Austin Greaser rallied from a pair of 2-down deficits during Saturday’s championship match, defeating Mateo Fernandez de Oliveira, 1 up, to win the 120th Western Amateur at Exmoor Country Club in Highland Park, Illinois.
It was an exclamation point to a superb stretch of golf for Greaser, the 21-year-old Vandalia, Ohio, resident who has cemented himself as one of the emerging talents in amateur golf. The North Carolina senior overcame a seemingly fatal late double bogey in the final round of stroke play to get in at 6-under 278, which would have fallen short of the 16-person match play cutoff if not for a couple of late mistakes by other players moving the cutline.
Greaser successfully navigated his way through a seven-for-two playoff to reach match play, and the magic didn’t end there. After cruising past Belgium’s Matthis Besard, 3 and 2, Greaser erased a 2-down deficit to beat Duke’s Kelly Chinn in a dramatic 1-up match. Greaser never trailed in his semifinals match against William Mouw, but he broke a tied contest by winning Nos. 14, 15 and 16, going birdie-eagle-birdie to reach the championship match against Arkansas senior Fernandez de Oliveira.
Fernandez de Oliveira won two of the first three holes, Greaser battled back to tie the match and then Fernandez de Oliveira struck back to regain a 2-up lead. But Greaser flipped the match by winning Nos. 12, 13, 14 and 15 with birdies to go 2 up before surviving another final scare from his determined opponent. Fernandez de Oliveira made birdie on No. 17 and had an excellent look for birdie on No. 18 that just went sliding by. Greaser, meanwhile, extracted himself from a bad lie behind the 18th green and salvaged a winning par.
“This is what you prepare for, this is what you practice for, this is what you dream of,” Greaser told the Western Golf Association. “I think I’m going to have to get some sleep before it hits me what happened this week, because I am exhausted.”
While Greaser showed ball-striking prowess during a final match in which he hit 11 fairways and 16 greens, getting putts to fall became a challenge. When a 35-foot birdie try found the bottom of the cup on No. 12, Greaser’s confidence changed. It stunned Fernandez de Oliveira, an Argentine who has ascended to No. 29 player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.
“It felt like the lid came off,” Greaser said. “I felt like I hit some good putts today that didn’t go in, but that is how it is.”
Last year was a breakout campaign for Greaser as he reached the Western Amateur’s semifinals before getting to the final of the U.S. Amateur at Oakmont. The latter performance earned him a trip to this year’s Masters, where he narrowly missed the cut, and to the U.S. Open at Brookline, where he was one of four amateurs to make the cut.
Despite battling inconsistency during the spring, Greaser has shown 2021 wasn’t a fluke. He won the NCAA New Haven Regional by one stroke over Alex Fitzpatrick and teammate Ryan Gerard and had a top-25 showing at the NCAA Championship.
Winning the Western, however, is arguably his greatest golf accomplishment to date.
RESULTS
Sean Fairholm