PARAMUS, NEW JERSEY | Moments after Sam Bennett warded off Stewart Hagestad in the U.S. Amateur quarterfinals, the fifth-year Texas A&M senior gave a quote that reverberated throughout Ridgewood Country Club.
“They're great players,” Bennett said of the highly ranked competitors whom he had dispatched to that point. “But I'm a better player. No. 3 in the (World Amateur Golf Ranking), and I feel like I'm the best player. I'm the dog in this race.”
It’s said that golfers, unlike many athletes in other sports, aren’t supposed to tell people how talented they are. The game is too humbling, too exacting for that type of attitude. Quiet confidence is necessary. Outward confidence can quickly border on arrogance, even if the intentions come from a good place.
None of that was a concern to Bennett, a 22-year-old overflowing with fist pumps and vicious club twirls. The small-town kid who grew up on a dirt-filled golf course in Madisonville, Texas, marked his territory, latched his jaws onto each competitor’s ankles and then, finally, chased away his last car – the resilient Ben Carr – in an instant classic championship match Sunday to win the 122nd U.S. Amateur.
“It doesn't even feel real looking at all these people on the 18th green at Ridgewood,” Bennett said moments after staving off Carr’s furious rally from 5-down to just one back. “I don't even know what I'm saying right now.”
Bennett, profiled in-depth at GGP Plus earlier in the week, didn’t need to say anything else after traveling a rigorous path in claiming the Havemeyer Trophy. Five of his six match-play opponents were within the top 30 in the world, with only Carr (No. 70) ranking outside. After squeaking past 2021 Phil Mickelson Award winner Nick Gabrelcik in 19 holes during the round of 64, Bennett started running downhill with three resounding victories that led him into a semifinals showdown with world No. 8 Dylan Menante.
It was late in that match when the bulldog mentality started to shine. Bennett had a 2-up lead with five holes to play, but a disobedient driver looked as if it could cost him a trip to the U.S. Open and Masters. By the par-5 17th hole, he stood in the fescue right of the fairway, obstructed by a tree in his through swing and blocked by another massive Ridgewood oak up ahead. Menante, having forced a tie match, sat pretty in the fairway.
Bennett didn’t miss a shot the rest of the way. He miraculously navigated through the tree and made birdie to take a 1-up advantage to the last and then strutted down the final hole with two impeccable swings, closing out Menante in style. The epic club twirl on his second shot into the 18th hole had Golf Twitter abuzz.
The match was emblematic of the type of kid Bennett is. A four-sport athlete who broke his collarbone playing intramural flag football during his sophomore year at A&M, Bennett, who could have millions of dollars in his pro golf future, is signed up for intramural basketball this fall.
Despite an abundance of nervous energy and a recurring loop of waggles, he lives to have the ball in his hands. Hagestad put it another way when he told Bennett, “I like you. You’re full of piss and vinegar.”
When Bennett left Ridgewood on Saturday night with the light quickly fading, he didn’t practice or fret over what could happen the next day. Instead, he had a few beers with friends. It’s part of the reason why he is headed back to College Station for a final year. Bennett has said openly that he wants to enjoy being a young person and take time to mature before the strain of professional golf.
Eschewing Korn Ferry Tour status in favor of school is also making good on a promise he made to his father, Mark, that he would graduate. His father, who had battled Alzheimer’s for seven years, died following Bennett’s junior season and left his son with words of advice: “Don’t wait to do something.” Those words, in Mark’s handwriting, are tattooed on Bennett’s left arm.
Bennett said he took more than a few glances at those words down the stretch against Carr, a fifth-year Georgia Southern player who suddenly lost his father, David, in March 2019. A day earlier as the two made it through the semifinals and a poetic rainbow formed in the northern New Jersey sky, Carr became overcome with emotion during a Golf Channel interview. He shared that he has a special ball marker to honor his father, and that marker had reappeared in his pocket on the 15th hole after a few hours of thinking it was lost.
“I think he just would have been really proud of the way I handled myself,” Carr said of his dad. “It was always much more important to him than the outcome of any sporting event. It was about the way I carried myself and spoke about my competitors and people who support me and just stay humble. That was the biggest thing I learned from him.”
The two young men shared a painful experience of losing a father too soon, but the championship match was marked by what they didn’t share. Bennett came into the day laser-focused, referencing the late Kobe Bryant’s mentality of not being happy until the final buzzer sounds. He said he was here to win, not just to qualify for majors. There was swagger and a bit of cockiness.
“We're going to get that job done,” Bennett said matter-of-factly.
Bennett finally could breathe a sigh of relief. His father, who Bennett said never got to see him play golf at his fullest potential, was with him.
Carr, on the other side, was seen fist-pumping his semifinals opponent, Derek Hitchner. He had belief, but not as much of a step-on-your-throat mentality. And from the outside, he appeared far more affected by the perks that come with reaching the final than Bennett was.
Early on in the 36-hole championship match, that difference looked as if it could be a dagger for Carr. Bennett shot 3-under over the morning 18 with match-play concessions, staking himself to a 3-up lead. He jumped over Carr again right after lunch, winning two of the first three holes to extend his advantage to 5-up.
“Some of the shots he hit in the morning, it’s just like, ‘How am I going to beat this guy?’ ” Carr said. “He just can't miss a golf shot.”
But Carr, consistently 20 yards ahead of Bennett all day, started to conjure up some magic that made his opponent nervous. It started out of the blue with a chip-in birdie on the 23rd hole and continued with a holed putt from off the green on the 24th. Bennett got a poor break in the bunker on the par-4 10th, the 28th hole of the match, making a double bogey that cost him another hole.
The next couple of hours would be full of momentum shifts.
Carr gifted Bennett a hole by making a sloppy bogey on the drivable par-4 12th, and then came one of the most regretful decisions in recent U.S. Amateur history. After Bennett hit his second shot out of bounds on the par-5 13th – which Carr was aware of thanks to a rules official – Carr went for the green and pulled his second shot out of bounds just feet away from where Bennett had gone. A layup and a wedge to the middle of the green could have been the difference in him winning the match, but he instead remained 3-down with five holes to play.
It appeared to be over, until it wasn’t. Bennett missed a shorty for par on No. 14 and Carr rolled in a clutch birdie putt on No. 17, suddenly squeezing the match to the 36th hole.
But Bennett, as he had all week, responded in style. A piped drive and solid second shot applied pressure to Carr, who missed the fairway and couldn’t hold the green with his approach.
“My dad, he didn't care what I shot, just that I respected the game,” Bennett said. “I know he was watching out there, and it's pretty cool. He would think that was the coolest thing ever.”
Top: Sam Bennett fist-bumps with caddie Brian Kortan, Bennett's coach at Texas A&M.
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