At the US Amateur, Donegan, Daly II, and some big surprises

Match play golf, even among equals, such as the pros, is a game of excitement, tension, and wild unpredictability. That last issue is the primary reason it’s rarely seen on tour.

You think that TV sponsors want an event in which the stars are no longer in the field after a round or two?

But match play is the essence of the amateur game, and one of the reasons the 125th U. S. Amateur now underway in the cold and gloom (brrrr) at San Francisco’s Olympic Club has been so fascinating.

Seedings and rankings mean almost nothing. As you may note from what has happened. The world’s number one-ranked player, Joseph Kolvin, was bounced 3 and 2 by Max Herendeen Thursday morning in the second round, and later in the afternoon, the number one qualifier, Preston Stout, was ousted by David Liechty, 2 and 1.

But finally, and fortunately, the surprises stopped there, not that it was any consolation to the favorites that lost. But the Friday quarterfinals would include one guy who has become a Bay Area star, Niell Shiels Donegan of Mill Valley in Marin County, and another who perhaps is on the way to equaling the stardom of his father, John Daly II. 

Donegan lists his nationality in the entry form as a Scot, and true, he was born in Scotland, but he came to America at age three and no way speaks with a Scottish accent. Donegan, who is in the process of transferring to the University of North Carolina after two years at Northwestern, is the guy who stunned Stout, one-up, going in front with a birdie on the par-5 16th.

Daly advanced to the quarters by defeating Nate Smith of South Africa 3 and 2.

“My putter has been the key to my play this week,” said Daly, who attends the University of Arkansas, where his father once was enrolled. “I’ve been putting really good. I’m reading them well and excited to see putts fall in.”

Putts that fall invariably become the difference maker in match play.

No one could better point that out than Donegan’s father, Lawrence, a long-time sports journalist for the Guardian, who knows from experience what is possible in the games we play.

Asked how he would come down from the victory, Niall said, “My dad does a pretty good job of it. He reminds me that I’m just human, like at the end of the day, this is just golf. 10 percent of my life is golf. 90 percent of my life is my family, my friends. Just keep the 10 percent where it is and live the other 90 like anybody else.” 

But everybody else is not in the quarters of America’s most important amateur tournament.