Palmer Jackson, the winner of the PIAA Class AAA
Championship as a senior at Franklin Regional last fall, saw his bid for a U.S.
Amateur championship halted in the quarterfinals on the Pinehurst Resort &
Country Club’s Donald Ross classic No. 2 Course in the Village of Pinehurst,
N.C. Friday.
Jackson, who had knocked off a series of college standouts
on his way to the quarterfinals, finally ran into one he couldn’t take out in
Vanderbilt senior John Augenstein of Owensboro, Ky., who claimed a 3 and 2
victory to advance to Saturday’s semifinals.
Augenstein will take on William Holcomb V of Crockett,
Texas, a Sam Houston State senior, in the semifinals Saturday after Holcomb
eliminated Karl Vilips, an Australian junior standout who turned 18 Friday, 4
and 3.
Mississippi is guaranteed to have a U.S. Amateur finalist
after junior standout Cohen Trolio of West Point, Miss. and Georgia Tech senior
Andy Ogletree of Little Rock, Miss. won their quarterfinal matches.
Trolio claimed a 3 and 1 victory over Austin Squires of
Union, Ky., who completed a solid college career at Cincinnati in the spring.
It was the second straight year that Squires has fallen in the quarterfinals.
Ogletree rolled to a 6 and 5 decision over Georgia senior
Spencer Ralston of Gainesville, Ga.
But western Pennsylvania was watching Jackson, who will join
the Notre Dame program later this month. Pretty sure I read somewhere that the
kid received his first name as a homage to western Pennsylvania’s greatest gift
to golf, Arnold Palmer, the King himself. Jackson plays out of Hannastown Golf
Club.
And the way Jackson was playing this week, it was starting
to look like he had designs on repeating the feat of his namesake from 65 years
ago when Arnie won the 1954 U.S. Amateur at the Country Club of Detroit.
But Augenstein was playing some pretty good golf himself. He
won the third and fourth holes with pars and the par-5 fifth hole with an eagle
to grab a 3-up lead.
I tuned in just in time to see an absolute downpour hitting
Pinehurst while Augenstein and Jackson were playing the seventh hole. Neither
player had driven it well, but it looked like Jackson had the advantage when he was in a greenside bunker while
Augenstein was short of the green after blasting it out of one of those clumps of Scottish broom in the sandy native area that lines the fairways at Pinehurst.
Play was finally halted and when Jackson returned he bumped
his shot past the hole and right off the green. You miss a Donald Ross shelf
and that’s what happens. Jackson still had a four-footer for bogey that would
have won the hole, but missed it. The hole was halved with double bogeys.
To his credit, Jackson bounced back, just as he had all week
whenever adversity struck at Pinehurst. He won the eighth and ninth holes with
pars to cut his 3-down deficit to just 1-down.
But he never got any closer and Augenstein closed Jackson
out by winning the 15th and 16th holes with pars.
Asked following his two wins Thursday that got him into the
quarterfinals where Jackson’s new-found confidence in match play came from, he
referenced his 1-up victory over defending U.S. Junior Amateur champion Michael
Thorbjornsen in the second round earlier this summer at the Inverness Club in
Toledo, Ohio.
“Michael is a really good player and one of the best junior
golfers there is right now,” Jackson told the USGA website. “When I beat him, I
really knew, OK, you can pretty much compete with all these kids.
“I’ve played in a lot of match-play events in the last
couple years and I’ve been successful, so I had a lot of confidence coming in.”
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