Nick Gross was the oldest player left in the field when the U.S. Junior Amateur quarterfinals teed off Friday morning at Trinity Forest Golf Club in sweltering Dallas, Texas.
Gross, the winner of the PIAA Class AAA Championship as a sophomore at Downingtown West in 2021, has a ton of experience at the highest levels of the amateur game, including his memorable run to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur at Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J. a week before his 16th birthday in 2022.
Gross was the lineup every time Alabama teed it up in a tournament as a freshman with the Crimson Tide during the wrapround 2024-2025 season.
He took opponents to the 18th hole before falling in his matches as Alabama reached the semifinals of the Southeastern Conference Championship at Sea Island Golf Club’s Seaside Course on St. Simons Island, Ga.
Gross was in the lineup in the spring in the NCAA’s Reno Regional, where the Crimson Tide caught a tough weather draw and failed to advance. And he teed it up in several of the Elite Amateur Series events this summer against older players.
All that experience couldn’t quite carry him through to the semifinals Friday as he ran into a tough customer in Nguyen Anh Minh of Vietnam and No. 52 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), who pulled away on Trinity Forest’s incoming nine to claim a 3 and 1 decision over Gross.
Not that Gross went down without a fight. The guy is a pure competitor.
Gross won the first hole against Minh, who will join the program at Oregon State later this summer, with a par. Minh answered by taking the second hole with a birdie, but Gross again took a 1-up lead with a win at three with a par.
Minh evened the match by winning the fifth hole with a birdie and then surged to a 2-up advantage by taking eight and nine with pars.
Gross was far from finished, though, as he got even by taking the 10th hole with a par and the 12th with a birdie.
Minh, however, had a finishing kick as he won the 14th and 15th holes with birdies, halved 16 with a birdie and then closed out Gross by taking 17 with, you guessed it, a fourth straight birdie.
Minh birdied four of Trinity Forest’s five par-5s, earning wins at the second, fifth and ninth holes on the front nine with those birdies, suggesting the kid has some power.
Minh would come back Friday afternoon and dominate Qiyou Wu of China, 4 and 3, in all-Asian semifinal.
Minh jumped out to a 5-up lead with wins at the first, second, third, fifth and sixth holes. Wu got a win at the seventh hole, but couldn’t stop Minh’s momentum. The pair halved the next eight holes as Minh eased into Saturday’s schedule 36-hole final.
Wu had reached the semifinals with a hard-fought 1-up victory over Ben Bolton of England in the morning quarterfinals
Minh’s opponent in the final will be the equally hot Hamilton Coleman of Augusta, Ga.
A day after Coleman, who plans to join the program at SEC power Georgia at the end of next summer, had stunned Tyler Watts of Huntsville, Ala. and No. 42 in the WAGR with a big closing kick, Coleman rolled into the final with 5 and 4 victory over Luke Colton of Frisco, Texas and No. 26 in the WAGR in Friday afternoon’s other semifinal.
All Colton, who will join the program at SEC power Vanderbilt at the end of next summer, did in the morning was cruise past Miles Russell, the 16-year-old phenom from Jacksonville Beach, Fla. and No. 18 in the WAGR, with a 4 and 3 decision in a quarterfinal match.
Colton also displayed quite the closing kick. After Russell evened the match by taking the 10th hole with a par, Colton won 11 with a par and 12, 14 and 15 with birdies to close out Russell, who recently announced he plans to join the program at Atlantic Coast Conference power Florida State in the summer of 2027.
But Colton ran into a player even hotter than he was in the semifinals.
After getting past Sahar Patel of Weston, Fla., 2 and 1, in the morning quarterfinals, Coleman only lost a single hole to Colton in their semifinal match.
When Coleman rattled off three straight wins at the eighth hole with a par, at nine with a birdie and at 10 with a par, he had a commanding 4-up lead and Colton never got back in the match.
This was the deepest run Gross had made in the U.S. Junior Amateur. It was three summers ago when he reached the second round of the U.S. Junior Amateur at the Bandon Dunes Resort in Oregon.
Gross followed that up a few weeks later with his stunning run to the U.S. Amateur quarterfinals at Ridgewood.
It is a much more battle-tested Gross who will arrive at the U.S. Amateur next month at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, Calif. His week in the blazing July heat of north Texas this week might turn out to be perfect preparation for whatever he may face in San Francisco.
No comments:
Post a Comment