Had a chance to chat a little with Palmer Jackson after he became Franklin Regional’s first state champion, winning the 2018 PIAA Class AAA Championship in impressive fashion to cap his scholastic career.
As well as Jackson played that day at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort, I didn’t think I was looking at a potential U.S. Amateur quarterfinalist, but there he was 10 months later on my TV screen battling it out with eventual runnerup John Augenstein of Vanderbilt at the Pinehurst Resort’s iconic No. 2 Course.
Jackson rode the momentum from that deep U.S. Amateur run right to South Bend, Ind. and made an immediate impact at Notre Dame as a freshman. The Fighting Irish were, very simply, playing as well as anybody in the country in the fall of 2019. Then came the coronavirus pandemic bringing an end to Notre Dame’s most promising season in years. The Fighting Irish were ranked No. 20 by Golfstat when the season came to a premature end last March.
The Atlantic Coast Conference kept Notre Dame from competing in the fall of 2020 due to coronavirus concerns. But the Palmer Jackson of the late summer and fall of 2019 resurfaced on Easter weekend of 2021 as he finished in fifth place in an elite field and led Notre Dame to a third-place finish in the team standings in the Augusta Haskins Award Invitational, presented by Valspar, which wrapped up Sunday at Forest Hills Golf Club in Augusta, Ga.
Between the best women’s players in college golf teeing it up at Augusta National Golf Club in the final round of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship and the loaded field of guys playing at Forest Hills, there was a ton of college golf talent to be found in Augusta on the Saturday of Easter weekend.
Notre Dame was never going to catch the tournament champion, Oklahoma State, No. 3 in the latest Golfstat rankings, or the runnerup, No. 7 Pepperdine, as those two teams were in a different zip code than the rest of the field.
But Notre Dame, behind Jackson’s solid showing, finished ahead of some very good teams in taking third place and saw its Golfstat ranking rise to No. 26.
Oklahoma State, a Big 12 power, was nearly at the level it was at when the lineup included Viktor Hovland and Matthew Wolff from the fall of 2017 to the spring of 2019 as the Cowboys fired a spectacular final round of 18-under 270 over the 7,053-yard, par-72 Forest Hills layout, finishing with a 37-under 827 total, two shots ahead of the Waves.
Oklahoma State opened with a 6-under 282 in the first round of Saturday’s double round and added a 13-under 275 in Saturday afternoon’s second round. That left the Cowboys nine shots behind Pepperdine, which ripped off an opening round of 16-under 272 before adding a 10-under 276.
The Waves, behind individual runnerup Dylan Menante, a sophomore from Carlsbad, Calif. who lost in a playoff to South Carolina’s Ryan Hall, a junior from Knoxville, Tenn. and No. 50 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), closed with a 7-under 281. The Waves’ 35-under 829 was a program record, yet they somehow came up two shots short of Oklahoma State.
Pepperdine, ranked No. 1 when the wraparound 2019-2020 season was terminated, appears more than ready to try to make up for the frustrating lost spring of 2020.
Notre Dame opened with a 3-under 285 and added a 13-under 275 before closing with another 3-under 285 as the Fighting Irish finished with a 19-under 845 total that left them in third place, 16 shots behind Pepperdine, but with an array of really good teams lined up behind them.
Perennial Big Ten power Illinois, ranked sixth, finished four shots behind Notre Dame in fourth place with a 15-under 849 total. The Fighting Illini opened with a 2-under 286 before firing a 15-under 273, the best team round of the Saturday afternoon session. They cooled off with a 2-over 290 in Sunday’s final round.
A couple of strong Pac-12 entries, No. 19 Arizona and No. 16 Arizona State, finished in fifth place and tied for sixth, respectively, ikn the loaded 15-team field.
The Wildcats opened with a 7-under 281 and struggled to a 3-over 291 in Saturday afternoon’s second round before finishing up with a 4-under 284 to end up seven shots behind Illinois in fifth place with an 8-under 856 total.
The Sun Devils opened with a 2-under 286 and added a 2-over 290 in Saturday afternoon’s second round before closing with a 4-under 284 that left them two shots behind their intra-state rival and in a tie for sixth place with UCF at 6-under 858.
The Knights outperformed their No. 61 ranking in getting a share of sixth place at 858. UCF sandwiched a 6-under 282 in Saturday afternoon’s second round with a pair of even-par 288s.
Oklahoma State was led by its talented sophomore duo of Eugenio Chacarra, the Spaniard who transferred to Norman from Wake Forest, and Aman Gupta, a Concord, N.C. native who made an impressive run to the semifinals of last summer’s U.S. Amateur at Bandon Dunes.
Chacarra sandwiched a 70 in Saturday afternoon’s second round with a pair of sparkling 5-under 67s to finish alone in third place, two shots out of the playoff for the individual title with a 12-under 204 total. Gupta was a big part of the Sooners’ Sunday charge with a 6-under 66 that left him two shots behind Chacarra in fourth place with a 10-under 206 total. Gupta followed up an opening-round 71 with a 3-under 69 in Saturday afternoon’s second round.
Jonas Baumgartner, a freshman from Germany, gave Oklahoma State a third finisher among the top eight as he joined a group of four players tied for eighth place at 6-under 210. Baumgartner matched Gupta’s scintillating 6-under 66 in Sunday’s final round after he had matched par in each of Saturday’s two rounds with a pair of 72s.
Bo Jin, a freshman from China and the runnerup in the 2019 U.S. Junior Amateur Championship at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, was low-Sooner with his sizzling 7-under 65 in Saturday afternoon’s second round. He had matched par in the opening round with a 72 and struggled in the final round with a 77 that left him among the group tied for 21st place with a 2-under 214 total. But Jin going low in the second round was a huge part of this victory for Oklahoma State.
Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, a sophomore from Denmark, rounded out the Oklahoma State lineup and his final round of 1-under 71 was a crucial final counter for the Sooners. He opened with a 73 before adding another 1-under 71 in Saturday afternoon’s second round and finished among the group tied for 25th place at 1-under 215.
The really scary part of this whole scenario is that Oklahoma State was playing without Austin Eckroat, a junior from Edmond, Okla. and a link to the Sooners’ 2018 national championship team and 2019 NCAA semifinalist. Eckroat, No. 14 in WAGR, was busy teeing up on the PGA Tour at the Valero Texas Open at TPC San Antonio’s AT&T Oaks Course. He missed the cut, but still … the Sooners lose a guy to a PGA Tour event and shoot 37-under.
The individual chase certainly had its share of drama. It looked like Pepperdine’s Menante was going to run away with it as he took a four-shot lead into Sunday’s final round after adding a sparkling 7-under 65 to his opening-round 67. Hall was six shots behind Menante after adding a 6-under 66 to his opening-round 72.
But Hall had two eagles on his scorecard, holing a tough chip for eagle on his final hole, the par-5 ninth hole, to complete the best round of the weekend, an 8-under 64 that got him to 14-under 202. Menante nearly eagled his final hole, the par-5 18th, but a birdie gave him a 2-under 70 that enabled him to catch Hall at 14-under.
Both players birdied the 10th hole, but Hall birdied the 10th again on the second hole of the playoff to capture the title.
Which brings us back to Notre Dame’s Jackson and yes, his first name pays tribute to the greatest player ever produced by western Pennsylvania, the late, great King himself. After opening with a 71, Jackson ripped off a 5-under 67 in Saturday afternoon’s second round before closing with a 69 that left him alone in fifth place at 9-under 207, a shot behind Oklahoma State’s Gupta.
A new era of golf success at Notre Dame, rudely interrupted by the pandemic, just might be back on schedule.
Virginia Tech’s Mark Lawrence Jr., a graduate student from Richmond, Va., and UCF’s Johnny Travale, a freshman from Canada, finished two shots behind Jackson in a tie for sixth place, each landing on 6-under 210. Lawrence sandwiched a 3-under 69 in Saturday’s second round with a pair of 70s while Travale closed with a 71 after posting a pair of 3-under 69s in Saturday’s double round.
Two of Menante’s Pepperdine teammates, Joe Highsmith, a junior from Lakewood, Wash., and Joey Vrzich, a senior from El Cajon, Calif., joined Oklahoma State’s Baumgartner in the foursome tied for eighth place at 6-under 210. After opening with a 73, Highsmith added a 2-under 70 in Saturday afternoon’s second round before closing with a 5-under 67. Vrzich contributed rounds of 69 and 68 to the Waves’ spectacular showing in Saturday’s double round before finishing up with a 73.
Rounding out the quartet tied for eighth place was Illinois’ Giovanni Tadiotto, a graduate student from Belgium who returned for a fifth year in Champaign, taking up the NCAA on its offer of a fifth year of eligibility to make up for the spring of his senior year lost to the pandemic. Tadiotto added a sparkling 5-under 67 to his opening-round 69 before finishing up with a 74.
Also contributing for South Carolina, which finished in a tie for 10th place at 6-over 870, was Jack Wall, a sophomore from Brielle, N.J. When big brother Jeremy was on his way to a second straight BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship win in 2019 at Stonewall, Jack Wall’s bid was halted in the quarterfinals when he was forced to forfeit because of an overturned dump truck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Long story, but I do have it covered in a post from that interesting day at Stonewall.
Jack Wall wasn’t at his best at Forest Hills as added a 79 to an opening-round 77 before bouncing back a little with a 2-over 74 in Sunday’s final round that left him in a tie for 70th place at 230.
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