Top 13 Seeds, Including Capan, Win at Maridoe; Flanagan Loses on 19th Hole

National

Carrollton, Texas -- The elite field of 96 players at the Maridoe Amateur Championship produced only three sub-70 rounds in three days of stroke play this week, and no one was able to post a 54-hole score that was under par. Will Holcomb was the medalist with a 2-over-par total of 218, and Leo Oyo was second with a 221. That should tell you all you need to know about the difficulty of Maridoe Golf Club in the cold and windy conditions that have prevailed this week in northern Texas. 

On Thursday, in the first round of match play, the top-seeded Holcomb, a senior at Sam Houston State, was even with his opponent, Washington senior Noah Woolsey, as they arrived at the 15th tee. Holcomb bogeyed the 453-yard par 4, but that was good enough to beat Woolsey's double, and that was the decisive hole. Both players parred in, and Holcomb won the match 1 up. He wound up with a medal score of 77 (5 over). Woolsey shot 79.

It was another not-so-great day for scoring, but it was a very good day for the high seeds. None of the top 13 lost. What are the odds on that?

No. 2 Oyo, an Oklahoma State sophomore from Tokyo, was 3 over for the 16 holes he needed to dispatch UCLA senior Devon Bling 4&2. 

Luke Potter, the latest wonderkind from California, following in the footsteps of Johnny Miller (who tied for eighth in the 1966 U.S. Open, when he was 19 years old) and Tiger Woods, turned one of two or three best rounds of the day. The 16-year-old winner of this year's Southern California Golf Association Championship was 2 under for the 15 holes he needed to eliminate Alexander Yang 4&3. Yang was 3 over, which would have been good enough to win most of the matches that were played Thursday.

Frankie Capan, the 2020 MGA Player of the Year, is the No. 12 seed. He also played well, starting with four consecutive pars, followed by consecutive birdies at the two short par-4's on the front nine, the 360-yard fifth and the 317-yard sixth. That gave him a 2-up lead against North Carolina-Charlotte junior Matthew Sharpstene (No. 53) and a par at the par-5 seventh (575 yards) bumped it to 3 up. Capan, a sophomore at Florida Gulf Coast, wasn't quite as solid on the back nine, but his double bogey at the 425-yard, par-4 10th didn't cost him the hole, because Sharpstene doubled it, as well. A birdie at the par-5 11th (583 yards) put Capan 4 up, and he won the long (482 yards), par-4 12th with a bogey. He lost the 13th to a par but won the 14th (216 yards, par 3) with a par and closed out the match 5&4.

For the 14 holes he played, Capan was 1 over. He will play the No. 44 seed, Segundo Oliva Pinto, a sophomore at North Carolina-Wilmington, in the Round of 32 on Friday morning. Pinto became something of a celebrity this summer, after a bizarre incident at the U.S. Amateur. Pinto was all square with the eventual champion, Tyler Strafaci, on the 18th hole in the Round of 16. Neither player was on the green in three, and even though he was in a bunker, Pinto appeared to have the advantage with an uphill bunker shot. Strafaci was facing a downhill chip shot to a perilously slick green. But then Pinto's caddy, a local who didn't know the rules, went into the bunker that Pinto's ball was in, and brushed the sand, presumably to determine the firmness of the sand. That violation of the rules cost Pinto the hole and the match -- but also made him sort of famous. There were videos played repeatedly of the caddy's breach of the rules for the rest of that U.S. Am weekend.  

There were two tournaments that Capan played in Minnesota this summer, and he was a combined 25 under -- 12 under in the State Am and 13 under in the State Open. But he didn't win them both. He finished two shots behind University of Minnesota star Angus Flanagan in the State Open. Despite not being able to defend his Big Ten individual championship this spring (the spring portion of the 2019-20 college golf season was a casualty of Covid 19), it's been a very good year for Flanagan. Besides winning the State Open in July, the Gopher sophomore from Surrey, England, added a victory in the Minnesota Golf Champions to his resume in October. He also claimed medalist honors at the Western Amateur this summer.

But he didn't have a great week at Maridoe. It began with a 79 on Monday, including a quadruple bogey at the 170-yard, par-3 17th hole, and he finished tied for 37th in the medal-play portion of the tournament with an aggregate of 231 (15 over). Match play did not prove to be a tonic for Flanagan. The No. 37 seed, he lost on the 19th hole Thursday to No. 28 Eddy Lai, a UCLA senior from San Jose. 

Flanagan was 4 over for 17 holes, and had an X on one hole (No. 5) during the regulation 18. Nevertheless, he was 2 up with two holes to play. Lai won the par-3 17th with a birdie and the 18th with a par to force extra holes. Thanks to that birdie at the 17th, Lai was able to get back to 1 over for the 16 holes he finished, but he had two X's (Nos. 10 and 16).   

Lai will play the No. 5 seed, Christopher Gotterup on Friday morning. Gotterup, a junior at Rutgers -- he was the Big Ten Player of the Year and an All-American for the aborted 2019-20 season -- played 17 holes and was 1 over with one X in his 3&1 first-round victory over Dylan Menante (No. 60). The winner of the Gotterup-Lai match will take on the Capan-Pinto winner in a Round of 16 match Friday afternoon.


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