Boner stuns Hagestad in semifinals to reach U.S. Mid-Amateur final on home turf

   Brett Boner, a 44-year-old financial adviser, had a plan.

   If the USGA was going to stage the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship in his home town of Charlotte, North Carolina, well then darn it, he was going to do everything he could to be ready to perform at his absolute best.

   Somehow that journey started with trying to qualify for the thing at … Cedarbrook Country Club? Yes, that Cedarbrook Country Club in Blue Bell. Well, it makes sense on a couple of levels. Charlotte Country Club, where this week’s U.S. Mid-Am is being staged, is the work of the master golf course architect Donald Ross.

   And Ross had a hand in tweaking a Cedarbrook layout that was originally the work of A.W. Tillinghast. Now, there are a lot of golf courses designed by Ross or Tillinghast, but how many courses can claim to be the work of two of the titans of golf course architecture?

   Boner also mentioned something about wanting to qualify on a course with bent-grass greens and Cedarbrook fit that bill. He shot a 3-under-par 67 to take medalist honors in the Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered qualifier, besting two of GAP’s best mid-amateurs, Jeff Osberg and Matthew Mattare, both of who made match play in the U.S. Mid-Am this week, in the process.

   And when Boner’s 22-foot birdie putt on the 18^th hole Wednesday dove into the cup to give him a dramatic 1-up victory over Stewart Hagestad, the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion at Stonewall, and sent Boner to the U.S. Mid-Am final, well, let’s just say the plan seems to be working to perfection.

   “It was the most thrilling moment of my golf life,” Boner told the USGA website after his birdie putt sent the several hundred members of the Charlotte golf community who came out to root on their home boy into a frenzy. “I hope there is more (Thursday) and I’m planning on it. I’m pinching myself.”

   It will be a North Carolina party for Thursday’s scheduled 36-hole final as Boner’s opponent will be Kevin O’Connell, a 30-year-old golf equipment representative from Cary, N.C. who starred collegiately at North Carolina.

   O’Connell’s semifinal victory had its moments, too, as he roared back from 4-down with seven holes to play to defeat Kyler Sauer, a 27-year firefighter from Valencia, Calif. who played his college golf at Cal State-Northridge, on the 19^th hole.

   Boner claimed a 2-up victory over Sam O’Dell, a cosmetic dentist from Hurricane, W.Va., in Wednesday morning’s quarterfinals. The 27-year-old Hagestad of Newport Beach, Calif. continued his roll through the match-play bracket with a 3 and 2 victory over Rusty Mosley, a 36-year-old first-time U.S. Mid-Am competitor from Vidalia, Ga., in another Wednesday morning quarterfinal.

   After his epic 37-hole victory over Scott Harvey to win the U.S. Mid-Am title at Stonewall two years ago, Hagestad’s mission was to represent mid-am golf as best as he could. He became the first mid-am to make the cut at the 2017 Masters and there he was at Sergio Garcia’s Butler Cabin celebration collecting his silver medal as the low amateur.

   Hagestad, a former college standout at Southern California, was on the U.S. team that did a pretty complete 19-7 number on Great Britain & Ireland to claim the Walker Cup Match last summer at Hagestad’s home course when he was growing up, Los Angeles Country Club. He reached the round of 16 in the U.S. Amateur last month at Pebble Beach, dropping a sparkling 4-under 66 on the venerable layout on northern California’s Monterey Peninsula in qualifying.

   But Boner was undeterred. Hagestad, No. 20 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, made birdie at the 12^th to take a 1-up advantage and Boner turned the tables on him by dropping in consecutive birdie bombs, a 25-footer at 14 and a 28-footer at 15, to take a 1-up lead.

   When Hagestad stuck his approach to five feet at the par-4 18^th, it looked like this one was headed for extra holes. But then Boner dropped in his 22-footer, rendering Hagestad’s birdie putt meaningless. Guess that little scouting mission to Cedarbrook and its bent-grass putting surfaces paid off.

   Things were looking bleak for O’Connell in the other semifinal when his tee shot on the par-3 11^th found the water in front of the green and Sauer held a 4-up advantage.

   But O’Connell won the 12^th with a birdie, the 13^th with a par and the 14^th with a birdie and suddenly was just 1-down. When O’Connell’s eight-foot birdie putt at the 16^th fell, he had evened the match. A par at the first extra hole, the par-4 10^th, was good enough to get O’Connell into the final.

   It was O’Connell’s second extra-hole affair of the day as he needed 19 holes to get past Andres Schonbaum of Argentina in his quarterfinal match Wednesday morning.

   Sauer earned his spot in the semifinals with a 3 and 2 victory over Ryan Eibner of Dallas, a former East Carolina standout, in Wednesday morning’s quarterfinals. Eibner had taken out Saucon Valley Country Club’s Mattare, the reigning GAP William Hyndman III Player of the Year, in Tuesday’s round of 16.

   In the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship being contested at the Norwood Hills Country Club in St. Louis, defending champion Kelsey Chugg, the 27-year-old membership director of the Utah State Golf Association, reached the final with a 2 and 1 semifinal victory over Gretchen Johnson of Portland, Ore.

   Chugg will have to cool off the red-hot Shannon Johnson, a 35-year-old sales representative for PING golf from Norton, Mass., when the two meet for the title in Thursday’s scheduled 18-hole final.   

   Shannon Johnson, who was the qualifying medalist, rolled to a 7 and 5 decision over 25-year-old Michelle Butler of Columbia, Mo., who played college golf at Missouri, in the other semifinal.

   Chugg certainly made an impression on South Jersey native Meghan Stasi, a four-time U.S. Mid-Amateur champion, in Chugg’s 3 and 2 victory over Stasi in Wednesday morning’s quarterfinals.

   Chugg, playing in just her second U.S. Mid-Amateur, ran her match-play record in the championship to 11-0 with her two wins. Against the 40-year-old Stasi of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Chugg won three of the first four holes and never really let Stasi get back in the match.

   “She’s just solid,” Stasi told the USGA website concerning her quarterfinal conqueror. “Just based off today, I think she’s probably a little like me. You don’t know if she’s 3-under or 3-over, you just have that demeanor, which is nice, especially in match play.

   “You don’t want to get too excited or too low, you know. So I think that’s great for her.”

   Chugg built a 5-up lead with seven to play in her semifinal win over Gretchen Johnson before withstanding a late rally. The 32-year-old Gretchen Johnson, who, remarkably didn’t even take up the game until she was 22, won three of the next four holes, but never got closer than 2-down to Chugg.

Gretchen Johnson got past Julia Hodgson of Canada, 3 and 2, in her quarterfinal match Wednesday morning.

   Shannon Johnson has been here before, falling to Julia Potter-Babb in the 2016 final at The Kahkwa Club in Erie. Coming off a summer during which she dominated the New England amateur circuit,   Shannon Johnson came into the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am on a roll and nothing that has happened at Norwood Hills has slowed her momentum.

   Before dismantling Butler in the semifinals, Shannon Johnson cruised a 3 and 2 victory over Clare Connolly, a 25-year-old Congressional Country Club looper from Chevy Chase, Md., in Wednesday morning’s quarterfinals.