Local heroes shine, Cinderella’s run ends in American amateurs

San Francisco – This week the clubhouse of the American Amateur Host Website is a shrine with unexpected consequences. Just next to the ground entrance, around the corner of the grill, there is a picture hanging on the wall. A picture shows Jack Fleck, who laughed after his victory over Ben Hogan in the 1955 U.S. Open. Another is the action of Billy Casper, the author of his own national champion Shocker, when he tracked Arnold Palmer from seven shots in 1966.

The theme exhibition is not over. These include Scott Simpson of Tom Watson in 1987 and Lee Janzen and Yuka Saso who rejected Payne Stewart 11 years later, who hung the U.S. Women’s Open Trophy in 2021 by Lexi Thompson.

You get the picture.

The weak perform well in the Olympic Club.

Whether that tradition will continue as the American amateur quarterfinals kick off on Friday on the club’s historic lake route.

After all, there is a Cinderella in the mixture. Jimmy Abdo, a sophomore at Minnesota’s third-level Gustavus Adolphus College, arrived in San Francisco with 4,992 amateur golfers ranked 492nd in the world. The longest long shot. But the journey that never came was nothing new to him. Born in 2006 in Lebanon, a war-torn Lebanon, he was evacuated from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, airlifted to Cyprus, flew to Germany, and then evacuated from adoptive families in the Midwest – a month before he was over.

Now 19, he hopes to eliminate Jackson Herrington, Tennessee, to expand his West Coast trip, which has been longer than his family plans.

“He expects himself a lot, and so do we,” Abdo’s father Jimmy said during the first nine games of the match he followed his son.

Despite this, he admitted: “I only packed for three to four days.”

As his clean clothes ran out, he purchased extra clothes the night before.

If the young Abdo is an unknown quarterfinalist, another competitor is a household name.

“Catch and tear apart, long John!” A fan is known as a familiar character, warming up in that range. John Daly II had similarities with his famous father at the age of 21, although his guard was shorter and his neck-warm hairstyle wasn’t long.

Nowadays, it seems everyone has bombs, and the Daly II is no exception. But he is not ready to perform for his fans. He was still limping, his breeze blew half the wedge. A wise move. He will need his entire race (not just the driver) to send his rival Mason Howell of Georgia, but is only 18 years old, but multiple USGA Championship veterans, including at Oakmont Open last summer, where he qualified for 63 rounds in two rounds.

If Daly II prevailed, would his father watch it in person on weekends? As the Daly II was powered by a race-style bracket, the inquiry mind kept asking some version of this query all week. His answer is as constant as uncertainty.

“I don’t know. Maybe? You never know him,” Daly II said.

This week is the fourth time the Olympic Club has staged an American amateur. One previous occasion was in 1981, when Bing Crosby’s child, Nathaniel, a Bay Area native, won the championship in a championship game, which is said to have attracted the largest crowd in championship history since Bobby Jones won in 1930.

On Friday, the field closest to local celebrities was the star of the day’s most attractive competition. Born in Glasgow but raised in Mill Valley, just across from San Francisco, Niall Shiels-Donegan, 20, beat No. 1 seed Preston Stout on Thursday with a one-win win on Thursday. For his quarterfinals, the crowd was even bigger, partly because another player was Notre Dame, Jacob Modleski: Fighting the Irish vs. the Scots.

Their head-to-head did not disappoint. Shiels-Donegan fell 12 and then scattered the gallery into madness as the two powerful factions cheered loudly.

Shiels-Donegan enters the next tee and his caddie Todd Moutafian yells: “Don’t we have entertainment?”

They are.

There’s more to do, as Shiels-Donegan uses a 17-year-old birdie to square the game and then wins in the first extra hole in his wandering drive bounces from the tree to the fairway. pandemonium.

“There are so many ‘I love you, Neil’ there, but any kind of love, I’ll accept it,” Shiels-Donegan said. “I can’t really thank them for trekking here. I know there’s only 30 minutes, but they still take the time to do it. It’s amazing, they gave me a lot of support.”

Does he expect greater support in Saturday’s semifinals?

“I don’t know,” he said. “We have some really good organizers.”

Finally, several other questions of the day were answered. John Daly Sr. is unlikely to go to the West Wing on the weekend. His son lost to Howell. Cinderella won’t continue either. Abdo fell 4 and 2. A final game still has, but will soon settle with Eric Lee of Fullerton, California, to eliminate Miles Russell, a 16-year-old prodigy from Florida.

At the end of the day to Lake Stadium, there were four players. The semi-finals are set: Lee vs. Howell, Donegan vs. Herrington.

It’s hard to find the weak in a bunch.