Story Links
Aug. 26, 2000
By JIM O’CONNELL
AP Sports Writer
Springfield, N.J. – Jeff Quinney shook his comeback kid label for a day. James Driscoll turned his round into a family affair.
They will meet Sunday in the 36-hole championship match of the 100th U.S. Amateur at Baltrusol Golf Club’s Upper Course, and it will be East Coast against West Coast and Atlantic Coast Conference against the Pac-10.
Both closed out their semifinal matches Saturday on the 17th hole and both used a 9-iron to hit the shots that virtually sealed their wins.
Quinney, 21, of Eugene, Ore., who will be a senior at Arizona State, beat David Eger 3 and 1 to advance, while Driscoll, 22, of Brookline, Mass., who just graduated from Virginia, defeated Luke Donald 2 and 1.
For Quinney the semifinals were very different from the previous two rounds when he made impressive comebacks to win.
“I got off to a much better start than the last couple of matches,” said Quinney, who was four holes down in his third-round match before winning in 23 holes and was down three with six holes to play in the quarterfinals before winning five straight holes in a 2-and-1 victory.
He won four holes in a five-hole stretch on the front side – three with birdies – to take the big lead Saturday. He made a 45-foot birdie putt on No. 7 to go 3 up.
“I was lagging it and then it looked good from the start and I knew it was in,” he said. “That was a big momentum swing.”
Eger, 48, who was trying to become the oldest Amateur champion, cut the lead to 2 up with a birdie at the par-4 14th, but Quinney came right back. He hit a 9-iron within a foot on the 145-yard 15th and the match was dormie.
Eger, of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., wasn’t done, however. He chipped in from behind the 16th green for a birdie that kept the match alive.
“I said, ‘You’ve done it yourself so someone else is capable,”’ Quinney said of being a victim of a comeback. “I had to regroup and remain calm.”
When Eger’s birdie putt on the par-5 17th lipped out, he conceded the hole – and the match.
It is the second time Eger lost to an Arizona State golfer in the semifinals – Phil Mickelson beat him in 1990.
Driscoll was cheered on by a group of 40 to 50 that included his five older brothers and an older sister.
His brother Timmy was stung four times by bees while looking for Driscoll’s ball after an errant tee shot on No. 8. His brother Billy got into the act on the next hole when Driscoll’s tee shot hit him in the backside.
“I guess you could call that direct interaction,” Driscoll said laughing. “I didn’t know about those things until after the round but it’s just great have all that support on the golf course. Every time I looked over my shoulder I saw at least one person I knew.”
The tee shot on No. 8 went into the woods but Driscoll was able to save a par 5 and halve the hole, staying within one of Donald. Driscoll birdied No. 9 after his brother was grazed with the tee shot and then won No. 10 with a par.
Donald, a native of England who was the 1999 NCAA champion at Northwestern, got even with a birdie on No. 12, but Driscoll came right back to take the lead again with a par win on the 13th.
The deciding shot was a 9-iron from 150 yards on the par-4 16th that Driscoll hit within a foot. When both parred the 17th, Driscoll, a quarterfinalist last year, was in the finals.
“From 8 to 11 was huge for me,” Driscoll said. “That was a stretch where anything could have happened and it went my way.”
Donald was trying to become the first non-North American to win the Amateur since Harold H. Hilton of England in 1911.