Back to all posts

Jul 12, 2018

Beat goes on at PNGA Men’s Amateur; quarterfinals and semifinals to be held tomorrow

With the summer temperatures rising, the pressure of match play continues to build during the 117th Pacific Northwest Men’s Amateur Championship, being held this week at The Home Course in DuPont, Wash.

Matches in the rounds of 32 and 16 were held today, and the region’s best players are playing it out on the sun-baked course.

Tomorrow, the quarterfinal and semifinal matches will be contested, followed by the 36-hole championship match on Saturday, July 14.

Temperatures reached the high 80s during Thursday’s Round of 32 and Round 16 matches.

Championship Links:

Still alive in the match-play bracket are Spencer Tibbits of Vancouver, Wash., who will be a sophomore next year, playing for the Oregon State University men’s golf team. Tibbits is a three-time WIAA 3A High School champion, and in 2016 was named the PNGA Junior Boys’ Player of the Year. Tibbits, the No. 63 seed, knocked off Jan Schneider, the No. 2 seed, in the Round of 64, 4&3.

In tomorrow’s quarterfinals, Tibbits will face former University of Arizona golfer Reid Hatley of Hayden Lake, Idaho, who was the PNGA Men’s Mid-Amateur Player of the Year for three consecutive years (2015-17) and won the PNGA Men’s Mid-Amateur in 2013. Last month Hatley finished tied for sixth in the Mexican Amateur. He made it to the Round of 16 in last year’s PNGA Men’s Amateur, before losing to eventual champion Emmett Oh.

Trevor Yu of Vancouver, B.C. will face Nick Mandell of Kennewick, Wash. Yu, who will be senior on the Oregon State University men’s golf team, was selected to the Pac-12 All-Academic First Team, and as a youth helped Team British Columbia win the gold medal in golf in the 2013 Canada Summer Games. Mandell is a former standout on the Washington State University men’s golf team.

Mitchell Baldridge of Edgewood, Wash. just finished his senior year playing for the Pacific Lutheran University men’s golf team, where during his junior year was named the Northwest Conference Player of the Year. He will face Trevor Frisby of Edmonds, Wash. in a quarterfinal match tomorrow. Frisby will be a senior on the St. Martin’s University men’s golf team, where he was recently named to the 2018 GNAC Second Team All-Conference.

The fourth quarterfinal match for tomorrow has not yet been set. Connor Golembeski, a recent graduate of Redmond High School who will be playing for the University of California-Berkeley in the fall, has already secured his spot in the match, but his opponent in the match is still to be determined, as No. 1 seed Graysen Huff of Eagle, Idaho, who was reinstated after a review of a ruling, and Jacob Koppenberg of Bellingham, Wash. will come back tomorrow morning to finish their Round of 32 match after it was called tonight due to darkness.

Click here for complete information about this year’s championship. To follow along with live scoring, visit thepnga.org.

This is the second time The Home Course has hosted this championship, having previously been the venue in 2009.

To join the conversation on social media, follow PNGA Championships on Twitter @PNGALIVE and use the hashtag #PNGAMensAm for live tweets and updates.