SAN FRANCISCO – With the winds picking up, the temperatures dipping and the greens at Olympic Club’s Lake Course starting to firm up on the second day of match play at the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball, it was a perfect time for experienced competitors to step up.
And so they did.
First it was U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Scott Harvey, who is partnered alongside another longtime Mid-Am stalwart, Todd Mitchell. Those two advanced to Wednesday’s semifinals with a 3-and-2 victory over Texans Zach Atkinson and James Edmondson.
Wednesday morning they will take on two of Harvey’s North Carolina neighbors: Sherrill Britt, 49, a custom home builder who is coming off a victory in the North Carolina Mid-Am, and insurance agent Greg Earnhardt, 46. They represent the oldest team left in the field. And they know their opponent well.
“He’s the man,” Earnhardt said of Harvey. He laughed, and added, “We could have stayed at home and played this one in Greensboro and saved us a whole lot of money.”
Harvey and Mitchell, both 36, met one another at the U.S. State Team Matches in 2010, Harvey representing North Carolina, Mitchell playing for Indiana. They played a practice round with one another and then were paired in the event, and they’ve been friends ever since. Each has a powerful game, and they can make birdies anywhere. The two birdied their last three holes to force extra holes in their opening victory on Monday, and Tuesday afternoon they birdied 14, 15 and 16 to close out their match, with Harvey doing the honors from 20 feet. One hole earlier, Mitchell’s ball came to rest against the collar of the rough left of the hole at the short 15th, and he used a belly wedge to hole the shot from about 20 feet.
“Match play, you get those momentum moments, and you’re either gaining or you’re falling behind,” Harvey said. “We played solid today, lots of birdies. We both had a lot of birdie putts, and that’s key at an event like this.”
Also advancing to Wednesday were savvy veterans Nathan Smith and Todd White, two Walker Cup competitors who took down the last remaining pair of brothers in the field, Jason and Ryan Higton (of Fresno, Calif.), 3 and 2. Smith, 36, a four-time U.S. Mid-Amateur champion, and White, 47, will play the youngest remaining tandem, high schoolers Sam Burns and Austin Connelly, both 18, who captured a 2-and-1 victory over Ping engineers Matt Simone and Corey Bacon.
Burns, who will play at LSU next fall, may be young, but he showed some great maturity with his team 1 up heading down the par-5 16th hole. He had a wedge in his hands from 95 yards, but wisely played away from the tucked right pin, hitting a shot that finished 20 feet to the left. He had seen the line on that putt earlier in the day, and his roll for birdie was perfect.
“I hit it exactly how I wanted,” he said.
It’s no fluke that Burns and Connelly will be playing on the final day. They are ranked sixth and 10th, respectively, in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.
“We play very well together. We have similar styles,” Connelly said. “It’s very rare that both of us are out of the hole, or very rare that one of us is out of the hole. So we usually have one if not two chances for birdie at pretty much every hole.”
White and Smith have gone 46 holes without a bogey, and White saluted Smith for playing the better of the two on Tuesday. Their match stayed all square as Smith made a nifty chip-and-run to set up birdie at the short seventh, and White converted an 8-footer for birdie on the next hole to secure a 1-up lead. They won the par-4 10th with a par and cruised from there.
As Olympic’s Lake Course started to get more and more difficult, growing firmer with every passing hour, and with heavier winds predicted for Wednesday, it’s good to have somebody by your side who you can trust.
“It’s nice to know that you have to go out and play the beast and you’ve got somebody at your back,” White said.
And Wednesday they get the kids, Burns and Connelly.
The championship match, which is slated for 18 holes, will begin Wednesday at 1 p.m. PST following the morning semis.
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