Coug’s 65 puts hurt on field

PULLMAN – Anytime you play in a golf tournament as prestigious as the Washington State Golf Association Men’s Amateur Championship and manage to keep your score out of the 70s all four days, you have to like your chances.

Unless one of those scores is an 81, which is the 9-over-par total Austin Hurt posted during Tuesday’s opening round.

But Hurt, a senior-to-be at Washington State University, shook off his first-round meltdown and fired a course-record 7-under 65 at Palouse Ridge Golf Club – the Cougars’ home course – on Friday to come from nine strokes off the lead and capture his first state amateur title with a 72-hole total of 4-under 284.

Hurt’s unlikely comeback gave him a one-stroke win over third-round leader Derek Berg and high school standout Drew Reinland, who tied for second at 285 after struggling in the steady wind that raked the 7,308-yard, par-72 Palouse Ridge layout throughout the day.

“I wanted to come back,” Hurt, a Bainbridge Island resident, said of his mental approach following Tuesday’s wreck of a round, which included an 11 on the par-5 fifth hole, and was exacerbated by an allergic reaction. “I didn’t want to quit, especially on my home track. It feels great to win in the land of the Cougs. I’m proud of myself.

“Go Cougs!”

Hurt’s Friday score was four strokes better than any other posted and included a tournament-changing eagle on the 540-yard, par-5 ninth, where he holed his third shot from 75 yards out.

“That was nice,” he said. “That’s when I knew I was back in the hunt for title.”

Especially with those third-round leaders, who were playing four groups in front of him, running into all kinds of problems.

Berg, a 27-year-old from Kenmore, who woke up on Friday with a one-stroke lead over Reinland and a two-stoke advantage over WSU teammate Kevin Tucker, let a bunch of players back into the title chase when he triple-bogeyed the par-4 eighth hole after taking three shots to get out of a green-side bunker.

“It was tough to come back from that, because I was really pissed off,” said Berg, who finished second in last year’s State Am and third the year before. “I hit a perfect drive and the kind of second shot I wanted to hit. But the wind must have been more right to left than it was helping and I ended up in the trap.

“It wasn’t like I made a bogey, I made a triple. And that was tough to swallow, because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Berg’s approach shot buried in the middle of the trap and his third rolled back into the sand in a fluffy lie. His fourth barely cleared the edge of the trap and ended up in the long grass that frames the bunker. And from there, he got it up and down for the 7 that probably cost him the tournament.

“I three-putted three times today, too,” Berg said. “So, it could have been the triple, or it could have been the three-putts. But the triple was definitely a momentum-killer.”

Reinland, playing in the final group with Berg and Tucker, made a birdie on the eighth hole to create a four-stroke swing that put him in the lead. But the 18-year-old senior-to-be at Walla Walla High School – who had his father, Jeff, a former basketball player at Eastern Washington University, as his caddy – ran afoul of a testy driver down the stretch and missed a chance to force a playoff when his 20-foot birdie putt on the par-5 72nd hole missed.

Berg, after thundering a drive on the 18th and then knocking a hybrid approach to the right side of the wide but narrow green, also watched his chances of forcing a playoff die when his 60-foot eagle putt burned the left side of the hole.

“I hit the two best shots I’d hit all week on that hole – a perfect drive and a perfect second shot,” Berg said. “And I’d have lost a lot of money on the putt, too, because 15 feet away I would have bet it was going in.”

But it didn’t, and Hurt ended up with the trophy and $750 to spend in the Palouse Ridge pro shop, despite his disastrous opening round, which occurred, he said, because of an allergic reaction on the fifth hole that caused one of his eyes to nearly close.

“I hit a great drive on that hole,” Hurt said of his Tuesday debacle. “But from there, my eye really started bothering me. It felt like something was scraping my cornea and I put my next three shots in the hazard. I made four bogeys after that, but you have to keep in mind that you’re never out of it.

“And this just proves that.”