Steven Fox
Steven Fox, 22, of the University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga, won the 2012
U.S. Amateur Championship after surviving a
17-player playoff to reach match play
and then coming from two holes down with
two to play in a 37-hole final. He is
sharing his thoughts on his first Masters
Tournament with Thomas Bonk of
masters.com in this exclusive personal diary.
One word for today: phenomenal. Played 18
holes with T.J. Vogel, the public links
champion, and it couldn’t have been any
better. Awesome. I mean, just walking out
on the driving range, having people behind
you. The nerves weren’t bad today —
maybe a little bit on the first tee, but after
that it was good. I hit the fairway on
the first tee and said, “All right! Just go from
here.”
With the wind picking up, the greens are
getting really quick now and pretty firm.
Also, around the greens it’s getting really firm.
So you have to start putting it off
the edges instead of being able to chip it. I am
not afraid of fast greens. I see the
high lines all the time. It’s just like Cherry Hills,
where we had the amateur, so I’m
ready.
The 16th today was so much fun. The crowd
was going crazy. T.J. and I hit
simultaneously. We said to each other, all
right, we’ll do the countdown, then we
had and a bunch of other people doing it, so
we turned around and said, all right,
we need one countdown. They did it for us …
“one, two, three, go” … and it was
awesome.
The Par 3 Contest is going to be great. I’m
playing with Luke Donald and Brandt
Snedeker. Luke just put his name in there with
us, which is awesome. I really don’t
know him that well, I just said hi to him at
registration.
I haven’t said hi to Tiger yet. Maybe I should
have. I need to eventually. I know
Tiger said hello to the 14-year-old Tianlang
Guan on the driving range. Tiger likes
the young players, he was young, he had all
the fame, so hopefully this 14-year-old
can do the same thing. He’s a really good kid.
I’m one day closer to Thursday, and I’m ready
to play. I’m feeling comfortable, have
a few things to work on, but other than that,
I’m ready.
ABOUT THE
The Masters
One of Golf's four professional majors
traditionally invites amateurs who have reached
the
finals of the US Amateur, or won the British
Amateur
or
the US Mid Amateur. Also included are
the winners of the relatively new Asia Pacific
Amateur
and Latin American Amateur.
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