114TH U.S. AMATEUR
Where: Atlanta Athletic Club (stroke play on Riverside Course; stroke and match play on Highlands Course).
When: Aug. 11-17
Format: A field of 312 golfers is cut to 64 after two days of stroke play. The survivors play single-elimination match play, leading to a 36-hole championship match.
Notable former champions: Bobby Jones (1924-25, '27-28, '30), Arnold Palmer (1954), Jack Nicklaus (1959, '61), Craig Stadler (1973), Mark O'Meara (1979), Phil Mickelson (1990), Tiger Woods (1994-96), Matt Kuchar (1997).
Top-ranked amateurs in the field: Ollie Schniederjans, Powder Springs (No. 1); Robby Shelton, Wilmer, Ala. (2); Scottie Scheffler, Dallas (4); Doug Ghim, Arlington Heights, Ill. (6); Gullermo Pereira, Chile (7).
Youngest player in field: Will Thomson, 13, Pittsford, N.Y.
Oldest player in field: Doug Hanzel, 57, Savannah
The U.S. Amateur, coming this week to the Atlanta Athletic Club, where the air will be thick with Bobby Jones allusions, is part golf tournament, part forced march.
Welcome to the opening of “Survivor: John’s Creek.”
Can there be such a thing as too much golf? Whoever wins this thing will play nine rounds in seven days, shortened only by how quickly he can dispatch his opponents over the match-play segments.
For the first two days, 312 players will do stroke-play battle, the low 64 moving on to the match-play part of the program. “It is the toughest cut in golf,” said Sean Knapp, who should know. He has played in more U.S. Ams than anyone else in this week’s field. Fourteen. In the previous 13, he advanced to match play four times.
“Making it to match play, I’d put it above making the cut at the U.S. Open,” he said.
Then, once there, there is day after day (if you’re good and if you’re lucky) of intense head-to-head play, 36 holes of it Thursday and again on championship Sunday.
The U.S. Amateur has become the playground of the young and limber, bombers off the tee who are just discovering how good they can be. Last year’s winner — England’s Matthew Fitzpatrick — looked like he just fell out of the supporting cast of “Mary Poppins.” He was 18 when he won.
Knapp has head covers older than that.
The average age of this field is 22. Would have been lower if the 52-year-old Knapp hadn’t thrown off the curve (although he’s not the oldest in the field). His caddie, though, hits pretty close to the average — it’s his 19-year-old daughter, Kensey.
A forever amateur, a financial advisor from the Pittsburgh area, Knapp is the kind of player Robert Tyre Jones himself would have appreciated. Maybe even have had him over for a Coke. Knapp made one attempt to qualify for the PGA over-50 Champions Tour, failed down the stretch and decided it was his lot to be strictly a love-of-the-game kind of player. He has been in more than 40 USGA championships.
He certainly has kept good company along the way. Lost to the up-and-coming version of Tiger Woods 2-and-1 in the 1995 Amateur. Lost to a college player from Northwestern named Luke Donald, also 2-and-1, in 2000. Got paired with Tom Watson in one round of the 2012 U.S. Senior Open.
His score in the match against Woods was deceiving. “It was never close,” Knapp said. “He never made a bogey, his game was exceedingly tight.
“But there is nothing like being that close to greatness.” And if it is of further consolation, Knapp may have the healthier back of the two now.
Working during the summers as a caddie at Oakmont, Knapp’s first experience with golf was as a beast of burden. A small college shooting guard, he was more interested in basketball.
It wasn’t until he was in his 20s that he got serious about golf (his wife’s brother was a teaching pro, so he had that going for him, which was nice). Fortunately, he maintained the mindset of an athlete, and to this day plays 36 holes at a time whenever he can, while carrying his bag.
“I never understood when 10 days of your summer golf life might involve 36 holes (in events like the U.S. Amateur, the Mid-Amateur, the U.S. Pub Links) why you wouldn’t prepare yourself for that,” he said.
Having made it as far as the quarterfinals in 1998, he would love to test his conditioning over the full grind of a U.S. Amateur. There’d be not a single groan or complaint.
“My approach the first four times I made the U.S. Amateur was that I was happy to be there. All the rest, it was a failure if I didn’t make match play. A wasted trip,” Knapp said.
Even at 52, even, as he says, “at some point you got to understand the music stops,” Knapp is not exactly ready to stop dancing. He said he has one or more of these tournaments still in him.
Since his first U.S. Amateur in 1988, he has seen the pool of talent deepen, seeming to grow bottomless. “It’s scary,” he said. “You used to go to the U.S. Amateur and know that 15 to 20 people had a chance of winning. Now, it like, I swear to you, 80 people could win. Maybe that’s just a little exaggeration.”
He has witnessed the dimensions of the game warped by how each generation is moving the ball farther and farther down the fairway. The best of them can blow it 50 yards past him this week.
But age has given him one advantage, to which he will cling.
“Maybe it’s a maturity thing,” Knapp said. “But when you know something is so special — this is our national championship, for gosh sakes — you really embrace it.
“To have my daughter on the bag is a special thing. I know that these are the moments we will remember for the rest of our lives.”
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