Potter, Fatigue Overwhelm Summerhays in Maridoe Final

CARROLLTON, Texas -- The Maridoe Amateur Championship was set up, at least in part, as a way for U.S. Walker Cup captain Nathaniel Crosby to see players that he was considering for his team in conditions as grueling as those that they would normally have to deal with at the U.S. Amateur. So the Maridoe format was the same as the U.S. Am format -- except that it was even more grueling. Instead of 36 holes of stroke-play qualifying, the 96 distinguished amateurs who were in the field -- by invitation only -- played 54 holes of qualifying at Maridoe. Then came six matches for those who managed to keep winning, including a 36-hole final. What that meant was that the two players who got to Sunday's championship match were going to have to play 10 rounds of high-pressure tournament golf in seven days.

Basically, this tournament was a kind of last-chance audition for Crosby's team, which will play the Great Britain & Ireland squad in the 2021 Walker Cup Matches at Seminole Golf Club in Florida in early May. For that reason, this was supposed to be a tough test, and weather conditions that were described as brutal for much of the week (temperatures in the 40's and wind velocities up to 30 mph) made it an ordeal. In the end, it turned out to be a little more of an ordeal than Preston Summerhays could handle. 

The prodigiously talented 18-year-old high school senior from Scottsdale, Ariz., ran out of gas against fellow prodigy Luke Potter on Sunday at Maridoe Golf Club, which had already proven to be a really daunting test for elite amateurs even when they had a full tank. (The medalist in qualifying was 2 over par; 7 over tied for fourth.) And what was a close, back-and-forth title bout throughout the morning and for a little while in the afternoon turned into a route, as Potter won nine of the last 11 holes that were needed after lunch -- and claimed an 8&6 victory.

Both players were shaky early on. The 441-yard, par-4 first hole was halved with bogeys, and Summerhays, the No. 8 seed, won the 611-yard, par-5 second with a bogey. But they both parred the third and fourth holes, and then the 16-year-old Potter took over, for a while anyway. He won the fifth hole (360 yards, par 4) with a par and the sixth (317, par 4) with a birdie. His par at the 150-yard eighth gave him a 2-up lead, which he increased to 3-up with a birdie at the 450-yard, par-4 ninth. 

Having won four holes in a row during that stretch, Potter lost four in a row on the back nine, beginning with the 13th, which he bogeyed. Summerhays, the 2019 U.S. Junior champion and winner of the 2020 Sunnehanna Amateur, won the 216-yard, par-3 14th with a birdie, the 453-yard, par-4 15th with a bogey and the 561-yard, par-5 16th with a par to go 1 up.

Potter, a junior at La Costa Canyon High School in California, was 5 over from the 12th, which he bogeyed, through the 16th, but he stopped the bleeding with a par at the par-3 17th (170 yards), halving the hole, and he won the 424-yard, par-4 18th with a birdie to tie the match at the halfway point. Actually, the way it turned out, they were 60 percent of the way to the finish. They just didn't know it yet.

The medal scores for the first 18 were: Potter 76, Summerhays 77. 

When the match resumed, Summerhays won the first hole with a birdie to go 1 up, but things went downhill quickly for him after that, thanks in no small measure to Potter, who won the second hole with a par, the third with a birdie and the 418-yard, par-4 fourth with another birdie. The fifth and sixth holes were halved with pars, and then Potter made his sprint to the finish line, winning the last six holes in a row. 

Both players bogeyed the sixth, but Potter birdied the 575-yard, par-5 seventh and the par-3 eighth, and won the ninth with a par. The 10th (425 yards, par 4) he won with a par, and he closed Summerhays out with two more birdies, at the 583-yard, par-5 11th and long, 482-yard, par-4 12th. For the 12 holes in the afternoon, Potter was 4 under, which got him back to even par for the day. Summerhays was. . .well, never mind. It was a day that he would probably just as soon forget. 

In a lot of match play tournaments, the guy who plays the best golf overall doesn't win. That was not the case at Maridoe. Potter, who at 16 became the youngest player to win the Southern California Golf Association Championship this summer, deserved to win at Maridoe. He was third in qualifying, with a three-round aggregate of 222, 6 over, but he was 3 under in his first match, and from then on, he had the lowest cumulative score -- medal play plus match play -- of anyone in the tournament. His total for the six matches he played was 10 under (he didn't have a single X in any of his matches). So he ended up being 4 under for the week in a tournament where no one else was close to being even par.

Not counting Potter, the person who was happiest about the results at Maridoe is probably Matt Thurmond, Arizona State's head coach for men's golf, because Potter has committed to the Sun Devils for 2022, and Summerhays signed a National Letter of Intent this fall to play for ASU beginning in 2021. 


Maridoe Amateur Championship

Nov. 30-Dec. 6
       
At Maridoe Golf Club

Par 72, 7,291 yards      

Carrollton, Texas

Match Play

Round of 64

(12) Frankie Capan, North Oaks def. (53) Matthew Sharpstene 5&4

(28) Eddy Lai, San Jose def. (37) Angus Flanagan, Surrey, England 19 holes 

Round of 32

Capan def. (44) Segundo Oliva Pinto, Cordoba, Argentina 6&4

(5) Christopher Gotterup, Little Silver, N.J. def. Lai 3&1

Round of 16

Gotterup def. Capan 1 up

Quarterfinals

(8) Preston Summerhays, Scottsdale  def. (1) Will Holcomb, Crockett,  Texas 19 holes

Gotterup def. (45) Benjamin Shipp, Duluth, Ga. 1 up

(23) Ryan Grider, Lewisville, Texas def.Sam Choi, Anaheim, Calif. 1 up

(3) Luke Potter, Encinitas, Calif. def. Jonathan Brightwell, Charlotte, N.C. 1 up

Semifinals

Summerhays def. Gotterup 3&2

Potter def. Grider 5&3

Final (36 holes)

Potter def. Summerhays 8&6