<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a detailed, hole-by-hole look at the site of this week\u2019s U.S. Amateur, the Lake Course at Olympic Club in San Francisco, California.<\/p>\n
Scotland\u2019s Niall Shiels Donegan, an adopted Bay Area product, arguably had the loudest gallery as members of both public Mill Valley and private Meadow Club made their way across the Golden Gate Bridge to watch the North Carolina transfer and Walker Cup hopeful drain an 8-footer at the last to defeat Florida\u2019s Luke Poulter.<\/p>\n
Two matches went extra holes, including Georgia commit Mason Howell\u2019s bout with sixth-ranked amateur Tommy Morrison, who led for 16 holes until Howell prevailed in 19 with a winning bogey on the par-4 first hole.<\/p>\n
And perhaps the craziest match was contested between Princeton\u2019s Reed Greyserman, the youngest brother of PGA Tour player Max Greyserman, and Texas Tech\u2019s Tim Wiedemeyer, who found himself 5 down after seven holes before winning five of his last six holes and closing out Greyserman on the par-5 17th.<\/p>\n
But when it comes to underdog stories, there isn\u2019t a longer shot left in this field than Abdo.<\/p>\n
Never even the best player on his teams at Edina High, Abdo signed with the Gusties and immediately rooted himself at the program\u2019s practice facility, which, unlike many schools at that level, features multiple hitting bays with TrackMans and other high-end amenities \u2013 more than enough for the mustachioed range rat to develop quickly. Abdo won his first tournament in April, a victory that landed him in the world ranking, and followed with a runner-up showing before being named the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference\u2019s rookie of the year.<\/p>\n
With the iron hot, Abdo decided to test the portal waters. It wasn\u2019t that he needed to get out of St. Peter, but it had always been his dream to play Division-I golf. Having also qualified this summer for his first U.S. Amateur \u2013 in his first try, too \u2013 via a 4-for-2 playoff, Abdo thought he\u2019d at least field a few offers from schools.<\/p>\n
But weeks went by, and to date, just one Big Ten program, which Abdo wouldn\u2019t address by name, has shown marginal interest.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a couple of calls, I was told that there wasn\u2019t enough time to make a decision,\u201d Abdo explained. \u201cI accepted that and used it as fuel to come out here and prove them wrong, and I think, so far, I\u2019ve done that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abdo birdied the treacherous first hole, a converted par-5 playing as a 522-yard par-4 on Wednesday \u2013 and a hole that yielded just three birdies in stroke play. He won the second hole, too, to take a 2-up lead out of the gates. But Abdo knew Reilly was too talented not to mount a charge, which came immediately; the Lovettsville, Virginia, native, whose dad, Terry Reilly, is the EVP of Wasserman, holed a 30-yard bunker shot to win the par-3 third and two holes later chipped in for birdie to flip the match to 1 up in his favor. Reilly led 2 up after 11 holes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of people would\u2019ve folded and gave up,\u201d Abdo said, \u201cbut me and my caddie (childhood friend Evan Raiche) were like, we got to this point, there\u2019s no point in backing down now. \u2026 What kept me fighting is knowing that there\u2019s not much pressure on the 61 seed. I knew I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I knew that if I just stayed aggressive and stayed with it \u2013 I\u2019d been hitting the ball too good to not make something happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Did he ever.<\/p>\n
And he doesn\u2019t plan on folding either, no matter who he\u2019s matched up against.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not afraid of anybody,\u201d Abdo replied when asked what he hopes people will learn about him this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the best opportunity of my career to make myself stand out, and that\u2019s the way I\u2019m going to view everybody,\u201d he added. \u201cDoesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s the No. 1 player or like me, the No. 4,000 player; the better the player, the more focused I\u2019m going to be, and I\u2019m going to use that to my advantage because I know I can trust myself out there.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t get chances like this to play against the best players in the world very often. This is probably going to be one of my few opportunities, and I just have to go out there and take care of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Olympic\u2019s graveyard, Abdo\u2019s proving ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2013 The Olympic Club has earned the nickname, \u201cThe Graveyard of Champions,\u201d for a reason. It…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":146075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1430,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-146074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115029242593120100","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}