2003 amateur champ to return to Oakmont
The 121st U.S. Amateur returns to Oakmont Country Club for the sixth time, 18 years after a homesick Australian teenager stuck around to beat the top-ranked amateur in the world in one of those difficult tournaments where the winner should have received a purple heart, not a trophy.
Nick Flanagan was 19 when he bested American star Casey Wittenberg, the world’s No. 1 ranked amateur, with a par on the 37th hole to win the U.S. Amateur in 2003, frustrating his opponent with a variety of spectacular up-anddowns from places Oakmont members consider to be black holes.
Flanagan’s charge to the title was so improbable it inspired countryman Greg Norman, who phoned the Oakmont pro shop with messages of encouragement on the weekend and offered to buy clothes for him to wear on national television. In the end, Flanagan’s victory was as draining as it was exhilarating.
“It was such a grinding week,”
Flanagan said. “It was a marathon.”
Flanagan almost didn’t even make it to the matchplay stage of the tournament. He had to birdie the 36th hole of stroke play to advance to a 14-man playoff for match play. And he needed some of that same grit and resolve in his semifinal match with David Oh to make it to the championship when he hit just four of 18 greens in regulation. Fortunately, he hit two of the greens that counted most — Nos. 17 and 18 — to advance to the 36-hole showdown with Wittenberg.
“I was very, very happy to get into match play,” Flanagan said over the phone from San Antonio, where he lives with his wife and two children. “I knew once I got into match play my confidence would come back. You don’t want to get beat up every day playing stroke play at Oakmont. I think 8-over par was the average score that week.”
And that might not change when the U.S. Amateur gets underway Aug. 9, when a field of 312 players begins 36 holes of stroke play to see which 64 players advance to match play. The stroke-play qualifier will be held at Oakmont and the Longue Vue Club in Verona, with every competitor playing 18 holes at each venue over two days.
Match play begins Aug. 11 at Oakmont and concludes with the championship match Aug. 15. Tickets purchased are good only for match play.
Among the interested spectators will be Flanagan, who will return to Oakmont to be part of the festivities and re-live a week that was both difficult and exhilarating. Flanagan had come to the U.S. to play in several big amateur tournaments in 2003 and was ready to go back to Australia even before he qualified for the U.S. Amateur.
“We were already heading back to Australia in our minds before we even did the qualifier,” Flanagan said. “We were so tired. I started getting a little homesick. I was ready to leave, but, at the same time, [ once I qualified] I was pumped to play in that event. I was new to the game and I really didn’t know too much about Oakmont and I couldn’t believe I was playing in the tournament. It was unlike anything I had seen before.”
Oakmont was playing so brutally difficult that the two semifinal matches on Saturday produced a grand total of only three birdies. The championship match with Wittenberg, 18, who was trying to become the second-youngest winner behind Tiger Woods, wasn’t any different.
Leading 1-up with two holes to play, Flanagan had a 6-foot birdie putt at No. 17, the drivable 313-yard par-4, to win the match. But the putt lipped the hole, sending the match down to the 18th, which Flanagan promptly bogeyed with a poor tee shot to force extra holes.
The drama, though, lasted only one more hole. Flanagan smoked a 2-iron 310 yards down the firm, sloping 10th fairway, hit his approach 20 feet above the hole, then managed to two-putt for par while Wittenberg bogeyed. Adding to the tension was Wittenberg failing to concede an 18-inch par putt to Flanagan.
At age 19, Flanagan became the first Australian to win the U.S. Amateur since Walter Travis in 1903, which, coincidentally, was the year Oakmont was founded. He was also the first international player to win the event in 32 years.
“I can still remember some of the up and downs to continually frustrate him,” Flanagan said. “He was the No. 1 amateur in the world at the time, and the big key for me winning the tournament was frustrating him with my upand-downs. He was hitting it much better than me but I kept making par putts. When you think you’re going to win a hole and someone keeps making pars instead of bogeys, it gets frustrating for him.”
The victory helped Flanagan launch a professional career where he won three times on the Nationwide Tour in 2007 to earn a battlefield promotion to the PGA Tour. He spent one year on the big tour, but won again on the Nationwide Tour in 2012. He has shuttled between the Korn Ferry Tour and the PGA of Australia Tour.
When Flanagan returns to Oakmont he will see his name in the hallway of the locker room listed among the pantheon of greats who have won a national championship there — Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones, Sam Snead, Gene Sarazen and Jack Nicklaus. He might even get to stay in the room in the Gatehouse guest quarters that bears his name — an honor bestowed to each of the 19 players who have won a national title at Oakmont.
“Being able to see my name up on those locker room boards, with some of the greatest to ever play, is very humbling,” Flanagan said.