Lin Qualifies for Match Play as Thai 'TK' Bows Out

New Jersey, United States: Two-time Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship winner Lin Yuxin has breezed into the match play stage at the 122nd US Amateur Championship, but Ratchanon ‘TK’ Chantananuwat failed to progress from stroke play.

For the second day in a row, The Ridgewood Country Club and co-host Arcola Country Club presented a daunting challenge to the world’s best amateurs.

With a set-up evocative of a US Open – five-inch rough coupled with firm and fast greens rolling as fast as 13 feet on the Stimpmeter – just making par was a challenge. The venues played to stroke averages well over par: 76.8 at par-71, 7,403-yard Ridgewood and 75.2 at par-70, 7,251-yard Arcola. That explains why only eight players finished under par for 36 holes.

Lin may not have been among them but his two-day total of one-over 142 secured him a share of 14th place and a comfortable passage into match play, the reward for the leading 64 players.

Other representatives from Asia-Pacific countries to make it through were Australians Connor McKinney (tied 14th, 142) and Hayden Hopewell (tied 30th, 144), and Malaysian Khavish Varadan and in-form Chinese teenager Ding Wenyi (tied 39th, 145). Ding created history last month with his victory in the US Junior Amateur last month at Bandon Dunes, becoming the first mainland Chinese male to win a USGA title.

Australian Karl Vilips was one of 15 players who finished on 146. They will return to the course on Wednesday morning to play-off for 11 spots in match play.

Thai Ratchanon was among the high-profile players to bow out. A winner on the Asian Tour this year, ‘TK’ followed up an opening 73 at Arcola with a 78 at Ridgewood.

Also making an early exit were Japan’s Kosuke Suzuki and New Zealander Kazuma Kobori (both 147), China’s Jin Bo and Korean Park Sangha (both 149), Australian Jack Buchanan (150), Korean Sam Choi (155), Australian Harrison Crowe (156), Chinese Taipei’s Tsai Yu-ta (160) and Japan’s Yuki Moriyama (162). Korean Kim Ho-won withdrew through illness after an opening 85.

Four players shared medallist honours at three-under 138 – Americans Luke Gutschewski, son of PGA Tour veteran and two-time Korn Ferry Tour winner Scott Gutschewski, and Michael Thorbjornsen, Brazilian Fred Biondi and Sweden’s Hugo Townsend. The four co-medallislts marks the highest total in US Amateur history.

They were one stroke ahead of 2022 NCAA individual champion and Vanderbilt rising sophomore Gordon Sargent, who shot the only bogey-free round of the championship, a 65 at Arcola, the lowest score of the week by two strokes.

Everyone who advanced to match play starts from scratch in the Round of 64. Stroke play scores are forgotten and it’s now head-to-head competition over the next five days to see whose name will be engraved on the Havemeyer Trophy.