U.S. Amateur’s 16-man playoff was fun for some fans, agonizing for others

ARDMORE, Pa. — It was not yet 11 on a still, warm Wednesday morning at Merion Golf Club, but Mike and Sherry Sands needed a drink. Could you blame them? On Tuesday evening, their son, Parker, a 20-year-old rising junior at the University of Florida, needed some gut-it-out heroics on his final hole to maintain any hope of advancing to match play here at the 126th U.S. Amateur. Parker was among the wave of players who went off hole 11 at Merion, meaning his round concluded on the drivable par-4 10th.

“He had to birdie it,” Sherry began, eager to dish the blow-by-blow details only a mother can provide. “He went for it, hit the green, bounced back into the sand, and it was right on the edge, on the down slope of the trap. Like, he barely had a backswing. He had one leg out, kneeling, and he kind of, like, goes like this.” Here, Sherry contorted into an uncomfortable-looking position. “Inch from the hole,” she continued. “Wow, wow. Best shot I’ve ever seen. His caddie — he was like, ‘Best shot I’ve ever seen.”

The 3 moved Parker to two over for 36 holes, meaning he was safely on the cut line yet still with much work to do. That’s because 16 other players also finished at two over — with only 11 spots available on the match-play bracket. Five of the two-over’ers would need to go home, their fate to be decided in a Wednesday-morning playoff. 

Parker is used to cutthroat golf. Most college golfers are, because week after week they need to earn their way onto their squads’ starting fives. Post a score or ride the pine. But there’s do-or-die golf, and then there’s DO-OR-DIE golf. Wednesday’s affair sat squarely in the latter camp: 16 uber-talented young’uns, from seven different countries, playing to stay alive in the amateur game’s most coveted championship, on a course with more history than the Smithsonian. And then there was the starting block for this mad dash: the 113-yard par-3 13th. You might know this mighty mite as the hole where Phil Mickelson airmailed a wedge at the 2013 U.S. Open, derailing his title hopes. 

The playoff contestants, you can be all but certain, were not thinking about Phil’s gaffe on Wednesday morning. For one, most of them are too young to remember it. For another, every one of their swings on 13 — aggressive, pin-hunting — suggested only three words were on their minds: make a two. Half of the players did just that, which is remarkable given the stakes, and two — Ryder Cowan (one foot) and Jack Whaley (lip-out) — nearly made ones. “I feel pretty good under pressure,” Cowan, who was the co-low amateur along with Jackson Koivun at the U.S. Open in June, told me later. “I like people watching me; I like the cameras. I like it all. I feel like sometimes I’m better with everything around me than I am just out there by myself.”     

The Amateur doesn’t draw U.S. Open crowds but when the playoff began at 8:30 a.m. a couple hundred fans had gathered on the hillside next to the 13th green and on a clubhouse veranda that overlooks the hole; by the time the fourth of the four groups had fired wedges into the green, the gallery had swelled to at least 500. Among the observers: Mike and Sherry Sands. Their boy was in the final group. Birdie would get Parker in, par would mean at least one more extra hole, bogey he’d be slamming his trunk. From their vantage point, mom and dad could see Parker had hit a good shot, but not how good.     

“We couldn’t see how far away he was from the hole from where we were sitting,” Sherry said. “I couldn’t see if it was three feet, four feet.”

It was more like 8 feet. 

“I always cross my fingers like this,” Sherry went on. “And then he just missed it right at the end. I’m like, ‘Don’t do this to me.’ So then, more nerves, more nerves.” 

When the shootout at 13 was over, 15 players had hit the green, eight had made a deuce, seven made a 3 and just one, Sihao Cong (front bunker), carded a 4. On the par-makers went, to the par-4 14th — seven fighting for three spots.

Parker could have put his parents through more nail-gnawing agony but instead let them off easy. After his ball appeared to find a divot hole in the 14th fairway, he made lemons out lemonade, sawing off an approach that clung to the front of the sloping green. “I’m just delighted it stayed up there, because it could have rolled down that hill,” his father said. Parker followed his stroke of good fate with a good stroke, period, leading to a birdie 3. He was in. 

And his parents were drained. 

I hope the bar is open, Sherry thought to herself. It was. The Wicker Bar, which sits adjacent to the 1st tee here, is good like that. Sherry and Mike bellied up and ordered a couple of bloody marys — to celebrate, sure, but also to help decompress.  

“She needed to vent everything out,” Mike said.

Sherry laughed.  

“Guys don’t talk about stuff like that, but as a woman, you have to express how you’re feeling in the moment; I have to let it out,” she said. “Otherwise, it just simmers in there. I’m just so happy. I’m so proud of him. We’re just proud of his tenacity.” 

That toughness would be tested again soon. Parker’s first-round match was scheduled for 2:30 p.m.