L-R: Preston Summerhays, Luke Potter
Forks up.
2021 Arizona State signee
Preston Summerhays and 2022 Sun Devil commit
Luke Potter are the last two players standing at the Maridoe Amateur, after each won two more matches at Maridoe Golf Club on Saturday to reach Sunday's final match.
Summerhays began the day in a quarterfinal match against 2020 U.S. Amateur semifinalist and this week's medalist,
William Holcomb. The Sam Houston State senior grabbed an early lead against Summerhays on the first hole, but it would be his only lead of the match.
Summerhays, the reigning Sunnehanna Amateur champion and former U.S. Junior champ, grabbed a 1 up lead before Holcomb knotted the match back up at the sixth. From there, the two matched each other shot for shot, halving each of the last twelve holes to force extra holes. On the first extra hole, Summerhays rolled in an 10-footer to move on against Rutgers senior
Christopher Gotterup.
Gotterup nabbed a 1 up win over NC State’s
Benjamin Shipp to advance to the semis, but Summerhays jumped to a quick lead and never looked back in a 3&2 win.
In the final, Summerhays will face one of the few players in the field who is younger than he is, and a future teammate who has similarly broken age barriers.
Three weeks after Summerhays became the
youngest-ever winner of the Sunnehanna Amateur at the age of 18, Potter won the Southern California Amateur
at the age of 16, the youngest player ever to do so.
Potter has carried his bag through eight rounds of golf in six days, quite a feat given the grueling nature of the format: 54 holes of stroke play followed by up to six match play rounds.
Saturday morning, Potter took an early 3 up lead on Oklahoma senior
Jonathan Brightwell through four holes. Brightwell chipped away from there and, when Potter lost the 10th and 12th holes, took the lead for the first time in the match. But he would stumble to the finish, bogeying two of the final three holes including the 18th where Potter's par gave him the win.
In the semifinal against Baylor's
Ryan Grider, it wasn't close. Grider, who dispatched WAGR No. 1
Chun An Yu (another Arizona State Sun Devil) yesterday morning, took the first hole but would never win another as Potter rolled to a 5&3 win, shooting the equivalent of 3 under par.
Summerhays and Potter begin their 36-hole championship match at 7:45am local time on Sunday with Walker Cup captain
Nathaniel Crosby keeping an eye on proceedings as he evaluates talent in advance of the matches next spring.
ABOUT THE Maridoe Amateur
This tournament was introduced in 2020 to provide
top-ranked players a
chance to contend for a Walker Cup berth. The
original format was grueling, a U.S.
Amateur-style competition with 54 holes of stroke
play followed by a 64-player match-
play bracket and a 36-hole championship match. In
2021 the format changed to 54
holes of stroke play. The top 102 players in the World
Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR)
will be invited, with the rest of the field based off the
rankings.
View Complete Tournament Information