Chris Williams wins The 110th Western Amateur Championship
Chris Williams recorded a hard-fought victory at The 110th Western Amateur Championship on Saturday, after he defeated Abraham Ancer and Jordan Russell in the semi-final and the final match, respectively.
While playing the semi-final, Williams went into a one-point deficit after Ancer birdied the opening hole.
Ancer kept in the lead until Williams levelled the score with a birdie on the seventh hole. The next four rounds saw them win points on every alternate hole until Williams took the lead for the first time with a par putt on the 12th hole.
The scores were all square at the end of the round and the winner was decided on the 19th hole when Williams eagled the par-five first hole against Ancer’s bogey finish.
After taking some rest, he came back to the first tee again and once again started off his final’s campaign with a one-point deficit, as Russell birdied the opening hole.
Ancer kept in the lead until he double bogeyed the 12th hole and the points all squared. The 14th hole saw Williams take the lead for the first time, which he retained till the end to win the event 1-Up.
“On the last putt, I was pretty nervous,” Williams said in a media release. “I was shaking. I figured he was going to make his putt, and we’d be going back to the first hole (for extra holes)”.
On the other hand, Russell also praised his rival because of his great performance throughout the tournament. Russell missed an eight-foot putt on the final hole that would have provided him a chance to play the extra holes.
"He's a great player and I made him earn it," said Russell, a recent graduate of Texas A&M. "So I'm not too disappointed".
It was a great feat achieved by the University of Washington student, as he won both the stroke play as well as the match-play event in the five-day tournament. With this victory, he surged to the top of the Scratch Players World Amateur Rankings.
According to him, it was the greatest victory of his career, as he will now join the league of Jack Nicklaus, Ben Crenshaw, Curtis Strange, Hal Sutton, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods who also won this tournament during their amateur careers.
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