Stasi stays in the hunt for a fifth U.S. Women's Mid-Am title by winning two matches

   Meghan Stasi cut her teeth in match play by taking on the best players in the Philadelphia area and winning the Women’s Golf Association of Philadelphia’s Match-Play Championship seven straight times from 1999 to 2005.

   It was a time frame during which the Eastern High product – Meghan Bolger then – would come home from playing college golf at Tulane or coaching college golf at Mississippi and test her game against the best this area had to offer. There have always been good players in the Philadelphia area, young, old and in between. and for seven straight years she beat them all.

   When Stasi graduated to the mid-amateur ranks she was almost as brutally efficient, winning the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship in 2006 and again in 2007 and again in 2010 and then a fourth time in 2012.

   She has won 48 U.S. Women’s Mid-Am matches all-time, including two in the second and third rounds of the 2018 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship at Norwood Hills Country Club in St. Louis Tuesday, but Stasi knows the most important match is the next one.

   “I don’t even think about it, honestly,” Stasi told the USGA website concerning her four U.S. Women’s Mid-Am titles. “It feels like just yesterday even though (the last victory) was 2012. It doesn’t bother me. I just want to play and compete and if it happens again, that’s incredible, but I’ve got to get through (Wednesday) first. It’s another long day ahead.”

   The next match Wednesday morning will be a quarterfinal battle against 27-year-old Kelsey Chugg, the defending champion from Salt Lake City, Utah.

   Stasi reached the quarterfinals with a 1-up victory in Tuesday afternoon’s round of 16 over Corey Weworski of Carlsbad, Calif.

   Stasi built an early 3-up lead by winning the third with a birdie, the fourth with a par and the sixth with a birdie. Weworski got on the board by taking the seventh with a birdie, but Stasi answered by taking the eighth with a par to again gain a 3-up advantage.

   The two halved the next five holes before Weworski won the 14^th with a birdie and the 17^th with a par. Stasi took a 1-up lead to the 18^th tee and made it stand up with a par at the last.

Stasi began the day by claiming a 3 and victory over Arielle Swan of Seaside, Calif.

   Chugg, who captured the title last November on Champions Golf Club’s Cypress Creek Course in Houston, faced a tough challenge herself in Tuesday afternoon’s round of 16 against two-time U.S. Women’s Mid-Am champion Julia Potter-Babb of Indianapolis.

   Chugg displayed the kind of grit that carried her to last year’s title by sinking a five-foot birdie putt on the 18^th hole to extend the match and then knocking her approach on the 19^th hole to six feet and making that birdie try to win the match.

   Chugg and Potter-Babb qualified earlier this month for next spring’s U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Timuquana Country Club in Jacksonville, Fla. It says here, they will be a tough out if they make it into match play.

   U.S. Women’s Mid-Am qualifying medalist Shannon Johnson of Norton, Mass. has been knocking on the door in this championship, including a loss in the final in 2016 at The Kahkwa Club in Erie to Potter-Babb. She came to Norwood Hills on a roll after dominating the New England amateur circuit this summer.

   The 35-year-old Johnson faced a tough challenge in her second-round match against the pride of St. Louis, Ellen Port, who, like Stasi, has won this championship four times.

   Johnson got past that challenge, defeating the hometown favorite, 2 and 1. Johnson then booked a spot in the quarterfinals by rolling to a 6 and 5 decision over Pittsburgh-area standout Jordan Craig-Nyiri of Connellsville.

   Johnson will take on Clare Connolly of Chevy Chase, Md., a Congressional Country Club looper, in Wednesday morning’s quarterfinals. Connolly edged Courtney McKim of Raleigh, N.C., a member of Alabama’s 2012 NCAA championship team, on the 19^th hole.

   The winners of Wednesday morning’s quarterfinal matches will turn right around and play in the semifinals Wednesday afternoon. Weather permitting, the last two standing will play for the title Thursday.

   In the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Charlotte Country Club in Charlotte, N.C., Mathew Mattare, the reigning Golf Association of Philadelphia's William Hyndman III Player of the Year, got past his second-round opponent, but saw his bid to make the quarterfinals come up short.

   Mattare, a 32-year-old financial adviser for Morgan Stanley who lives in Jersey City, N.J. and plays out of Saucon Valley Country Club, fell to Ryan Eibner of Dallas, 3 and 2, in Tuesday afternoon’s quarterfinals.

   The 27-year-old Eibner, a native of Cary, N.C. who played college golf at East Carolina, got out to a 2-up lead by winning the first with a birdie and the fourth with a par. But Mattare got the match back to even by taking the sixth with a birdie and the seventh with a par.

   Eibner then won the next two holes, the eighth with a par and the ninth with a birdie. Mattare cut into his deficit by winning the 10^th with a birdie, but Eibner pulled away by taking the 11^th with a par and the 15^th with a birdie that gave him a 3-up lead.

   Mattare had reached the round of 16 with a 2 and 1 decision over Brett Tomfohrde of Chicago in a second-round match Tuesday morning.

   After falling 2-down to Tomfohrde after six holes, Mattare didn’t lose another hole.  He evened the match by winning the seventh with a birdie and the eighth with a par and pulled away by winning the 15^th with a birdie and the 16^th with a par.

   Stewart Hagestad of Newport Beach, Calif., whom myself and a few hundred lucky golf fans got to watch win the 2016 U.S. Mid-Am at Stonewall, is back in the quarterfinals after knocking off two of the top senior amateurs in the country.

   Hagestad beat reigning U.S. Senior Amateur champion Jeff Wilson of Fairfield, Calif. – he captured the title last month at Eugene Country Club in Eugene, Ore. – 3 and 2 in a second-round match Tuesday morning and then came back in the afternoon to knock off Matt Sughrue of Arlington, Va., the 2016 U.S. Senior Amateur champion.

   It looked like Hagestad would draw qualifying medalist Stephen Behr, a former Clemson standout from Florence, S.C. in the quarterfinals. It looked that way until Rusty Mosley, a 36-year-old from Vidalia, Ga. playing in his first U.S. Mid-Am, wiped out a 1-down deficit by winning the 17^th hole with a par and then dropping a 25-foot downhill putt for par on the 18^th hole to earn a 1-up victory over Behr.

   Then there is Brett Boner, a 44-year-old playing in his hometown U.S. Mid-Am, but who qualified by taking medalist honors in a GAP-administered qualifier at Cedarbrook Country Club. Said he wanted to go somewhere with bent-grass greens.

   But there Boner is with an 8:15 a.m. tee time Wednesday for a quarterfinal match against Sam O’Dell, a 40-year-old cosmetic dentist from Hurricane, W.Va.

   Boner reached the quarterfinals with a 4 and 3 victory over Kory Bowman of Springfield, Mo. Boner’s bigger test came in Tuesday morning’s round of 16 when he needed 22 holes to pull out a victory over Claudio Consul of Germany.

   O’Dell reached the quarterfinals with a 6 and 5 victory over Benjamin Hayes, a 30-year-old U.S. Navy pilot from Jacksonville, Fla.

   As with the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am, Wednesday’s quarterfinal winners in the U.S. Mid-Am will play the semifinals in the afternoon. The last two standing will play for the title Thursday.