Brandon Holtz, suffice it to say, is accomplished at putting a ball in a hole, considering that he played college basketball and, for a time, professional golf, but his ability at doing so paid a huge dividend on Thursday when he won the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship.<\/p>\n
Holtz, 38, who played college basketball at Illinois State, defeated Jeg Coughlin III, who also briefly tried professional golf, 3 and 2, at Troon Country Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. The payoff for Holtz: A likely invitation to play in the 2026 Masters, as well an exemption into the \u201926 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. <\/p>\n
\u201cWild,\u201d Holtz said. \u201c I kept my pro card for a while just because I liked to play for cash, and it got to the point where I just wasn\u2019t playing any events anymore, so decided to get my amateur status back last year. I didn\u2019t see this day. I\u2019m glad it\u2019s here, though. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m 38. I\u2019ll be 39 next week. I\u2019ve been around, seen all the shots and the crazy things. I feel like the older I get, the better I get. I\u2019ll be back next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seven of the eight quarter-finalists played professional golf before regaining their amateur status, so inevitably at least one was going to reach the final. Holtz pursued the professional game for six years, through 2015, unsuccessfully, and regained his amateur status a year ago.<\/p>\n
Holtz, whose caddie was his father Jeff, took a lead at the fourth hole in the 36-hole final, and held a lead throughout the rest of the match. In a seven-hole stretch at the end of the opening 18 and the beginning of the following 18, he won five holes, lost one, and opened a 5-up lead.<\/p>\n
Coughlin, 28, with friend and former PGA Tour pro Kevin Streelman as his caddie, methodically whittled away his deficit, notably by making consecutive birdies at the 26th, 27th and 28th holes, to get to 1-down, but birdies by Holtz on two of the following three holes, took a 3-up lead with five to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a great match,\u201d Coughlin said. \u201cWhat a week. Just a marathon of a week. It\u2019s definitely the most amount of golf holes I\u2019ve ever played in my life in a stretch like that. I was super fighting my golf game early. I was super nervous. Desert golf is so tight; if you start to lose your swing a little bit, it\u2019s gone. I had to change my clothes midway through the round because I was in the desert so much. But he played really well. I think we showed our talent a little better the second match. Had a great match going there, but just a little too late.\u201d<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brandon Holtz, suffice it to say, is accomplished at putting a ball in a hole, considering that he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-153152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}