Hamilton Coleman was up big, and then he wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
But Coleman never lost hope, or his lead, before birdieing the 35th hole to secure a 2-and-1 victory over Minh Nguyen in Saturday\u2019s final of the 77th U.S. Junior Amateur.<\/p>\n
Coleman, a 17-year-old from Augusta, Georgia, converted a birdie from 18 feet and led 5 up after 12 holes of the scheduled 36-hole championship match at Trinity Forest in Dallas. He went into the lunch break 3 up, too, before the 18-year-old Minh, of Vietnam, clawed back to just 1 down with six holes to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting off to that hot start, I knew that I couldn\u2019t just ease my way into winning, and I knew I had to keep hitting quality shots,\u201d Coleman said. \u201cI was playing well, and he just kept making putts and hitting shots close. It got a little tight there, but I never lost faith. And I told my caddie, I was nervous, but I was never scared. I\u2019m proud of the way I handled that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Minh, who will attend Oregon State starting this fall, began his afternoon comeback at the par-4 first, where he curled in a 5-footer for birdie to move to 2 down. Coleman then won Nos. 22 and 23, the latter after nearly holing out his third shot on the par-5 fifth, to stretch his advantage back to 4 up. But Minh birdied four of the next seven holes, including the lengthy par-3 11th where he landed his tee ball on the front of the green and watched it roll some 50 feet to close range, to get it to 1 down.<\/p>\n
Minh nearly tied the match on the 34th hole, the par-5 16th, but his 12-footer for birdie missed. He couldn\u2019t get a similarly distanced putt to drop at the par-3 17th, which set the table for Coleman to hole his match-winner from 10 feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou try not to tell yourself what it\u2019s for, to qualify for the U.S. Open and be the U.S. Junior champion,\u201d Coleman said. \u201cJust stuck to my line and made a free, aggressive stroke at it, and it happened to go in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like Coleman said, he\u2019s into the field for next summer\u2019s U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills. He\u2019s also the first U.S. Junior champion from Georgia since Andy Shim in 2012. A Georgia commit for 2026, Coleman is the first future Bulldog to win this championship since Brian Harman in 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hamilton Coleman was up big, and then he wasn\u2019t. But Coleman never lost hope, or his lead, before…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":95700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1430,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-95699","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\/114923034720161454","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95699","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=95699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}