Australian Young Shines Bright at Fog-Bound Bandon Dunes

Bandon, Oregon, United States: A little wind. Some sunshine mixed with fog. A career-best round and a record nine-hole score. Round one of the 74th US Junior Amateur Championship at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort provided a bit of everything.

American Grant Lester, 17, Paraguayan Erich Fortlage and 18-year-old Australian Harvey Young all posted 66s to share the day one lead. Lester played at par-71 Bandon Trails, the stroke play co-host, while Fortlage, who turns 16 on Thursday, and Young played par-72 Bandon Dunes, where match play will take place beginning on Wednesday.

Bandon Trails (75.3) played more than four strokes over its par of 71, while Bandon Dunes played a little more than two strokes over its par of 72 (74.4) in round one.

It wasn’t just the leaders who provided the headlines. Jack Cantlay, 18, younger brother of reigning PGA Tour Player of the Year Patrick Cantlay, broke the championship nine-hole scoring record with a 28 on Bandon Dunes’ front nine. Cantlay started on 10, and his second nine included eagle-threes on the two par-fives, a 45-foot putt on the third hole and a 65-foot chip-in on nine. Four-over through his first eight holes, Cantlay, an incoming freshman at Long Beach State, rallied to play his final 11 holes in nine-under par to card a 67.

The day began with bright sunshine and temperatures reaching the low 60s on the Oregon coast. The winds, which are so much a part of the story here, gusted as high as 20 miles per hour before they were replaced by late-afternoon fog that made visibility challenging for the final groups.

“On [hole] 13, the par-five, it started to get bad and then it got worse and worse,” said Young of the fog. “I said to [my caddie] Daniel [Kitayama], it was one of the most enjoyable rounds I’ve had just because I’ve never played in anything like this before.”

Lester, who like Cantlay is competing in his first USGA championship, picked an opportune time to have a career-best day. Playing in the fifth group off 10 at Bandon Trails, the high school senior went out in three-under 32, then added birdies on the first, third and sixth against a lone bogey on the 115-yard, par-three fifth to come home in 34. “I wasn’t as nervous as I expected,” said Lester. “My caddie did a really good job of keeping me calm the whole day.”

Young, playing in the penultimate grouping off the first tee at Bandon Dunes, got off to a roaring start with birdies on his first three holes, making putts of seven, 10 and two feet. Another birdie on the ninth gave him a front-nine 32. As the fog worsened, Young came home in 34 to complete just the second bogey-free round on Monday (the other was by China’s Li Zhengqian, who shot 68 at Bandon Trails).

This is Young’s first trip to the United States to play golf. He arrived on May 31 and competed in the Dogwood Invitational in Atlanta; the International Junior Masters and the Porter Cup in New York, as well as a US Junior Amateur qualifier on June 23 at Huntsville Golf Club in Dallas, where he posted a bogey-free 71 to garner one of the two available spots.

“If I woke up and said: ‘You’d shoot even,’ I’d go back to sleep,” said Young of surpassing his expectations. “So having six [strokes] better than that is pretty good.”

Like Lester, Fortlage, who spends his summers in Florida playing on the Hurricane Junior Golf Tour, had a strong day on the greens, converting a 20-foot par putt on the par-three 12th hole. He also nearly holed a 110-yard wedge approach on the 351-yard 16th hole.

While Cantlay posted the lone 67 at Bandon Dunes, China’s Wu Dianchou, who holed out for an eagle-two from 70 yards on the eighth, and Korean Choi You-seong, shot the same number at Bandon Trails, a Ben Crenshaw/Bill Coore design that measured 6,723 yards.

American Caden Pinckes, whose father, Mike, is the PGA Tour’s General Manager of Media, was among four players who shot 68 at Bandon Dunes, a David McLay Kidd design that measured 6,912 yards. The others were incoming Georgia Tech freshman Aidan Tran of the US, the youngest competitor in the 2019 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Bandon Dunes, along with New Zealander Jayden Ford, and Thai Pongsapak Laopakdee.

Nicholas Gross, a 2018 Drive, Chip & Putt age-group finalist, joined Li and Caleb Surratt, in posting 68s at Bandon Trails.

Of the other Asia-Pacific entrants at Bandon Trails, Indian Shubham Jaglan and China’s Ding Wenyi both shot 69s, followed by Pakistan’s Omar Khalid Hussain (73), Singaporean Atiksh Gupta, Chinese Taipei’s Stanley Lin and Pakistan’s Syed Yashal Shah (all 75), Chinese Taipei’s Chen Chi-chun and Indian Jayaditya Saluja (both 78) and Thai Supakorn Amornchaichan (80).

At Bandon Dunes, Kai Komulainen returned a 70, while fellow-Australians Jeffrey Guan and Jye Halls both carded 72s, followed by China’s Justin Bai Xiangyun (73), Arjun Gupta of the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand’s Joshua Bai and China’s Zhou Ziqin (all 74), Australian Josiah Gilbert (77) and China’s Jason Tang (79).

Round two of stroke play will take place on Tuesday. Players will switch courses, after which the field of 264 will be trimmed to the low 64 scorers for match play.