Jackson roars into second round of U.S. Amateur at Pinehurst with win over Springer

   Palmer Jackson, who became Franklin Regional’s first state champion when he won the PIAA Class AAA Championship last fall, stormed into the second round of match play in the U.S. Amateur at the Pinehurst Resort & Country Club’s No. 2 Course Wednesday, closing out Hayden Springer of Trophy Club, Texas with an eagle.

   Jackson, who reached the third round of last month’s U.S. Junior Amateur at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, wiped out an early 2-down deficit and claimed a 3 and 2 victory over Springer, who capped his college career at TCU by winning the Big 12 individual title.

   Jackson’s second-round opponent Thursday morning will be Jacob Solomon, who wrapped up a solid college career at Auburn in the spring. Solomon reached the second round with a 4 and 3 victory over Cameron Young of Scarborough, N.Y. and No. 40 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR). Young wrapped up his college career at Wake Forest by helping the Demon Deacons earn a spot in match play in the NCAA Championship at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark. in the spring.

   Springer put Jackson in a 2-down hole by winning the fourth and fifth holes with birdies and the seventh hole with a par.

   But Jackson came roaring back, evening the match by taking the eighth and 10^th holes with pars. Jackson then won the 11^th, 12^th and 14^th holes, all with birdies, to take a 3-up lead. Springer tried to get back in the match by winning the 15^th with a birdie, but Jackson shut the door with authority by closing out the match with an eagle at the 16^th hole.

   Jackson, who will join the Notre Dame program later this month, is just playing great golf right now and isn’t backing down from anybody.

   It wouldn’t be the first day of match play at a U.S. Amateur without some upsets and none was bigger than Brandon Wu, the qualifying medalist, getting knocked off by Austin Squires of Union, Ky., 2-up.

   Squires was the last survivor of a bulky 27-man playoff for the final three match-play berths Wednesday morning, a par on the fourth hole of the playoff at Pinehurst’s No. 4 Course earning him a match against Wu of Scarsdale, N.Y. and No. 11 in the WAGR.

   Wu led Stanford to a national championship at The Blessings in the spring and played four rounds in the U.S. Open at the Pebble Beach Golf Links after making the cut. Last weekend he teamed up with Stewart Hagestad, Rose Zhang and Emilia Migliaccio to win a gold medal for the United States in the Pan-American games mixed golf competition in Lima, Peru.

   Not that Squires, who completed a solid college career at Cincinnati in the spring, was totally out of his league. He reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur a year ago at Pebble Beach before getting smoked by the eventual champion, Viktor Hovland of Norway.

   Squires will get Italy’s Stefano Mazzoli, who wrapped up a solid college career at TCU in the spring, inb the second round. Mazzoli, No. 37 in the WAGR, needed 19 holes to get past Thomas Hutchison of San Jose, Calif. in his opening-round match. Hutchison was the Big West Player of the Year as a sophomore at UC-Davis.

   Hagestad, who staged an epic rally to win the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Stonewall, was another upset victim. Hagestad of Newport Beach, Calif. and No. 7 in the WAGR, dropped a 3 and 2 decision to Maxwell Moldovon, a 17-year-old from Uniontown, Ohio who is a two-time scholastic state champion.

   Maybe the biggest surprise of the first three days of the U.S. Amateur was the failure of Texas sophomore Cole Hammer, No. 1 in the WAGR, to earn a spot in the match-play bracket. Hammer got into the playoff by finishing at 5-over 145, but missed a three-footer for par on the first hole and was eliminated.

   Not a great sign to see three of the four players who have already clinched spots on the United States team in next month’s Walker Cup Match at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, England, struggle at Pinehurst. Hammer, Hagestad and teen phenom Akshay Bhatia of Wake Forest, N.C. secured their spots on the team by being the three highest-rated Americans in the WAGR on July 24.

   Wu clinched his spot by capturing the medal in qualifying, although he was a pretty sure thing even before that.

   Bhatia, No. 5 in the WAGR, is very much alive and will have what I would consider one of the more intriguing second-round matches when he takes on Vanderbilt senior John Augenstein of Owensboro, Ky. and No. 38 in the WAGR.

   Bhatia claimed a 3 and 2 decision over Pepperdine junior R.J. Manke of Lakewood, Wash. in his opening-round match.

   Augenstein has been a match-play maestro ever since he led the Commodores to a Southeastern Conference title as a freshman in the spring of 2017. Pretty sure he’s still in the mix for a spot on the U.S. Walker Cup team. Let’s put it this way, if he isn’t, he should be.

   Augenstein cruised to a 6 and 4 decision over Ryan Smith, a talented junior player from Carlsbad, Calif. who plans to join the North Carolina program in the summer of 2020.