A few thoughts on some
goings-on at the U.S. Amateur, which basically got bumped from Thursday’s Daily
Times when Tiger Woods announced he was taking himself out of consideration for
the U.S. Ryder Cup team.
Temple senior Matthew Teesdale saw his U.S. Amateur bid
halted in the first round of match play with a 6 and 5 loss to Ollie
Schniederjans, a Georgia Tech senior who is the top-ranked amateur player in
the world, Wednesday.
Still, it’s been a very good summer for Teesdale, the former
Hatboro-Horsham standout, who won the Philadelphia Open last month and reached
the semifinals of the Philadelphia Amateur earlier this summer.
And he did a good job making match play at the Atlanta
Athletic Club, outshining his more decorated Temple teammate, Brandon Matthews,
who was the 2010 PIAA champion at Pittston. Teesdale has a very good chance of
succeeding Matthews as the winner of the Golf Association of Philadelphia’s
William Hyndman III Player of the Year award.
In fairness to Matthews, though, he was playing on the
national amateur circuit this summer, as a player of his caliber should.
Another guy who made match play in Atlanta was Will Betts,
the Hartford junior who was a co-medalist in the local U.S. Amateur qualifier
at Stonewall. A resident of the Pittsburgh area, Betts had a conflict with the
western Pa. qualifier and drove to Stonewall and got in and then got into match
play. Betts fell, 3 and 2, Wednesday to Eli Cole, a former TCU standout from
Los Angeles.
A survivor of that Stonewall qualifier who is still very
much alive, though, is Isaiah Logue, the two-time PIAA Class AA champion from
Fairfield in District Three. Two-time as in the last two times for the recently
graduated senior who is headed for Liberty University.
Not only did Logue earn a spot in match play, Wednesday he
knocked off Sam Horsfield, 2 and 1. The 17-year-old Horsfield is a Florida
recruit who moved to the Sunshine State from England at age 4 and has become
one of the top junior players in the country.
Which brings us to Nathan Smith, the western Pennsylvanian
who has become the Jay Sigel of his time. Smith has won four U.S. Mid-Amateur
titles and has played on the U.S. Walker Cup team three times, helping captain
Buddy Marucci retain the Cup on his home course, Merion Golf Club’s East
Course, in 2009.
Smith won the 1994 PIAA title as a sophomore at Brookeville
High School in a four-man playoff which included Haverford High’s Kevin
McDermott.
Smith has never had much luck in the U.S. Amateur. But maybe
that’s about to change. He survived a 17-for-4 playoff to get into match play
then rallied from 1-down on the 18th tee to oust co-medalist Lee
McCoy on the 19th hole.
“It was a long day,” the 36-year-old financial adviser told
The Associated Press. “That was a lot of fun. You know I think it was one of
those, I was so excited to be there. Kind of nothing to lose and I just got
lucky.”
I can remember wondering why Marucci chose Smith to be the
veteran to round out that 2009 U.S. Walker Cup team. But Smith keeps proving
over and over again what a wise choice it was.
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