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The runner-up team of Brendan MacDougall and Sam Meek had all the golf they wanted on the final day of the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship. They played 41 holes in their attempt to become the first Canadian side to win the event.
MacDougall and Meek had to show up early for a 6:45 a.m. tee time to survive the final three holes of their quarterfinal match against Blake Hathcoat and Michael Slesinski, which they won, 1 up. The match had been suspended because of darkness.
They needed 19 holes – and three consecutive birdies at the finish – to defeat Tyler Anderson and Devin Johnson in the semifinal. They were beaten in 19 holes in the championship match.
“It’s been a lot, but it was a lot of fun being out there, and it was worth it,” Meek said.
The two were also trying to become the first Nevada players to win a USGA championship since Casey Watabu knocked off Anthony Kim in the 2006 U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship.
“We both played incredible golf throughout the entire week,” MacDougall said. “I’m super proud of what we did and it’s just unfortunate the way it ended the way it did.”
They didn’t bring home a medal, but Blake Hathcoat and Michael Slesinski did set a record for the longest match in the six-year history of the U.S. Amateur Four Ball. Their second-round match against Cole Berman and Michael Davis lasted 25 holes and took 7 hours, 54 minutes to complete.
Hathcoat and Slesinski, teammates at St. Mary’s College, birdied the 16th and 17th holes to square the match. Both sides birdied the 18th to extend the competition. It ended seven holes later when Hathcoat made a two-putt birdie on No. 1, the third time they played the hole during the match.
Their good fortune didn’t last. They were beaten, 1 up, by MacDougall and Meek in the quarterfinals the next day.
The junior dream team of Kelly Chinn and David Ford, the medalists from stroke play, finally ran out of juice in the quarterfinals. Their loss to eventual champions Kiko Francisco Coelho and Leopoldo Herrera III means the event’s No. 1 seed has not won the championship in six tries.
Chinn, a native of Great Falls, Virginia, who has signed with Duke, and Ford, a Peachtree Corners, Georgia, resident who has signed with North Carolina, shot 62 in the first round of qualifying to match the competitive record at the Home Course. They followed with a 66 at Chambers Bay and fell one stroke shy of matching the stroke-play championship record to earn the No. 1 seed.
“We were trying to go as low as possible,” Chinn said. “To shoot (128) for 36 holes is awesome.”
They won their first-round match against Ryan Eckelkamp and Tony Gumper in 19 holes and prevailed, 4 and 3, in the second round against Daniel Gratton and Zach Jecklin. They were defeated, 3 and 1, by eventual winners Coelho and Herrera.
The U.S. Amateur Four-Ball continues to trend toward the younger set. No mid-amateur advanced past the Round of 16. Hathcoat and Slesinski, both 23, were the oldest side to reach the quarterfinals, where the average age was 19.81.
Stan Awtrey