Austin Connelly (left) and Sam Burns (Photo by Conner Penfold)
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — After knocking off the top-seeded Stanford sophomores, Draegen Majors and Brooks Price were defeated 2-and-1 in Tuesday afternoon's quarterfinal matchup at the hands of Sherrill Britt and Greg Earnhardt.
Three-down going into the par-four 14th, the former SMU golfers made back-to-back birdies to sit just one-down with three to play but Britt and Earnhardt rolled in a birdie of their own on 16.
The winning pair will face a tough duo in Wednesday morning's semifinal, with 2014 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Scott Harvey and his partner Todd Mitchell greeting them on the first tee. Harvey and Mitchell defeated Texans Zach Atkinson and James Edmondson 3-and-2 on Tuesday afternoon thanks to three straight birdies to close out the match.
The other semifinal matchup will feature two of the top juniors facing off against two of the top mid-amateur players as Sam Burns and Austin Connelly will battle Nathan Smith and Todd White. The young guns will be SEC rivals this fall as Burns is headed to LSU while Connelly will enroll at Arkansas.
ROUND-OF-16 RECAP
Medalists Maverick McNealy and Viraat Badhwar, sophomores at Stanford University, can turn their attention back to collegiate golf after they were defeated in the Round-of-16 Tuesday at The Olympic Club.
After winning their opening-round match of the inaugural U.S. Amateur Four-Ball on Monday against Erik Ciotti and Michael Affeldt 6-and-4, in which the Cardinal pair drained seven birdies in 14 holes, only two birdies were marked on the card through the complete 18. In contrast, the duo of Draegen Majors and Brooks Price birdied three of their last six holes to win 1-up on the 18th green.
"We felt we were in it the whole way," McNealy told Golfweek. "We were never up or down by more than 1, and I felt we had some good birdie opportunities coming in. Unfortunately, we just couldn’t convert on 17 and 18."
Majors, of Oklahoma, and Price, of Ohio, were teammates at Southern Methodist University in Dallas with Price most recently graduating in 2013.
McNealy and Badhwar had made the only birdie of the match on hole 3 up until the par-three 13th hole when Majors and Price made two to bring the match all square. What followed were two more birds in the closing five holes to knock off the top seeds.
While the former SMU Mustangs moved on, current teammates Bryson DeChambeau and Austin Smotherman were ousted by perennial mid-amateur competitors Nathan Smith and Todd White, 2-and-1. Smith, the four-time U.S. Mid-Amateur champion from Pennsylvania, and White, the 47-year-old reigning Azalea Invitational champion, closed out the arch with a birdie on the short par-five 17th.
Semifinal and final matches can be seen live on Fox Sports 1 beginning at 4 p.m. PDT.
View results for U.S. Four-Ball
ABOUT THE
U.S. Four-Ball
The U.S. Amateur Four-Ball championship was played for the first time in
2015 at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, Calif.
The event has no age restriction, however, it is only open
to individual players with a Handicap Index of 2.4 or lower.
It is one of 15 national championships conducted
annually by the USGA. Due to the early season date of the U.S. Four-Ball, qualifying is held at the end of the prior year through early the year of the tournament based on weather and geographies.
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