Team International defeated Team USA to claim the 2022 Palmer Cup at Golf Club de Geneve in Switzerland on Sunday.
The International squad notched 13 singles wins during the final day en route to a 33 to 27 victory. The United States now leads the Palmer Cup series 13-12-1.
The Arnold Palmer Cup is a Ryder Cup-style event played annually that features teams of 24 players, consisting of 12 of the top men’s and 12 of the top women’s college golfers.
Julia Lopez Ramirez, the 2022 SEC Freshman of the Year after a stellar campaign at Mississippi State, earned the first singles win, defeating Brooke Seay 4 and 3.
“I’m so happy for this and the team,” she said.
Mateo Fernández de Oliveira of the International team (University of Arkansas ) and Amari Avery of Team USA (USC) each won every match they played this week.
Winners of exemptions into the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Amundi Evian Championship were Ludvig Aberg (Texas Tech), Aline Krauter (Stanford) and Benedetta Moresco (Alabama), as voted on by their peers at the event.
The top-five finishing teams advanced to the Championships, with ETSU joining the four previous teams.
Senior [autotag]Segundo Oliva Pinto[/autotag] and junior [autotag]Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira[/autotag] helped the Razorbacks on the last day, each shooting 2-under par.
The NCAA Championships run from May 27 to June 1 at Raptor Course in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The LAAC has been dominated by Chile, as three players from there have won half of the events.
The Latin America Amateur Championship will return on January 20, 2022 after being canceled in 2021 due to COVID-19.
The 72-hole event, formed in 2015 by Augusta National, the USGA, and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, was conceived in order to encourage the growth of amateur golf in Latin America. The opportunities for the winner are the stuff of dreams: an invite to the Masters, The Open Championship, and both the U.S. and British Amateur Championships.
The LAAC has been dominated by Chile, as three players from the South American country have won half of the events (Matias Domínguez, 2015; Toto Gana, 2017; Joaquín Niemann, 2018). Mexico’s Alvaro Ortiz, Costa Rica’s Paul Chaplet, and Argentina’s Abel Gallegos are the other three winners.
Heading into this year, Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira, who hails from Argentina and plays his college golf at Arkansas, is the highest-ranked amateur player; he is currently 43rd in the world.
The 25 countries that have yet to claim a winner have some potential challengers this year. Panamanian Omar Tejeira Jaen (62nd), Brazilian Andrey Borges Xavier (80th) and Peruvian Julián Pericó (100th) are clear contenders to earn a victory.
The range of age in the field is 39 years. The youngest player is Ezequiel Cabrera a 14-year-old Paraguayan while the oldest is 53-year-old Costa Rican veteran Álvaro Ortiz.
Whoever wins the 2022 edition will do it on a Pete Dye course that he believed to be his favorite among his world-class designs.
Teeth of the Dog, located on the Casa de Campos resort in the Dominican Republic, has seven holes that run along the edge of the ocean. Dye credits “the man upstairs” for the construction of those scenic holes; the other eleven holes, which sit farther from the cliffs, required some of Pete and Alice Dye’s magic touch.
In true Dye fashion, the bold landscape was made bolder through extremely laborious work. Built in the 1960s, the land needed serious massaging, but bringing the proper equipment over to the Dominican Republic was far too expensive. The majority of the land was infertile, spotted with coral and limestone. The course earned its name when the workers compared the limestone to the “diente de perro” or Teeth of the Dog.
Hundreds of laborers used hammers to pound away the hard material in order to replace it with soil. But where would the soil come from? Dye and his team used oxen-pulled wagons to transport soil to the site from a mile down the road. These were not large wagons, one square yard of soil fit in each wagon; they were typically used to move sugarcane. Continuing the trend of resourcefulness, Dye mixed a sugarcane byproduct – cachaza – with sand and soil to construct his topsoil.
As they began routing the course, large rocks and boulders impeded the playing corridors. With painstaking effort, the laborers moved the heavy rocks to the edges of the fairway. Once all the rocks were moved, they created a stone wall that actually covered two miles of terrain.
It’s no wonder that Tom Doak said Teeth of the Dog was built “with a degree of craftsmanship seldom seen today.” The Dye’s stayed on the property while Teeth of the Dog was built, visiting the site almost daily. The laborers, who spent hours building calluses as they pounded limestone and coral, demonstrated their craftsmanship as they delicately built greens and bunkers using hand rakes and shovels.
The No. 5 hole at Casa de Campo’s Teeth of the Dog in the Dominican Republic (Courtesy of Casa de Campo)
The breakdown of inland and water holes at Teeth of the Dog is the same as Pebble Beach. Both have 11 inland holes and seven holes on the water. For Tom Doak, there is no comparison between Pebble’s inland holes and those at Teeth of the Dog. In The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses” Doak wrote, “The starting holes of Teeth of the Dog are especially good, letting golfers stretch their muscles before they reach the par-5 3rd.”
The holes along the water are what separate Teeth of the Dog and earn its reputation as the best Caribbean course and a top-tier course in the world. Holes 5-8 and then 14-17 both run along the Caletón de la Majagua.
Photographer Brain Morgan famously said that Teeth of the Dog has seven holes in the water. Anyone who has seen the fifth hole knows what Morgan is talking about; the tee box and green both jut out into the ocean. According to Doak, both sets of water holes would be the “best stretch of holes on 99 percent of golf courses.”
Whoever wins the 2022 LAAC will require the skill to hit all the necessary shots and avoid the manmade distractions that Pete and Alice Dye created along with Mother Nature’s distractions just off the coast of the Dominican Republic.
Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira’s name has floated to the top of several amateur events in 2020, but he finally broke through at the Azalea Am.
Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira’s name has floated to the top of several amateur events in 2020. When the spotlight shines on Argentinian amateurs – as it has this year everywhere from the South American Amateur to the Latin American Amateur to the U.S. Amateur – Fernandez de Oliveira is often a reason why.
An eleventh-hour bogey nearly cost Fernandez de Oliveira the Azalea Amateur title on Sunday at the Country Club of Charleston (South Carolina), but the TCU sophomore redeemed himself in a short playoff with Jamie Wilson to win the title instead. When Fernandez de Oliveira made par on the first extra hole, the title was his.
That part of the story is new. Fernandez de Oliveira was runner-up at the South American Amateur to start the year and most recently played his way to the Round of 16 at the U.S. Amateur. But a trophy? That part was missing.
The Azalea Amateur typically falls early in the spring, before the Masters. It was postponed from its March dates to this past week, and still served as a tune-up for the Masters.
Fernandez de Oliveira fired rounds of 71-69-66-71. Wilson caught him with a closing round of 69 that included a birdie on the final hole.
South Carolina junior Ryan Hall and former Clemson All-American Stephen Behr tied for third at 5 under.
Among the three Masters invitees in the field were Lukas Michel, 2019 U.S. Mid-Amateur champ; Yuxin Lin, 2019 Asia-Pacific Amateur champ; and Abel Gallegos, 2020 Latin America Amateur champion. Lin finished the best out of the three with a tie for eighth at 3 under.
U.S. Amateur champion Tyler Strafaci was another shot back in a three-way tie for 12th.
Gallegos is a fellow Argentinian player. Fernandez de Oliveira finished T-19 at the LAAC in January, one of six players inside the top 20.
Fernandez de Oliveira was among four players from Argentina to reach match play at the U.S. Amateur in August. He and Segundo Oliva Pinto advanced the furthest, to the third round.
So far this fall, Fernandez de Oliveira has made just one start with TCU, finishing 42nd at the Colonial Collegiate Invite. But the top spot at the Azalea Amateur, with a field of amateur golf’s best, is something special.
