Hagestad holds on for second U.S. Mid-Amateur crown at Sankaty Head; Brock the women's champion at Berkely Hall

    Nobody knew better than Stewart Hagestad that his 5-up advantage after 18 holes of the scheduled 36-hole final of the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship against Mark Costanza of Morristown, N.J. at the Sankaty Head Golf Club in Siasconset, Mass. on Nantucket Island was hardly insurmountable.

   Five years earlier at Stonewall, Hagestad of Newport Beach, Calif. was 3-down to 2014 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Scott Harvey after 18 holes at the North Course, 5-down three holes into the afternoon round at the Old Course and still 4-down with five holes to play. And won. On the 37^th hole.

   The situation was somewhat different. A five-hour delay in last Saturday’s opening round of qualifying for match play had put the U.S. Mid-Am schedule a half-day behind all week.

   Thursday morning, Hagestad ended the Cinderella story of 64^th-seeded Hayes Brown of Charlotte, N.C. with a 4 and 3 victory in their semifinal match. The 32-year-old Costanza, the 2020 Player of the Year in New Jersey and in the Metropolitan Golf Association, punched his ticket to the final with a 2 and 1 win over Nick Maccario of Haverhill, Mass. in the other semifinal.

   The 30-year-old Hagestad and Costanza were to play the first 18 holes of the scheduled 36-hole final Thursday afternoon and then come back Friday morning to complete the match.

   A combination of some shaky play by Costanza and the kind of solid golf you’ve come to expect from Hagestad had the former Southern California standout 7-up through 11 holes.

   After going 3-up by taking the first, fifth and sixth holes, Hagestad ripped off four straight wins at eight, nine, 10 and 11 to go 7-up. But Hagestad knew it wasn’t over. And it wasn’t. Costanza finally got on the board by taking the 12^th hole and then cut his overnight deficit to 5-down with a win at the 18^th hole.

   Five years earlier, Hagestad had pulled out a win on the par-5 finishing hole at Stonewall’s North Course to cut his deficit to 4-down going to the Old Course for the afternoon. The scenario was all too familiar to Hagestad, who is in the second year of an MBA program at Southern Cal.

   Costanza kept coming when the match resumed Friday. With his new bride Meredith – they were wed Sept. 18 -- on the bag, Costanza picked up wins at the 21^st, 23^rd and 24^th holes. When Costanza buried a 25-foot birdie putt at the 13^th hole, the 31^st of the match, he was just 1-down.

   Costanza could never make it all the way back, though. He had a great look at birdie at the 14^th hole, the 32^nd of the match, from  inside 10 feet, but couldn’t get it to fall. He dropped a 24-footer for birdie two holes later, but then watched Hagestad drain his 14-foot birdie try right on top of him for a half that fell like a loss to Costanza.

   At the par-5 17^th hole, Costanza couldn’t get it up and down for birdie and Hagestad did get it up-and-down for birdie. It was the first hole Hagestad had won since the 11^th hole Thursday afternoon and it gave him a 2 and 1 victory and his second U.S. Mid-Amateur crown. And it had been hard won.

   Ever since his victory at Stonewall, Hagestad has been one of the game’s top amateur players. He is No. 13 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) on merit, right in there among all the college kids. Hagestad was in Butler Cabin with Masters champion Sergio Garcia in the spring following his 2016 U.S. Mid-Am victory as the low amateur at Augusta National. He has become the elder statesman on three straight winning U.S. Walker Cup sides.

   This week was the fourth time in five U.S. Mid-Am starts that Hagestad has reached the semifinals. His victory over Costanza ran his U.S. Mid-Am match-play record to 20-3. And now he has won the U.S. Mid-Am title twice.

   “It puts me on the same level as Spider Miller, a guy who I’m good friends with and close to and I played for him (in the Walker Cup Match),” Hagestad told the USGA website. “Still a couple behind Nathan (Smith), but it puts me on par with Spider. It’s an honor to have my name on that trophy twice.”

   A day earlier at the Berkeley Club’s North Course in Bluffton, S.C., the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur crown went to former Tennessee standout Blakesly Brock as she rolled to a 5 and 4 decision over Aliea Clark, a San Diego native who is doing graduate work at New York University.

   Much like Brown on the men’s side, Clark who played college golf at UCLA, snuck into the match-play bracket as the sole survivor of a 5-for-1 playoff following two rounds of qualifying. Clark then won five matches to become just the second 64^th seed to advance to a final in a USGA match-play event.

   The other was Gulph Mills Golf Club’s Alexandra Frazier, who fell in the 2010 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur Championship final at Fiddlesticks Country Club in Fort Myers, Fla. Fiddlesticks will host the U.S. Women’s Mid-Am next year.

   Brock had to go 19 holes in the round of 16 to beat Talia Campbell, the former Notre Dame standout who lost in the 2019 U.S. Women’s Mid-Am final at Forest Highlands Golf Club in Flagstaff, Ariz. It took Brock 20 holes to get past Clare Connolly of Chevy Chase, Md. and a weekend looper at Congressional Country Club. It was another 19-hole nail-biter in the semifinals as Brock knocked off 2018 U.S. Women’s Mid-Am champion Shannon Johnson of North Easton, Mass.

   But apparently the 25-year-old Brock, like Clark a U.S. Women’s Mid-Am “rookie,” had had enough of the extra-holes drama. She ripped off six straight wins from the seventh to the 12^th holes to put Clark away.

   Brock had won the first hole with Clark quickly squaring the match by taking the second hole. Clark took a 1-up lead with a win at the sixth hole, but Brock got on a big-time roll after that.

   Brock squared the match by winning the seventh hole and then dropped a 12-footer for birdie at the eighth hole to take a 1-up lead, a putt she would later say gave her a lot of momentum. I guess so because she proceeded to win the ninth, 10^th, 11^th and 12^th holes to take a commanding 5-up advantage.

   When the two players halved the next two holes, it was over and Brock had become the third youngest U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur champion.

   “I’m speechless,” Brock told the USGA website. “This has been an absolute dream week for me. I’m so happy. The course has been phenomenal. I’ve enjoyed it. The superintendent has done a great job, especially with the rain we had at the start of the week. The USGA has been absolutely incredible. It’s a dream.”

   After the 2022 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur at Fiddlesticks, the 2023 site for the event has yet to be announced. I’ve seen a few smoke signals that indicate the 2023 U.S. Women’s Mid-Am might be coming to the North Course at Stonewall. If true, that would be extremely cool.