A birdie on the last lifts Willy Walsh to the Silicon Valley Amateur title
Willy Walsh
In a battle of two of the Bay Area's top high school players,
Willy Walsh and
Niall Shiels Donegan went head-to-head over the last round of AmateurGolf.com's Silicon Valley Amateur that went down to the wire at Baylands Golf Links in Palo Alto, Calif.
The golf was exquisite, as both players shot 4-under rounds of 68 and it wasn't until Walsh, a senior at Serra High School in nearby San Mateo, made a birdie on the par-5 18th hole that the title was decided.
In what quickly turned into a match-play final, Walsh and Donegan matched scorecards with six birdies and two bogeys. Donegan, a senior at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley who will attend Northwestern next fall, pulled even with Walsh at 9-under with a birdie on the par-3 17th hole but Walsh answered quickly with a deciding birdie on the last.
Senior Division champion Daniel O'Connor "I didn't hit it as well as yesterday and it was kind of a battle for 18 holes but I stayed in it mentally," said Walsh. "It helped Niall was playing so well because he was forcing me to make every single putt."
With the win, Walsh joins a list of past champions which includes
PGA Tour stars Max Homa and Collin Morikawa.
For Donegan, it marks his second consecutive runner-up finish after he finished one back of
Edan Cui at the
Pacific Grove (Calif.) City Championship last weekend.
Mid-Amateur champion Chris Goin , a 36-year-old mid-amateur who started the day just one off the pace, shot a final even round 72 to drop into a four-way tie for third with
Mitchell Hoey,
Brandon Knight and
Joshua Kim.
"It was an interesting round," said Goin, who was the low mid-amateur in the field. "The weather finally showed up and the wind was in the opposite direction. It was challenging on the front and the back nine really dug in and showed its teeth at the end."
Daniel O'Connor turned in rounds of 68-74 to earn a three-shot victory over
Chris Hyland in the senior division.
"Today was quite a bit tougher than yesterday," said O'Connor. "The wind was quite a bit stiffer than yesterday and it was a lot colder, for sure. I struggled on the first nine with four bogeys and a birdie but managed to make three birdies in a row to start my back nine which settled me down a bit."
Photo gallery from the 2023 Silicon Valley Amateur:
ABOUT THE AGC Silicon Valley Amateur
PAIRINGS |
RESULTS
The Silicon Valley Amateur is the first
AmateurGolf.com
tournament to have, on its past winner's list, a
MAJOR
champion. That would be Collin Morikawa, who won
the
2016 title. Just over 4 years later, he won the PGA
Championship just up the road at TPC Harding Park
in San Francisco.
Rising PGA Tour star Max Homa also won the Silicon
Valley Amateur
in 2011.
Related: The road to PGA stardom for Homa
and Morikawa went through the Silicon Valley
Amateur
2021 marked the announcement of Baylands Golf
Links as the tournament's new host venue. And wow,
did players enjoy it. It's
location in Palo Alto is fitting -- as the original garage
where Hewlett Packard was founded is located there,
and today's biggest tech companies dot the area
map
like the Canadian Geese on the fairways and
wetlands
near Baylands in the winter. Like
Corica Park in Alameda, Baylands was recently
completely redesigned as a new course from the dirt
up, under the hand of architect Forrest Richardson,
and
the results are stunning.
This is a gross competition with Championship,
Senior
and Women's divisions. There will be no Net division.
MID-AM DIVISION
For players age
25-
49. Compete alongside the younger players in the
Championship Division, (same tees, same prize
opportunities) and if there are at least 10 Mid-Ams, a
separate prize and trophy will be awarded.
SUPER SENIORS
For players age
65+. Compete alongside the younger players in the
Senior Division, (same tees, same prize
opportunities) and a
separate prize and trophy will be awarded for low
super senior.
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