It was an anticlimactic Friday afternoon at the U.S. Junior Amateur.
Neither semifinal reached the 16th hole as Hamilton Coleman of Augusta, Georgia, and Vietnam’s Nguyen Anh Minh easily advanced to Saturday’s 36-hole final at Trinity Forest in Dallas.
Coleman, the 17-year-old Georgia commit, took down Vanderbilt commit Luke Colton, 5 and 4. Showcasing great speed on Trinity’s massive greens, Coleman made just one bogey while taking advantage of Colton’s five bogeys. Coleman went 1 up with a par at the par-5 second and never looked back. A key moment was Coleman’s birdie putt on the par-3 eighth, where Coleman lagged a 70-footer through multiple breaks to a couple feet to eventually win the hole after Colton couldn’t get up and down.
“It’s definitely hard because you feel like you can get away with things but you have to keep reminding yourself to keep the pedal down and not make silly mistakes because that’s when the match can slip away from you,” Coleman said. “So, I really just made sure I eliminated errors, and my caddie has been telling me the whole time, ‘Quality golf shots.’ It’s hard to lose when you’re hitting quality shots at your targets.”
Colton, the second-ranked junior and 26th-ranked amateur in the world, was coming off a 4-and-3 win over No. 1 junior Miles Russell in the morning and had played his first 81 holes this week at Trinity in a combined 14 under with 26 birdies. But he only carded a single birdie against Coleman, and on the second hole, he injured his left wrist while playing his second shot from a bush and required medical attention.
Coleman is trying to become the first player representing Georgia to win the U.S. Junior since Andy Shim, who rallied from 5 down through 18 holes to beat Jim Liu in the 2012 final. The last Georgia recruit to win this championship was Brian Harman in 2003.
Waiting for Coleman in the championship match, which will begin at 8:45 a.m. ET Saturday, will be Minh, who would be the first winner from Vietnam. Minh, an incoming Oregon State freshman who is ranked No. 52 in WAGR, won five of the first six holes against China’s Qiyou Wu, going 5 up in the process. He only lost one hole all match.
“I’ll definitely have to keep myself in the present and hopefully just make putts,” Minh said of what it will take to win Saturday, where a berth in next year’s U.S. Open will be on the line.
“It’s definitely cool to have a chance to play in the U.S. Open, so that’s going to be fun to play for,” Coleman said. “And you know, I’ve watched this tournament a lot on TV throughout the years, and I didn’t really know how far I’d get into this, but now I have a shot to live out my dreams.”
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