William Mouw (NCGA photo)
As he prepares for his freshman season at Pepperdine, William Mouw got a major confidence boost and a massive trophy on Saturday at Monterey Peninsula Country Club. The 18-year-old Mouw prevailed at the California Amateur Championship despite the fact that he carried the highest World Amateur Golf Ranking into the event.
With his 4-and-2 defeat of Christian Banke, Mouw, ranked No. 58, also becomes one of the youngest winners of this championship. The youngest champ ever remains Mac Hunter, who captured the title in 1972 at the age of 16. Mouw is 18.
After stroke-play qualifying, Mouw had the No. 24 seed. Banke, meanwhile, was the No. 3 seed. Regardless, Mouw’s name joins a list of champions that includes
Ken Venturi, Johnny Miller and Mark O’Meara.
“It feels great. It’s an honor to have my name with those guys,” said Mouw, who prepped at Ontario Christian High. “It was a great match. We both played great.”
Mouw trailed by one hole after the first half of the 36-hole final, but stuffed his approach to 3 feet on the first hole after lunch and made birdie to tie it up. He was 2 up by the time the match turned for the final time, then won No. 10 to go 3 up. Banke couldn’t overcome that deficit.
All week at Monterey Peninsula, Mouw had his dad Billy on the bag. Mouw also leaned heavily on his mental coach, with whom he often talks on the phone.
“My mental coach and I talked about how long the week is and that I needed to just keep plodding along with no big expectations. Visualize, verbalize and realize,” said Mouw, who hit 15 of 16 greens in the afternoon round. “This is going to be a great confidence booster going into college.”
Mouw is the No. 5-ranked junior golfer in the country, according to the
Golfweek Junior Rankings.
Quotes and information in this article courtesy of NCGA
ABOUT THE
California Amateur
The Championship is open to amateur golfers
who have established current indexes of 4.4
and are members in good standing of the
Southern California Golf Association, the
Northern California Golf Association, or the
Public Links Golf Association of Southern
California. Nonexempt players must qualify. An
entrant may play in only one qualifying event,
even
if
the golfer
belongs to clubs in both Southern California
and Northern California. The 18-hole
qualifying
rounds will determine the qualifiers.
The championship field will play 36 holes of
qualifying at a Northern or Southern California
Location, with the low 32 golfers from that
combined field moving on to match play (with
a
playoff, if necessary, to determine the final
spots).
Two rounds each of 18-hole match play will
follow on Thursday and Friday and the 36-hole
final match will be on Saturday.
The location will rotate yearly between
Northern and Southern California locations.
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