SAN FRANCISCO – The Olympic Club has earned the nickname, “The Graveyard of Champions,” for a reason.
It all started with Jack Fleck, the improbable 1955 U.S. Open winner on the Lake Course after outlasting Ben Hogan in an 18-hole playoff, a day after the television broadcast signed off by declaring Hogan the champion, not considering that Fleck still had holes to play. Billy Casper followed in 1966, rallying from seven shots back of Arnold Palmer with nine holes remaining to claim his second U.S. Open. Lee Janzen, in 1998, also made up seven strokes on the final day as he beat Payne Stewart. There was Scott Simpson over Tom Watson late in 1987, and Yuka Saso ending Lexi Thompson’s U.S. Women’s Open dreams by erasing five shots down the stretch in 2021.
This week at the 125th U.S. Amateur, there is no Fleck, but there is an Abdo.
Meet Jimmy Abdo, the 19-year-old from Edina, Minnesota, and a rising sophomore at Division-III Gustavus Adolphus, though only because he sat in the transfer portal all summer, drawing no real interest from Division-I programs.
He sits No. 4,292 in the world amateur rankings with just four counting events, and he isn’t shy about the sizable chip that rests on his shoulder.
“I love proving people wrong,” Abdo said. “I just have to keep telling myself that I belong.”
Abdo birdied three of his last six holes on Tuesday on the adjacent Ocean Course just to get into a 20-for-17 playoff for match play. Two pars later and he was on to the knockout stage, where he knocked off Logan Reilly, the much-ballyhooed Auburn incomer, in the Round of 64 on Wednesday evening.
Having just rattled off four straight birdies, Abdo left himself about 10 feet for par on the Lake’s par-4 finishing hole. He then stepped up and confidently holed the lightning-fast putt before punctuating the 1-up victory with a thunderous fist pump.
“That’s the kind of putt you dream of,” Abdo said. “The biggest moment of my golf career for sure.”
And it’s only getting bigger.
Abdo will face Houston grad Wolfgang Glawe in Thursday morning’s Round of 32. Glawe produced an equally thrilling finish on the 18th green, finding the rough long and then whiffing on his first chip by sliding his wedge right under the ball, only to then regroup and hole his next chip for par and a 1-up victory over Ole Miss’ Tom Fischer.
There were some other cool moments on Wednesday:
John Daly II, son of the two-time major champ, tied 17 holes with Louisville’s Cooper Claycomb, with Daly’s birdie on the par-4 11th hole marking the only hole won by either player.
Medalist Preston Stout of Oklahoma State carded seven birdies in 15 holes to beat high-schooler Pennson Badgett, while world No. 1 Jackson Koivun didn’t make birdie until the last hole of his 2-and-1 win over Illinois’ Ryan Voois.
Scotland’s Niall Shiels Donegan, an adopted Bay Area product, arguably had the loudest gallery as members of both public Mill Valley and private Meadow Club made their way across the Golden Gate Bridge to watch the North Carolina transfer and Walker Cup hopeful drain an 8-footer at the last to defeat Florida’s Luke Poulter.
Two matches went extra holes, including Georgia commit Mason Howell’s bout with sixth-ranked amateur Tommy Morrison, who led for 16 holes until Howell prevailed in 19 with a winning bogey on the par-4 first hole.
And perhaps the craziest match was contested between Princeton’s Reed Greyserman, the youngest brother of PGA Tour player Max Greyserman, and Texas Tech’s Tim Wiedemeyer, who found himself 5 down after seven holes before winning five of his last six holes and closing out Greyserman on the par-5 17th.
But when it comes to underdog stories, there isn’t a longer shot left in this field than Abdo.
Never even the best player on his teams at Edina High, Abdo signed with the Gusties and immediately rooted himself at the program’s practice facility, which, unlike many schools at that level, features multiple hitting bays with TrackMans and other high-end amenities – more than enough for the mustachioed range rat to develop quickly. Abdo won his first tournament in April, a victory that landed him in the world ranking, and followed with a runner-up showing before being named the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference’s rookie of the year.
With the iron hot, Abdo decided to test the portal waters. It wasn’t that he needed to get out of St. Peter, but it had always been his dream to play Division-I golf. Having also qualified this summer for his first U.S. Amateur – in his first try, too – via a 4-for-2 playoff, Abdo thought he’d at least field a few offers from schools.
But weeks went by, and to date, just one Big Ten program, which Abdo wouldn’t address by name, has shown marginal interest.
“After a couple of calls, I was told that there wasn’t enough time to make a decision,” Abdo explained. “I accepted that and used it as fuel to come out here and prove them wrong, and I think, so far, I’ve done that.”
Abdo birdied the treacherous first hole, a converted par-5 playing as a 522-yard par-4 on Wednesday – and a hole that yielded just three birdies in stroke play. He won the second hole, too, to take a 2-up lead out of the gates. But Abdo knew Reilly was too talented not to mount a charge, which came immediately; the Lovettsville, Virginia, native, whose dad, Terry Reilly, is the EVP of Wasserman, holed a 30-yard bunker shot to win the par-3 third and two holes later chipped in for birdie to flip the match to 1 up in his favor. Reilly led 2 up after 11 holes.
“I think a lot of people would’ve folded and gave up,” Abdo said, “but me and my caddie (childhood friend Evan Raiche) were like, we got to this point, there’s no point in backing down now. … What kept me fighting is knowing that there’s not much pressure on the 61 seed. I knew I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I knew that if I just stayed aggressive and stayed with it – I’d been hitting the ball too good to not make something happen.”
Did he ever.
And he doesn’t plan on folding either, no matter who he’s matched up against.
“I’m not afraid of anybody,” Abdo replied when asked what he hopes people will learn about him this week.
“This is the best opportunity of my career to make myself stand out, and that’s the way I’m going to view everybody,” he added. “Doesn’t matter if it’s the No. 1 player or like me, the No. 4,000 player; the better the player, the more focused I’m going to be, and I’m going to use that to my advantage because I know I can trust myself out there.
“You don’t get chances like this to play against the best players in the world very often. This is probably going to be one of my few opportunities, and I just have to go out there and take care of it.”
On Olympic’s graveyard, Abdo’s proving ground.
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