Showing the same tenacity that he has displayed from his junior days through collegiate and international play, Denny McCarthy of Rockville, MD made another 12-foot putt on the 16th green of the Highlands Course of the Atlanta Athletic Club for a 3&2 win over Roman Robledo of Hartingen, TX that put McCarthy in one of the two semi-final matches of the 114th United States Amateur Championship. McCarthy, a rising senior at the University of Virginia and a member of Argyle Country Club, started in the same whirlwind fashion that characterized two earlier matches with a 3-up lead through five holes, including three successive holes won after losing the second hole to a Robledo hole-out from a greenside bunker on the second hole.
Robledo won the seventh and eighth holes with a birdie on #7 and par on #8 after McCarthy drove into the large pond that encroaches sharply on the left side of the hole. The two players exchanged wins on the 11th and 12th holes to maintain a McCarthy one up lead. The key hole was the 14th where both players drove into the large right fairway bunker, with McCarthy coming up short into another bunker and a half-buried lie and Robledo going over the green and leaving himself a very difficult downhill pitch shot. McCarthy blasted his ball out of the bunker successfully but left himself a treacherous downhill and sidehill putt as Robledo pitched to a position on the collar of the green. Both players then left themselves difficult short downhill putts. McCarthy holed his putt from just outside Robledo’s ball mark and then Robledo missed his shorter putt leaving McCarthy with a two-hole margin that was expanded to the closing three hole edge after the downhill putt on the 16th green.
In other matches, Frederick Wedel of The Woodlands, TX, defeated four-time US Mid-Amateur champion Nathan Smith from Pittsburgh by a margin of 4&3; Gunn Yang (Korea) edged Cameron Young (Scarborough, NY) 2 up and Corey Connors (Canada) dispatched Zachary Olsen (Corbova, TN) 2&1. Wedel meets Yang at 8:00 AM Saturday morning while Connors plays McCarthy at 8:20 AM. McCarthy will have the support of his brother and caddie Ryan, his two sisters and mom and dad as well as two uncles and four cousins who travelled through the night to reach Atlanta for the quarter-final match. Argyle club members and UVA supporters will also be in the gallery tomorrow morning.
McCarthy’s previous wins were 7&5 over Jonathan Woo (Singapore), 4&2 against Jonathan Chang (Corona, CA) and 1 up versus Eli Cole (Los Angeles). McCarthy is currently ranked 36th in the World Amateur Golf Rankings while Connors is ranked 44th. Wedel is at 619 and Yang is at 776.
– Reported from the Atlanta Athletic Club by Randy Reed
