Two 37-year-olds with a combined 154 Korn Ferry Tour starts are among the six reinstated amateurs who have reached the quarterfinals of the 44th U.S. Mid-Amateur.<\/p>\n
Justin Hueber and Christian Brand are each three victories away from berths into next year\u2019s Masters and U.S. Open. Hueber, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, knocked off Grant Smith and Michael Buttacavoli on Tuesday at Troon Country Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, and will face Brandon Holtz on Wednesday morning. Brand, of Hurricane, West Virginia, now faces defending champion Evan Beck after taking down Nahum Mendoza and Marc Dull after trailing each opponent 2 down.<\/p>\n
Hueber turned pro out of the University of Indianapolis in 2009 and made 87 career starts on the Korn Ferry Tour before last playing as a pro in 2021. Brand, who played collegiately at Marshall, turned pro in 2012 and logged 67 career Korn Ferry Tour starts. Brand\u2019s last year as a pro was 2019.<\/p>\n
While Brand became an amateur again last year, in time to make the Round of 16 at the 2024 U.S. Amateur, Hueber regained his amateur status so recently that he doesn\u2019t own an official World Amateur Golf Ranking.<\/p>\n
The other reinstated amateurs are:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Beck, 34, a former standout junior and college player at Wake Forest, played four years of pro golf before quitting in 2017. He also won the Thomas and Coleman invitationals last year.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Bobby Massa, 37, last year\u2019s runner-up to Beck, who played five years of pro golf before quitting in 2015 because of the driver yips. The performance coach from Dallas, who was reinstated as an amateur in 2019, beat Matt Liston and Ryan O\u2019Rear on Tuesday to advance to play Christian Cavaliere, who upset three-time U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Stewart Hagestad in the Round of 16. Cavaliere, who owns his own soft-goods company, Tremont Sporting Co., won the Azalea Invitational and New York State Open earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Parker Edens, 35, who now serves as the head men\u2019s golf coach at South Dakota State, played four seasons as a pro, including the 2017 season as a conditional KFT member, before getting into coaching in 2018. He\u2019ll face Jeg Coughlin III after wins over Stephen Behr Jr. and Chris Kamin.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Brandon Holtz, 38, was a basketball player for Illinois State before pursuing pro golf after graduating in 2009. He retired in 2015 and regained his amateur status last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two 37-year-olds with a combined 154 Korn Ferry Tour starts are among the six reinstated amateurs who have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-144334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}