These players were hit hardest by lost U.S. Amateur opportunity
- Tony Dear/PNGA photo
Nearly two dozen caddies at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort had their games in shape to attempt to qualify for this summer’s U.S. Amateur Championship, which will be held in their own back yard. Goodbye to all that.
by Tony Dear
Every December, the top six caddies at Bandon Dunes take on their counterparts from Pine Valley, Cypress Point, and Pebble Beach in a three-day Ryder Cup-style event at Bandon Dunes known as the Looper Cup.
To be a member of the home team, players must advance from an 18-hole qualifier held on one of the resort’s five regulation courses. In 2017, the qualifying round was contested on Old Macdonald and Jason Humphrey guaranteed his spot on Team Bandon Dunes quite handily. He shot 64.
Seven-under-par on any course is pretty stout, but on Old Macdonald? The Tom Doak/Jim Urbina-designed, CB Macdonald-inspired course is widely acknowledged as the perfect layout for a match-play duel, but a tough place on which to keep a medal score going.
Shooting 64 there takes some different-level ball-striking – touch, finesse, scrambling, putting, patience, and course management – and it was these skills Humphrey had hoped would take him far in this year’s U.S. Amateur, which will be played at Bandon Dunes on August 10-16.
But with the USGA’s announcement that all qualifying for the Amateur would be canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that only exempt players would play in the championship, the dreams of Humphrey, and of 20 or so other of the resort’s caddies, went poof.
>> Read the rest of Tony Dear's excellent article here
ABOUT THE
US Amateur
The U.S. Amateur, the oldest USGA
championship, was first played in 1895 at
Newport Golf Club in Rhode Island. The
event,
which has no age restriction, is open to
those
with a Handicap Index of .4 (point four) or lower. It is
one
of 15 national championships conducted
annually by the USGA.
A new two-stage qualifying process went into effect in 2024, providing exemptions through local qualifying for state amateur champions and top-ranked WAGR playres. See the USGA website for details -- applications are typically placed online in the spring
at www.usga.org.
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