ARDMORE, Pa. – It’s not often Ryder Cowan is the underdog.
The Oklahoma standout, ranked eighth in the world amateur rankings, is coming off earning first-team All-America honors as a junior and earlier this summer was co-low amateur at the U.S. Open with recent PGA Tour winner Jackson Koivun.
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But Miles Russell isn’t your typical 17-year-old.
“He’s a guy that you want to beat because he’s so good,” Cowan said of Russell, who is ranked fourth in the world and has widely been heralded as the best high-schooler since Tiger Woods.
“I wouldn’t say I felt like the underdog from the perspective of golf, but I felt like the underdog out there because you’ve got all these people, Miles is – I don’t know what the word is – a figure for golf right now, and you’ve got all these people rooting for him. I’m just out there, I’ve got a couple people.”
That was all he needed.
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Cowan took control of their first-round U.S. Amateur matchup Wednesday afternoon around Merion Golf Club’s turn, then closed out the teen phenom with some clutch par saves, none bigger than his chip-in par at the par-3 17th hole.
In shades of Dillon Dougherty, who famously chipped in on Merion’s 17th in his 2005 U.S. Amateur semifinal victory over J.C. Deacon, Cowan needed two chips on the penultimate hole. He flubbed the first from the left rough some 15 feet from the hole, his club sliding right under the ball, before redeeming himself with the second, which popped up perfectly before running into the hole.
“The first one was, I don’t want to say impossible, but it was probably a 10 out of 10 difficulty,” Cowan said. “Literally my lie was terrible, and I had a lot of grass behind the ball. I could barely get to it. … The second one, it was still really hard because that green is straight downhill all the way, but I pretty much was trying to hit the same shot. Fortunately, I hit it different.”
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Russell had a chance to send the match to No. 18, but his 8-footer slid by right.
“Those days happen,” said Russell, who hasn’t had many of those this summer, tying for 39th at the U.S. Open, making the final of the U.S. Junior Amateur and reaching the semifinals of the Western Amateur.
“Didn’t have my best stuff and kind of needed it, you know? It’s the way it goes in match play, usually sometimes when if you’re not playing great, you can still kind of scrape it around, and I hung around there for a long time.”
Cowan was blown away by Russell’s wedge game, especially on the par-4 fifth hole, where Russell missed the green right before chipping down the severe slope to gimme range to remain 1 up.
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But Russell began missing fairways, including at the par-4 eighth, where he went bunker to bunker to lose the hole with bogey as Cowan took his first lead. Cowan then won the next after another Russell bogey, after which Russell took a seat on a nearby chair and gave himself a pep talk.
Three holes later, the match was tied again after a 20-foot birdie make by Russell, though Russell would commit what seemed to be a mental error on the par-3 13th hole, where he had Cowan mark a 2-footer for par before rolling his 8-foot birdie try right over Cowan’s coin. The ball took one hop before finishing just short and right of the cup.
Russell later explained that he left the mark there as a “training aid.”
“It was a little bit of a slider, but it was more there if I missed it low,” Russell said. “It might’ve gotten lucky and bounced in, but I just needed to hit it a little harder. … If his mark wasn’t there, it would’ve still missed.”
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Russell tied that hole and didn’t win another.
Cowan said he’d always struggled finding patience until recently. He was especially proud of his fight in stroke play, where he was 6 over through 21 holes before playing his remaining holes at Merion in 4 under to get into the playoff, which he continued to watch despite getting through with birdie on the first extra hole, No. 13.
Cowan went up on Russell for good by getting up and down at the par-4 15th, where he sank a 10-footer for par. “I really needed it because I hadn’t really seen a putt go in all day,” said Cowan, who took the par-4 16th with par, too, after Russell’s approach from the rough came up short and the teen sent his next through the green.
Russell is already on the U.S. Walker Cup team that will compete at Lahinch in a few weeks; Cowan, if he wasn’t already, can count on a nod as well.
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Elsewhere on the bracket, a couple more favorites joined Russell and the eight top-15 amateurs who failed to qualify for the knockout stage in heading home early.
World No. 7 Josiah Gilbert, also a likely U.S. Walker Cupper, lost to New Zealand’s Zack Swanwick, 3 and 2. Swanwick joined University of Florida teammates Jack Turner, Joshua Bai and Noah Kent in advancing to Thursday’s Round of 32.
BYU’s Kihei Akina, ranked 11th in the world, bogeyed three of his last five holes to fall to Washington’s Finn Koelle, 1 up. Akina is on the Walker Cup bubble along with Stanford’s Jay Leng and North Carolina’s Carson Bertagnole, who both won their matches on Wednesday.
No. 3 Tyler Watts and No. 5 William Jennings are the highest-ranked players still alive, followed by Cowan and No. 18 Niall Shiels Donegan, the North Carolina senior from the Bay Area via Scotland who was a semifinalist from a year ago at Olympic Club.
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