Northeast Amateur champion Anthony Delisanti had a 32-hole marathon final day as he recorded the biggest victory of his amateur career.
Delisanti arrived at Wannamoisett Country Club in Rumford, Rhode Island, on Saturday morning and had to play the final eight holes of the rain-suspended third round. It wasn’t a brilliant round, as he posted 2-over-par 71.
That inspired him to “fire at pins and get aggressive in the fourth and final round,” said Delisanti, a Valparaiso University senior from Sanborn, New York. “And then my putter got hot.”
The result was a final-round 7-under 62, one stroke off the course record set by Luke Guthrie in 2011, for an 11-under 265 total and a playoff berth against Bryan Lee for the title.
Delisanti had to go five more holes before he defeated Lee, a University of Virginia junior from Fairfax, Virginia, by canning an 8-foot birdie putt.
The playoff format was an aggregate score for three holes, but the two players remained tied at 1-over after the first three. Two more sudden-death holes were required to determine a champion.
Delisanti began the day five shots back of the pace set by Canada’s Hunter Thomson. Delisanti set the tone for the final round with a birdie on the first hole, and he added six more birdies in a bogey-free round. Lee shot 66.
Delisanti, a standout player in western New York, is a two-time all-Missouri Valley Conference first-teamer and was the 2022-23 MVC Player of the Year. He has been playing some high-level golf for the past several weeks. He ended his junior college season with two top-five results, calling the year “pretty decent.”
He then won the Golfweek National Golf Invitational, a postseason college event. He began the summer-long Elite Amateur Golf Series with an 11th-place finish at the Sunnehanna Amateur one week before the Northeast. He was ranked No. 258 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, a number that is certain to improve when the list is updated this week.
RESULTS
Jim Nugent