It was a match fitting for a final, only it came two rounds earlier.<\/p>\n
Luke Colton, 18, from Frisco, Texas, and the second-ranked junior player in the country, took down top-ranked Miles Russell, 4 and 3, in Friday morning\u2019s quarterfinals of the U.S. Junior Amateur at Trinity Forest in Dallas.<\/p>\n
Colton collected seven birdies in 15 holes, including birdies at each of his final two to put away the 16-year-old Russell, who is also ranked No. 18 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. Colton, No. 26 in WAGR, jumped on Russell early, making a long birdie putt from the fringe to win the par-3 third and go 2 up. Russell, who lipped out shots on each of his first two holes, would battle back, tying the match after six holes.<\/p>\n
After Russell drained a 30-footer for birdie at the par-4 ninth, Colton poured a 25-footer on top of him to tie the hole and turn at 1 up. He and Russell, both lefties, shot a best-ball, 6-under 30 on the front nine. To compare, the other three quarterfinals posted such marks of 33, 35 and 34.<\/p>\n
But Russell\u2019s putter would eventually cost him. He three-putted the par-3 11th from 12 feet for bogey to lose the hole and go 1 down. He later missed mid-range putts at Nos. 14 and 15 that could\u2019ve extended the match.<\/p>\n
Colton now advances to Friday afternoon\u2019s semifinals, which start at 2 p.m. ET. He will face the winner of Hamilton Coleman and Sohan Patel; Coleman was 2 up through 16 holes.<\/p>\n
Texans have won eight of the last 25 U.S. Juniors with Noah Goodwin the most recent to do so, in 2017. Just two left-handers have won U.S. Junior titles \u2013 Brian Harman (2003) and Cory Whitsett (2007).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a match fitting for a final, only it came two rounds earlier. Luke Colton, 18, from…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":92445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1430,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-92444","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\/114916110321095034","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92444","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=92444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}