The U.S. Amateur journey for Downingtown West junior Nick Gross came to an end Friday with a 4 and 3 loss to Dylan Menante of Carlsbad, Calif. and No. 8 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) in a quarterfinal match at The Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J.
But having “the time of his life,” as Gross characterized it, at Ridgewood wasn’t the end of anything for him. It was, in a very real way, the beginning of a whole new world for the kid who will celebrate his 16th birthday Wednesday.
Gross, the reigning PIAA Class AAA champion, zoomed to the top of the junior golf world this week. He has two full years of junior golf remaining and he will be the guy that all those talented youngsters will be gunning for.
Nick Gross, playing out of Kennett Square Golf & Country Club, will be the new measuring stick in the world of junior golf. Gross knows what that’s like because he was one of those guys chasing the elite junior players for the last year or so.
Beating Luke Potter was probably almost unimaginable to Gross as recently as March when he finished in fourth place in the 11th Junior Invitational at Sage Valley Golf Club in Graniteville, S.C., seven shots behind Potter and Caleb Surratt, who went on to defeat Potter in a playoff to claim the title.
But there was Gross staring down Potter of Encinitas, Calif. in the round of 16 in the U.S. Amateur Thursday, defeating a guy who has been of the top players in junior golf for a while, 4 and 3, to earn his spot in the quarterfinals opposite Menante.
Potter is headed for Arizona State and will likely vie for a spot in the Sun Devils’ starting lineup. Surratt is headed for Tennessee, where he figures to be a valuable addition to a program that has been on the rise in the impossibly talented Southeastern Conference.
Nobody loves the District One Championship more than I do. I’ve been to every district tournament since it moved to Turtle Creek Golf Course a couple of decades ago. But the Turtle on a Monday in October is going to look a lot different to Gross than the places he has been the last five or six weeks: Bandon Dunes for the U.S. Junior Amateur, Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in suburban Chicago for the Boys Junior PGA Championship and finally Ridgewood for the U.S. Amateur.
The foundation for this summer’s run by Gross can be traced back to the pandemic summer of 2020 when his dad Shawn shuttled Nick Gross around the eastern half of the country in search of competition.
The onset of the coronavirus forced the USGA to cancel the U.S. Junior Amateur and the PGA of America to cancel the Boys Junior PGA Championship. But Nick Gross and his dad took on a play-anywhere attitude that was still evident two years later. Nick Gross just wanted to play, just wanted to compete.
And there he was on a Friday morning in Paramus, N.J., grabbing a 2-up lead over Menante, a veteran of Pepperdine’s run to the national championship in the spring of 2021 and to the national semifinals this past spring at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Gross won the first hole with a par and increased his lead with a win at three with a birdie.
But Menante, who will take his fifth year of college eligibility at North Carolina for the upcoming 2022-2023 season, responded like you would expect a champion to do.
He ripped off four straight wins from the fifth through the eighth holes, all with birdies, to turn his 2-down deficit into a 2-up advantage. Menante won the 10th hole with a par that gave him a comfortable 3-up lead.
Caught Gross’ birdie bomb, an impossible 40-foot downhiller, at the par-3 11th hole on a Twitter highlight as he cut his deficit to 2-down.
Menante caught the hint that the kid wasn’t going away and kept the heat on, winning the 12th hole with a par and then closing Gross out with a birdie at 15.
“I had the time of my life here,” Gross told the USGA website. “It’s my first Am and it was a hell of a ride. I played against some of the top guys in the world and I was able to get into the quarterfinals, which eight people get to do out of 312, so it’s pretty special, something I’ll remember forever.”
Menante’s semifinal opponent Saturday will be fifth-year Texas A&M standout Sam Bennett, who is No. 3 in the WAGR. The 22-year-old Bennett, the player in the year in the SEC for the 2021-’22 season, knocked off Stewart Hagestad, No. 9 in the WAGR, 3 and 2, in another of Friday’s quarterfinals.
The 31-year-old Hagestad won the first of his two U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship crowns six years ago at Stonewall, quite memorably rallying from 4-down with five holes to play to defeat Scott Harvey on the 37th hole.
Hagestad of Newport Beach, Calif. added a second U.S. Mid-Am title to his resume a year ago at Sankaty Head Golf Club on Nantucket Island. He will be seeking a third U.S. Mid-Am crown next month at Erin Hills, in Erin, Wis.
The other semifinal will pit Ben Carr of Columbus, Ga., a fifth-year player at Georgia Southern, against Menante’s teammate on the Pepperdine team that reached the NCAA semifinals at Grayhawk in the spring, Derek Hitchner of Minneapolis, Minn.
Carr held off Alex Price of Hillsboro, Va., 2 and 1, in his quarterfinal match while Hitchner claimed a 3 and 2 victory over Shea Lague of Jamul, Calif., 3 and 2, to punch his ticket to the semifinals. Price is a senior at Christopher Newport while Lague is a sophomore at San Diego State.
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