Despite early exit at U.S. Amateur, Gross had himself quite a summer

 

   Nick Gross was probably disappointed to be leaving Cherry Hills Village, Colo. a little earlier than he had hoped after he suffered a 2-up setback at the hands of fellow 16-year-old Bowen Mauss of Draper, Utah in the opening round of match play in the U.S. Amateur Wednesday.

   It was only a year ago when Gross at age 15, about to turn 16, stunned the amateur golf world with a run to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur at Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J.

   Gross, a senior at Downingtown West, gave himself a pretty tough act to follow. But the best thing about reaching the quarterfinals a year ago was that it opened up his options for the summer of 2023.

   He was exempt from local qualifying for the U.S. Open and for a long, long time on golf’s longest day at a sectional qualifier at Canoe Brook Country Club in Summit, N.J., it looked like Gross was going to be the 16-year-old darling of the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club.

   Nick Gross aims high and when he faltered a little down the stretch at Canoe Brook, it almost seemed to affect the rest of his summer.

   But what a summer it was. Gross teed it up in a couple of the Elite Amateur Golf Series events, the Sunnehanna Amateur at the A.W. Tillinghast gem in Johnstown and the Northeast Amateur at Wannamoissett Country Club, a Donald Ross classic in Rumford, R.I.

   Gross, who captured his second District One Class AAA crown in three years at Turtle Creek Golf Course last fall, was in the middle of the pack in those events that had leaderboards you’re likely going to see on the PGA Tour in 10 years or so.

   Back among his fellow junior golfers, Gross bounced back from a disappointing week in the U.S. Junior Amateur at the Daniel Island Club in Charleston, S.C., where he failed to make the match-play bracket, with a solid showing in the Boys Junior PGA Championship at Hot Springs Country Club in Hot Springs, Ark., where he finished in a tie for eighth place with a 7-under-par 277 total.

   After matching par with a 71 at the tough Cherry Hills layout, a classic William Flynn design, in the opening round of qualifying for match play in the U.S. Amateur last week, Gross unleashed the kind of round that we’ve come to expect from him in the second round.

   Gross, the winner of the PIAA Class AAA crown as a sophomore in 2021, made five birdies and had nary a bogey on his scorecard in a sparkling 5-under 67 at the Colorado Golf Club and zoomed up the leaderboard, finishing in a tie for eighth place in qualifying with a 5-under 138 total.

   It was the kind of round that seemed to indicate Gross was poised to make another deep run in the U.S. Amateur at still just 16 going on 17.

   But nobody knows better than Gross the depth of talent in the amateur game and he quickly found himself in a dogfight with another talented teen in Mauss.

   Mauss took a 1-up lead in the opening-round match back at Cherry Hills by winning the third hole with a par before Gross answered by taking the sixth with a birdie.

   A double bogey by Gross at the seventh hole enabled Mauss to win the hole with a bogey. Gross bounced back to win the eighth hole with a par and square the match again.

   But Mauss seized control of the match when he won the 10^th hole with a par and 13 with birdie to take a 2-up advantage.

   Gross cut his deficit in half by winning the 15^th hole with a par and took the match to the 18^th hole, needing a win to send it to extra holes. But Mauss sealed the verdict by winning the 18^th hole with a par.

   Up until last year’s U.S. Amateur, Gross was the kid on the rise. In the ensuing year, he has become familiar with being the guy with a target on his back, on being the player all the other juniors are measuring themselves against.

   A couple of more wins at Cherry Hills and Gross would have been matched against his future Alabama teammate, Nick Dunlap of Huntsville, Ala.

   It was Dunlap who took out Mauss with a 5 and 3 victory in the round of 16 Thursday afternoon on his way to a U.S. Amateur triumph with a 4 and 3 decision over Neal Shipley, the Pittsburgh native who starred at Ohio State, where he took his extra year of eligibility granted by the NCAA to players who lost the spring of 2020 to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, in Sunday’s scheduled 36-hole final.

   It’s been a huge summer for Dunlap, who claimed Elite Amateur Golf Series wins in the Northeast Amateur at Wannamoisett and at the North & South Amateur Championship at the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina. Dunlap, No. 9 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), will represent the United States in the Walker Cup Match Labor Day weekend at the Old Course at St. Andrews, which is hosting the biennial matches between the Stars & Stripes and Great Britain & Ireland for the first time since 1975.

   Perhaps you could judge Gross’ summer against the one he put together a year ago, but that’s not really fair. The summer he did have this year with a top-10 finish in the Boys Junior PGA Championship and a spot in the match-play bracket at the U.S. Amateur would be fairly epic by itself.

   The junior golf scene has really exploded in the last couple of decades. But by any measure, Gross has put together as good a junior career as any player in the history of the Philadelphia area. I’ve been watching high school and junior golf in this area for more than 40 years and nobody can match Gross’ accomplishments and there have been some talented players during that time.

   And Gross is not done yet.

   Gross wasn’t the only PIAA Class AAA champion to make some noise at Cherry Hills.

   Auburn senior Carson Bacha, who captured a state title as a senior at Central York in 2019, reached the round of 16 before falling to Jose Islas of Mexico, 3 and 2.

   Bacha, No. 50 in the WAGR, helped Auburn capture the team crown as the host team in the Auburn Regional in the spring. He matched par at Cherry Hills with a 71 in the opening round of qualifying in the U.S. Amateur and then matched par at Colorado Golf Club with a 72 in the second round.

   Bacha was one of 15 players who made the cut for match play on the number at even-par 143. That’s what it took to earn a spot in the match-play bracket, even-par. Not much margin for error.

   Bacha then proceeded to take out two members of an Arizona State team that earned a spot in the match-play bracket in the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. in the spring in the first two rounds of match play at Cherry Hills.

   Bacha knocked off Luke Potter of Encinitas, Calif., 1-up, in the opening round of match play. Potter was one of the top freshmen in the country in a banner year for college rookies.

   Bacha then claimed another 1-up victory over Ryggs Johnston of Libby, Mont., a senior on the Sun Devils’ roster for the wraparound 2022-2023 season, in the round of 32.

   The 20-year-old Islas, who played a year of college golf at Oregon in the 2021-2022 season, ended Bacha’s bid in the round of 16. Bacha was one of three Auburn players in the round of 16 as he was joined by fellow senior John Marshall Butler and incoming freshman Jackson Koivun. Think the Tigers are going to be any good in the wraparound 2023-2024 season?

   Of course, nobody represented Pennsylvania better at Cherry Hills better than the 22-year-old Shipley did. Shipley was a member of the 2018 Pittsburgh Central Catholic team that captured the PIAA Class AAA team crown at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort in York County.

   It was a talented Pittsburgh Central Catholic team that included Jimmy Meyers, who will play a fifth year at Penn State this season.

   Shipley landed at James Madison and was the Dukes’ best player for four years before taking a post-graduate year at Ohio State.

   Shipley really emerged with the Buckeyes. He was in second place in the individual chase in the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk going into the final round before struggling and ending up in a tie for 29^th place. Shipley was the runnerup at Sunnehanna this summer.

   And when Shipley, who captured the Pennsylvania Amateur last summer at Llanerch Country Club, rallied from 3-down after 10 holes against Auburn’s Butler to pull out a 2 and 1 victory in Saturday’s semifinals, he was in the U.S. Amateur final, another chapter in the storied history of golf in western Pennsylvania.

   Next year will mark the 70^th anniversary of the U.S. Amateur victory for Arnold Palmer, the King whose iconic career sprung from western Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands, at the Country Club of Detroit. Shipley was one of several players who duplicated Palmer’s famous drive off the first tee at Cherry Hills’ par-4 first hole onto the green to begin his dramatic rally in the final round to win the 1960 U.S. Open during one of the U.S. Amateur practice rounds. And did so with the persimmon driver from back in the days of wood woods.

   Shipley made a birdie on the 18^th hole at Cherry Hills to draw even with Dunlap halfway through the scheduled 36-hole final, but the Alabama star went 5-under 30 on Cherry Hills’ outgoing nine in the afternoon to take control of the match on his way to hoisting the Havemeyer Trophy.

   While I’m on the subject of PIAA Class AAA champions of recent vintage, I have to give a shout-out to Notre Dame sophomore Calen Sanderson, who outdueled Gross for the 2020 state crown when Sanderson was a junior at Holy Ghost Prep and Gross was a freshman at Downingtown West.

   While Gross was getting knocked out of the U.S. Amateur in the opening round of match play Wednesday, Sanderson was carding a sparkling 4-under 66 at the Country Club of York in the final round of the Pennsylvania Open to finish in second place and earn low-amateur honors.

   Sanderson, playing out of Jericho National Golf Club, briefly held the lead late in the final round before finishing a shot behind Kevin Kraft, a 52-year-old fitting manager at 2nd Swing Golf, with a 7-under 203 total. It was Kraft’s second Pennsylvania Open victory, having captured the title in 2018.

   Finishing second in a field of many of the best professional and amateur players in Pennsylvania should give Sanderson a nice confidence boost as he tries to crack the starting lineup for the Fighting Irish.