Maryland Amateur Champion Denny McCarthy’s quest for the 114th United States Amateur Championship title was sidetracked on the early holes of the back nine of the difficult Highlands Course of the Atlanta Athletic Club as Canadian Corey Conners outlasted McCarthy for a one up win in one of the semi-final matches on Saturday, August 16.
Conners had opened boldly with a thirteen-foot birdie putt on the 446-yard first hole and then expanded the lead to two holes with a winning par on the third hole. McCarthy regained a hole on the par five, 567-yard 5th hole with a driver and three wood to 20 feet, capped by a two-putt birdie. But Conners returned the favor with a superb 13-foot downhill birdie putt on the tough seventh hole, playing at 197 yards.
The tide seemed to turn when McCarthy won the eighth and ninth holes with pars but mishaps on holes 10 through 13 were to prove fatal for the young UVA and Argyle Country Club star as he missed a short putt for a win on #10 and another comeback par putt on #13 that left Connors with a two hole edge. However, in between these putts, perhaps the telling blow was the iron that McCarthy played to the 12th green after a 320-yard drive on the par five hole. The two-time Maryland Open champion drew a freakish lie on a little hump in the left intermediate rough and then his pulled second shot struck a cart path and bounced over the boundary fence. Plunging ahead heroically in the style that characterizes his play, McCarthy holed a ten-foot bogey putt that forced Conners to make a tough par putt.
After the players halved the uphill 468-yard fourteenth and the downhill par three fifteenth, Conners conceded a short birdie putt to McCarthy on the 465-yard sixteenth hole, giving the Marylander his third successive three on the hole. Both players fired superb tee shots right at the hole on the downhill 210-yard seventeenth but McCarthy’s ball stopped quickly about 35 feet below the hole while Connors’s ball bounded forward to a threatening eight feet from the hole. McCarthy left his putt six inches short right in the jaws of the cup while Conners’ delicate stroke of his ball resulted in a narrowly missed putt and a disappointing par.
The players moved to the 18th tee of the shortened par five playing at 528 yards. Once again, as has happened in a number of previous matches, McCarthy drove into one of the bunkers just right of the narrow fairway. Then surprisingly Conners slightly hooked his tee shot into the lateral water hazard on the left. However, in taking relief from the hazard after a one stroke penalty he was able to drop the ball in the fairway. He then delivered the telling third stroke with a beautiful iron to a point about 30 feet behind the hole. McCarthy laid up with a short iron from the bunker and then played a wedge that barely cleared the water hazard, leaving him a last chance from about 20 feet. Connors lightly stroked his putt just past the hole. After McCarthy ran his birdie try well past the hole but then holed a slick downhiller for par, Connors sunk his uphill par putt for the one hole victory.
The match was a spirited battle between two great players and drew a large crowd of as many as 500 in the wonderful golf city of Atlanta. Connors meets Gunn Yang of Korea in the final on Sunday, August 17. In the other semi-final match, Yang defeated Fred Wedel in 19 holes.
-Reported by Randy Reed from the Atlanta Athletic Club