Jackson's U.S. Amateur bid halted by Augenstein in quarterfinals at Pinehurst

   Palmer Jackson, the winner of the PIAA Class AAA Championship as a senior at Franklin Regional last fall, saw his bid for a U.S. Amateur championship halted in the quarterfinals on the Pinehurst Resort & Country Club’s Donald Ross classic No. 2 Course in the Village of Pinehurst, N.C. Friday.

   Jackson, who had knocked off a series of college standouts on his way to the quarterfinals, finally ran into one he couldn’t take out in Vanderbilt senior John Augenstein of Owensboro, Ky., who claimed a 3 and 2 victory to advance to Saturday’s semifinals.

   Augenstein will take on William Holcomb V of Crockett, Texas, a Sam Houston State senior, in the semifinals Saturday after Holcomb eliminated Karl Vilips, an Australian junior standout who turned 18 Friday, 4 and 3.

   Mississippi is guaranteed to have a U.S. Amateur finalist after junior standout Cohen Trolio of West Point, Miss. and Georgia Tech senior Andy Ogletree of Little Rock, Miss. won their quarterfinal matches.

   Trolio claimed a 3 and 1 victory over Austin Squires of Union, Ky., who completed a solid college career at Cincinnati in the spring. It was the second straight year that Squires has fallen in the quarterfinals.

   Ogletree rolled to a 6 and 5 decision over Georgia senior Spencer Ralston of Gainesville, Ga.

   But western Pennsylvania was watching Jackson, who will join the Notre Dame program later this month. Pretty sure I read somewhere that the kid received his first name as a homage to western Pennsylvania’s greatest gift to golf, Arnold Palmer, the King himself. Jackson plays out of Hannastown Golf Club.

   And the way Jackson was playing this week, it was starting to look like he had designs on repeating the feat of his namesake from 65 years ago when Arnie won the 1954 U.S. Amateur at the Country Club of Detroit.

   But Augenstein was playing some pretty good golf himself. He won the third and fourth holes with pars and the par-5 fifth hole with an eagle to grab a 3-up lead.

   I tuned in just in time to see an absolute downpour hitting Pinehurst while Augenstein and Jackson were playing the seventh hole. Neither player had driven it well, but it looked like Jackson had the advantage  when he was in a greenside bunker while Augenstein was short of the green after blasting it out of one of those clumps of Scottish broom in the sandy native area that lines the fairways at Pinehurst.

   Play was finally halted and when Jackson returned he bumped his shot past the hole and right off the green. You miss a Donald Ross shelf and that’s what happens. Jackson still had a four-footer for bogey that would have won the hole, but missed it. The hole was halved with double bogeys.

   To his credit, Jackson bounced back, just as he had all week whenever adversity struck at Pinehurst. He won the eighth and ninth holes with pars to cut his 3-down deficit to just 1-down.

   But he never got any closer and Augenstein closed Jackson out by winning the 15^th and 16^th holes with pars.

   Asked following his two wins Thursday that got him into the quarterfinals where Jackson’s new-found confidence in match play came from, he referenced his 1-up victory over defending U.S. Junior Amateur champion Michael Thorbjornsen in the second round earlier this summer at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio.

   “Michael is a really good player and one of the best junior golfers there is right now,” Jackson told the USGA website. “When I beat him, I really knew, OK, you can pretty much compete with all these kids.

   “I’ve played in a lot of match-play events in the last couple years and I’ve been successful, so I had a  lot of confidence coming in.”