Stories about college hotshots abound at this U.S. Amateur.
OK, maybe Atlanta’s Chris Waters couldn’t crack a Georgia roster laden with future PGA Tour players when he was in Athens (he got his undergrad degree in 2009). But he obviously knew his way around the university course’s pro shop. Waters was the assistant manager there, and later the facilities manager, before moving to Atlanta for an accounting job.
Out of the golf shop and on to the U.S. Amateur match play. No class distinction here. Shoot low enough and it doesn’t matter what your background is. And Waters shot plenty low enough in the stroke play portion of the tournament — 4 under for two days — to advance easily to the field of 64 match play.
“I feel my game has progressed a lot since then,” Waters, 27, said. Even though he is tied now to a real-life job and a real-life title — senior audit associate at KPMG — his game has managed to grow.
Having put up a 2 under Monday, Waters could have come to Tuesday playing a little defensively, just trying to maintain his place. Instead, “I just wanted to do the same thing I did yesterday,” he said. That would be hitting fairways and greens with great consistency, and mirroring his first round.
As for his expectations now that he’s on to the vagaries of match play: “To win. Absolutely, to go out there and win.”
“It will be like going out and playing with my buddies. We play match play all the time,” he said.
About the Author
