Ban and Quayle to Meet in Final Match at 114th Pacific Northwest Men’s Amateur
Shintaro Ban of San Jose, Calif. and Anthony Quayle of Queensland, Australia will meet in the final match of the 114th Pacific Northwest Men’s Amateur Championship.
The championship is being held at Sunriver (Ore.) Resort, and is conducted by the Pacific Northwest Golf Association (PNGA).
Tomorrow’s final match will be contested over 36 holes, with the tee time being 7:30 am on the Woodlands course. The afternoon round of the match will be held on the resort’s Meadows course.
Ban defeated Grady Meyer of Fargo, N.D., 4 and 3, in this afternoon’s semifinal match to advance into tomorrow’s final, while Quayle defeated No. 1 seed Charlie Kern of Mercer Island, Wash., 1-up, in their semifinal match.
Quayle mounted an early 4-up lead after six holes, and Kern was able to close the gap on the back nine but could not overcome the deficit. He had opportunities to square the match on both the 17th and 18th holes, but after reaching the par-5 17th in two he 3-putted to halve the hole, and on the 18th Quayle scrambled and then drained a par-saving 10-footer to halve the hole and win the match.
Afterward, Quayle said about the match, “I might have got a little complacent (after building the early lead), missed some short putts that opened the door for Charlie and he started to play some good golf on the back nine. There might have been some fatigue on my end on the last few holes, along with the heat. I’ve played a lot of golf the past few days.”
Kern, who had made it to the quarterfinals of last year’s championship, had steamrolled his way through the match play bracket this year, handily defeating his early opponents.
Quayle recently won the Tasmanian Amateur Open Championship, is a member of the Queensland Men’s State Team and is ranked in the top 15 of the Australian Amateur Rankings.
In Ban’s semifinal match with Meyer, he birdied four out of five holes on the front nine to build a 4-up lead on the front side, extended it to 5-up after 11 holes and closed out the match on the 15th hole. Meyer, who just finished his sophomore year playing on the men’s golf team at the University of Minnesota, had won the second hole to take an early lead, but could not maintain it against Ban’s birdies.
Ban hit the ball close all day in the day’s quarterfinal and semifinal matches. “I’m learning a little more every day here,” he said. “And just trying to
keep it going. I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Anthony is obviously a great player, defeating the medalist.”
Ban just finished his freshman year playing on the men’s golf team at UNLV. He was a co-medalist at the 2012 U.S. Junior Amateur, and qualified for the 2013 U.S. Amateur. He won the 2014 San Francisco City Men’s Amateur, and last week tied for seventh at the Sahalee Players Championship. Ban’s older brother, Shotaro, won this Men’s Amateur championship in 2012.
The Pacific Northwest Men’s Amateur is one of the oldest amateur golf championships in the world. Past champions include names such as Tiger Woods, Jeff Quinney, Ben Crane, Jeff Coston, Nick Flanagan, Jim McLean and Pacific Northwest Golf Hall of Famers Chandler Egan, Harry Givan, Jack Westland, Bud Ward and George Holland, among many others.
Players are competing for the Macan Cup, which is named after legendary golf course designer A.V. Macan, a member of the Pacific Northwest Golf Hall of Fame and winner of this championship in 1913.
