The toughest test in amateur golf saw its most grueling edition in Dayton, Ohio, last week.
After both won 19-hole matches in the semifinals on Saturday morning, University of Florida teammates Ian Gilligan and Jack Turner battled across 29 holes in the afternoon to determine a champion at Moraine Country Club. The 13-hour day ended with Gilligan hoisting the George R. Thorne Trophy on the 11th playoff hole of the longest match in Western Amateur history.
“After hours and hours of a grind of a match, I couldn’t be happier to have pulled it out in the end,” Gilligan said. “It was a battle of energy levels and so hard to stay focused all day, but it ended up being an unbelievable day. I can’t even put it into words.”
Gilligan – a senior from Reno, Nevada, who transferred from Long Beach State to Florida after his sophomore year – rolled in an 8-foot birdie putt on the 29th hole to seal the match, pumped his arms in the air and joined in a shared sigh of relief with the crowd that followed the nearly seven-hour match that needed 11 extra holes.
“Definitely the craziest match I’ve ever been a part of or heard of. I think I owe an apology to everyone for making it so long.”
Ian Gilligan
The 122nd title match began with Gilligan and Turner, a sophomore, trading birdies, halving just one of the first nine holes. Gilligan took a 2-up lead to the 17th tee, needing to tie one of the final two holes to secure the victory.
Instead, Turner fought back to win 17 and capitalized on a Gilligan missed putt on the 18th to even the match and force a playoff.
The two Gators went shot-for-shot for the next 10 holes, topping the record for longest match set by Mitch Mooney and Scott Hoch in the 1979 Western Amateur Round of 16 which went 26 holes. The longest Western Amateur final – a 22-hole affair featuring Norman Xiong and Doc Redman in 2017 – was topped more than an hour before Gilligan was crowned champion.
“Jack and I were talking about it on our ninth playoff hole and decided we were ready for it to be over,” Gilligan said with a laugh. “But I just kept telling myself you’re playing for a tournament of the biggest magnitude and need to keep going.”
The Western was the final event of the seven-tournament 2024 Elite Amateur Series. Connor Jones held a nearly 10-point lead through six events over Anthony Delisanti and Ben Warian, neither of whom made the match-play cut in the Western.
In a summer that already featured Florida freshman Parker Sands winning the Western Junior in June, the Gators continued to show their teeth by securing three of the four semifinal spots at Moraine. Gilligan, ranked No. 14 in the World Amateur Golf rankings (WAGR), defeated another teammate, Florida junior Parker Bell, with a birdie on the 19th hole of his semifinal.
No. 2-ranked amateur Jackson Koivun claimed the 72-hole stroke-play medal after signing for 15-under 269. He led or had a share of the lead for all four rounds of stroke play. However, he lost his round-of-16 match to Bell, 3 and 2. Bell survived a one-for-eight playoff to qualify for the match play.
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