A kid from the golf school takes the US Amateur Medal

Oklahoma State is a golf school, as surely as Duke is a basketball school and Oklahoma is a football school.

It’s had US Open Champions, Wyndham Clark; Masters Champions, Bob Tway; and a lot of other stars, including Rickie Fowler, Hunter Mahan, Scott Verplank, and Viktor Hovland.

So it should be no surprise that the medalist from this year’s US Amateur, Preston Stout, attended and played for Oklahoma State. Stout shot a 5-under par 65 Tuesday on Olympic Club’s historic Lake Course that, with a 3-under 67 Monday on the Club’s Ocean Course, gave him a 2-day score of 8-under 132 and Medalist honors as low qualifier for the 125th U.S. Amateur.

That’s quite impressive, but it wouldn’t mean a thing when match play began Wednesday on the Lake.

As golfers say, match play is a different animal from stroke play. 

“I love match play,” said Stout, even though a year ago he got knocked out in the first round of the Amateur.

Need we explain that match play is golf where each hole is a separate entity, and whether you lose the hole by one stroke or five strokes makes no difference. 

“I think it is the best form of golf,” Stout added, “and it’s super fun.”

Those feelings might not be shared by someone who gets eliminated early on. But match play tests your courage as much as it does your putting stroke.

Tommy Morrison, who shared the Monday lead with Charles Forrester, ended up two shots behind Stout, but of course was among the 64 players to get into match play.

Forrester, the Englishman who played for Long Beach State, slipped back Tuesday but was safely into match play. Also advancing to match play were John Daly II of Arkansas, whose father won two majors, and Luke Poulter, Florida, whose father, Ian, kept winning Ryder Cup matches.

There is a cliché that qualifying, which goes on from early morning to dark, is the longest day in golf. But for this amateur, you can make it the longest day and a half, because when the last putt was holed Tuesday, with the fog rolling, in true San Francisco fashion, play had not concluded.

There would be a playoff, not surprisingly, but because of the darkness and gloom, it was determined earlier that if extra holes were needed, it would take place on Wednesday. 

There were 20 golfers tied at 141, 1-over par, for the final 17 places in match play. If that sounds like a playoff that was overwhelmingly large, it was.

Meanwhile, while the playoff was held on the Ocean Course, the golfers who had already qualified were teeing off in match play on the Lake Course.

And they told us golf was a very simple, organized game.