Dallas, Texas, United States: Wu Qiyou maintained his impressive recent form to ease into the match play phase at the 77th US Junior Amateur.
The 16-year-old Chinese fired rounds of 66 and 72 in the stroke play segment to place seventh from the 264-strong starting line-up.
The leading 64 players have progressed to the first round of match play which will take place on Wednesday morning at Trinity Forest Golf Club. Match play continues through to Saturday’s 36-hole final.
A total of 13 players from the Asia-Pacific region battled their way through the 36 holes of stroke play on Monday and Tuesday.
Wu is joined in the last 64 by compatriots Gu Liangliang (tied eighth, 139), Jiang Minbao (tied 13th, 140), Gu Hongtao (tied 24th, 141) and Hou Zenghao (tied 30th, 142).
Also through are the Vietnamese duo of Nguyen Anh Minh (tied 13th, 140) and Ho Anh Huy (tied 50th, 144), Thais Ajalawich Anantasethakul (tied 13th, 140) and Lapassaporn Liberto Heras-Gomez (tied 37th, 143), along with Singapore’s Troy Storm (tied 13th, 140), Korean Lim Tae-young, Indonesian Rayhan Latief and Hong Kong’s William Lisle (all tied 50th, 144).
In the only all-Asia-Pacific pairing in the Round of 64, Wu takes on Korean Lim.
Wu, who is 219th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), arrived in Texas off a victory and a second-place finish in two American Junior Golf Association events this summer as well as a tie for 31st in the Trans-Mississippi Amateur.
Wu, who was exempt into the field based off his high ranking, also has won three low-level professional events in his home country.
“It’s challenging,” said Wu of playing in the heat and wind of Texas. “A couple of years ago, I was not good at playing a course that is links style.”
In other standout matches in the Round of 64, Nguyen Anh Minh, a US Junior Amateur quarter-finalist in 2024 at Oakland Hills, faces American Nicholas Brooks while Indonesia’s Latief is up against Tyler Watts, the 2024 US Junior Amateur runner-up, who is a member of the US National Junior Team.
Among the Asia-Pacific contingent who did not make it to the match play stage were New Zealand’s Ryan Xie (145) and Cooper Moore (150), Korean An Seong-hyeon (146), Singapore’s Brayden Lee (149) and China’s Chang Xihuan (152), a US Junior Amateur semi-finalist last year and the highest rated Asia-Pacific player in the line-up at 98th in the WAGR.
Notable players to miss the cut for match play included Charlie Woods, the 16-year-old son of nine-time USGA champion Tiger Woods, who was in attendance this week, Jackson Byrd, son of five-time PGA Tour winner and 1999 US Walker Cupper Jonathan Byrd, and US National Junior Team members Phillip Dunham and Will Hartman, who captured the US Amateur Four-Ball title in May.
