By Tod Leonard
BANDON, Ore. — It was a scene out of fiction, a gorgeously sunny day turned damp and gloomy, the fog having crept onto the cliffs and blanketed the Bandon Dunes Golf Course. In the eeriness, a movie of Tyler Strafaci’s making was playing in his head. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, visualizing the 4-iron shot that he was about to strike on the 36th hole in the final of the U.S. Amateur Championship.

“I said, ‘This is your time to hit a winning shot. Go get it,’ ” Strafaci recalled later when darkness had descended on the Oregon coast. “I’ve done it a bunch of times back home, and I knew I could execute it, and I trusted myself, and I did it.”

Strafaci powered a draw into the mist and exclaimed, “Oh, please be good!” When a handful of onlookers near the green cheered, he knew he’d reached the par 5 in two, settling 14 feet from the hole. It was the shot of Strafaci’s life, and in the fog, considering the pressure cooker of the circumstances, it’s likely one of the greatest on a finishing hole in the 120-year history of America’s national championship.

When opponent Charles (Ollie) Osborne, who had fought back in the tremendous match by winning the 34th and 35th holes, couldn’t get up and down for birdie, the 20-year-old from Reno, Nev., conceded the last, and Strafaci took the match, 1 up, without rolling a final putt.

It was a fittingly dramatic ending to a tremendous contest in which the combatants combined for 25 birdies and one eagle, including concessions. In the morning alone, they would have shot 60 in best ball.

“Oh please be good! Come on! Oh yeah!”

What a shot! @TyStrafaci with the RIPPED 4-iron to ? range. #USAmateur pic.twitter.com/wjUioHA5QN

— USGA (@USGA) August 17, 2020

“Ollie played spectacularly,” said Frank Strafaci Jr., who caddied for his son for the 159 holes he played over seven days. “I don’t know what they’re saying, but this has to be one of the best-played finals in U.S. Amateur history.”

Tyler Strafaci, whose amateur and college career at Georgia Tech was extended by the coronavirus pandemic, earned the right to lift the Havemeyer Trophy that eluded his highly accomplished grandfather, Frank Strafaci Sr. Eighty-five years ago, the eldest Strafaci captured his only USGA title, the U.S. Amateur Public Links.

“This trophy has been the holy grail for my family for over 80 years,” said Frank Strafaci Jr., 62. “And it’s something that my father always felt was an empty spot in his competitive career. It’s something that meant a lot to him, and I can genuinely say that he would have preferred Tyler to win it.”

Steven Gibbons
Tyler Strafaci with his caddie/father, Frank Strafaci, as they walk together during the final match of the U.S. Amateur.

RELATED: Golfer makes 102-yard hole-in-one at Sheep Ranch … with her putter!

On the 18th green, Tyler Strafaci bear-hugged and lifted off the ground 2021 U.S. Walker Cup captain Nathanial Crosby, the 1981 U.S. Amateur champion. With the triumph, Strafaci automatically makes the American Walker Cup team for the matches against Great Britain & Ireland next May at Seminole Golf Club in Strafaci’s home state of Florida.

“My grandfather was born in America, and during the late ’30s he was the best amateur golfer in the world—no ifs, ands or buts about it,” Tyler Strafaci said. “And for him not to be selected on that Walker Cup team, it kind of hit home hard with him. It’s a different day and age now, but he kind of held that deep inside him. That’s why I always wanted to be the first Strafaci to make a Walker Cup.

“It’s been a rough couple years,” he added, “because I’ve been pretty close to it, and now that I’m on that team, I feel like I’ve made him proud, and I feel like it’s just unbelievable.”

Strafaci has worn the family name with pride at times while feeling a pressure he may not have been able to acknowledge until he captured this summer’s North and South Amateur, a prestigious tournament his grandfather won twice in the 1930s.

“I think he found out this summer that he belongs,” said Georgia Tech head coach Bruce Heppler, who flew overnight on Saturday from Atlanta to attend the final and see U.S. Amateur and Yellow Jackets history. No other university has had two different players win back-to-back titles, with teammate Andy Ogletree winning a year ago a Pinehurst.

Reflecting on the family legacy on Sunday, Tyler said, “Later in my high school career, when I started playing amateur events and U.S. Amateurs and the North and South, and I had 20 people and cameras following, I don’t think I was ready to handle it—until about six months ago. To be able to do what I did and kind of overcome all that pressure and stuff, I’ve grown up and kind of compartmentalized a lot of stuff, and I got it done.”

Steven Gibbons
Ollie Osborne plays his second shot to the 11th hole during the final round at the 2020 U.S. Amateur at Bandon Dunes.

There was plenty of packaging things into various boxes in the Bandon Dunes final. There were the first 12 holes in the morning, when Osborne and his hot putter seized a 5-up lead with seven birdies—only one of them conceded.

Was Strafaci rattled? No, he said flatly, “Never a doubt.”

He backed up that bravado by storming back to win four of the last six holes in the morning to be only 1 down heading into a 90-minute lunch break.

When Strafaci won the 20th hole with a birdie 2 he completed the comeback, and on the 25th hole he seized his first lead with another birdie.

Then the fog rolled in and the match got wild. Osborne tied it with a birdie 4 on the 31st hole, but Strafaci countered with what would have been the shot of the tournament if not for his 4-iron at the last. Strafaci said he didn’t catch all of his tee shot at the par-4 14th—playing at 315 yards in the afternoon—but he still drove the green, his ball catching a slope and cozying up to six feet from the cup. And after Osborne made a tremendous up-and-down for birdie, Strafaci drained the eagle putt to retake the lead.

“To be able to clutch up on top of him was pretty cool,” Strafaci said.

Steven Gibbons
Tyler Strafaci plays his shot out of the fairway bunker at the 16th hole of the morning portion of the U.S. Amateur final.

The lead went to 2 up at the par-3 15th when Osborne overcooked his 7-iron to a tough lie down a slope and conceded after needing three shots to reach the putting surface. But then Strafaci made two big mistakes that led to the match becoming tied again—driving into a fairway bunker on the par-4 16th when he could have chosen to lay up, and not having enough club to clear the canyon on his approach at the 17th.

So, Strafaci had to stare down the par-5 18th hole again. He was forced to play it in his previous three matches—proof of his grinding wins.

“Coach [Heppler] today after my first 18, he came up to me and pretty much told me, ‘You know how to play 18. If it comes down to it, you’ve won it [three] times in a row; do it again. I did it,” Strafaci said.

Frank Strafaci marveled at the 4-iron shot from his son pulled off from more than 225 yards and recalled what he and his wife, Jill, saw in Tyler when he was a kid.

“He’d hit a shot like that and we’d go, ‘There’s something about him, something special,” the father said. “He just did things … we’d look at each other and say, ‘That’s not us; that’s all him.”

It’s all Tyler Strafaci now, and he’s got a USGA trophy to call his very own.

The post Tyler Strafaci comes up clutch on 36th hole, wins U.S. Amateur to add to his family lore appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Tod Leonard
BANDON, Ore. — In this case, it’s truly like father, like son.

When Tyler Strafaci and Charles (Ollie) Osborne tee it up against each other in the 36-hole championship match of the 120th U.S. Amateur on Sunday at Bandon Dunes, their personalities and approaches to the pressure they face will be markedly different. Not only in their own demeanours, but those of their caddies—both of whom happen to be their dads.

Frank Strafaci Jr. is a fast-talking, edgy son of a New Yorker with longish gray hair who hails from a deeply accomplished golf family. There’s a certain amount of, say, confidence that goes along with that. Steve Osborne speaks softly and deliberately, just as you might expect from an attorney by profession. You’re probably not going to see him pounding his fist on a table in the courtroom like the lawyers do on television.

“My wife’s Italian. She’s the animated one,” Steve said with a grin late on Saturday afternoon.

Ollie Osborne is decidedly not cartoonish, which is why his family dubbed him the “Silent Assassin” when he’s on the golf course. “He’ll be walking up the fairway, talking to no one, but he will beat you,” his dad said with pride.

Tyler Strafaci, 22 and a rising fifth-year senior at Georgia Tech, doesn’t mask his emotions or thoughts, explaining about his near-collapse in the semifinals on Saturday, “I wasn’t responding to it well. I’m not gonna lie. I didn’t do well with it. I was telling my dad there was a lot of negative self-talk.”

The golfers are opposites to be sure, but that makes their first meeting of any kind all the more compelling, as does what is on the line for each of them if they can claim their first U.S. Amateur title. Strafaci got choked up after his 1-up semifinal victory over Aman Gupta when reminded that just by reaching the finals he’d made the 2021 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines and likely will get an invitation to next year’s Masters, which his grandfather, Frank Strafaci Sr., played in three times. “So cool, awesome,” he said after pausing to collect his emotions.

Said Osborne, after he’d beaten Matthew Sharpstene, 4 and 2, “It’s kind of unbelievable. I can’t believe that I’m here. It’s just cool how this week has gone for me, and I’m excited to be in it.”

RELATED: Golfer makes 102-yard hole-in-one at Sheep Ranch … with her putter!

A 20-year-old from Reno, Nev., who will be a junior this fall at SMU, Osborne looked doomed to not make it out of stroke play when he got the field’s toughest draw for the first round—wind-swept Bandon Dunes on Monday—and shot 77.

“We had a little talk about how he has to just … feel that calmness within himself,” Steve Osborne said. “He’s at his best when he’s that way. Whenever he plays with me, he knocks my socks off. I told him to just pretend you’re playing dad.”

Osborne responded the next day by tying the Bandon Trails course record with a 64. His run through match play thus far has been one of domination, with only his first-round match reaching the 18th hole. On Saturday, in the most benign conditions of the week, Osborne was 1 down to Sharpstene after losing the seventh hole, but countered with four birdies while winning six of his final nine holes.

“This week, I’ve just been looking at this like I have nothing to lose, everything to gain,” Osborne said. “I try to be as aggressive as possible.”

Osborne, who won the AJGA’s 2017 Jordan Spieth Championship, has one college win and came into the week somewhat under the radar because of his place at No. 460 in the World Amateur Golf Rankings. But he also advanced through two stages of qualifying to reach the PGA Tour’s 2019 Barracuda Championship, and while playing on his home course of Montreaux Country Club in Reno, he came up one point shy [with a double bogey on the 18th hole] of reaching the weekend in the modified Stableford format.

His dad also recalled that in SMU’s playoff to get into match play at the 2019 NCAA Championship, Osborne drained a 20-foot birdie that helped the Mustangs reach the final eight.

“The people who play him can see how good he is, and the best part is, he keeps working to get better,” Steve Osborne said. “When the top guys play him, they see it.”

Steven Gibbons
Tyler Strafaci and his caddie/father Frank Strafaci celebrate after he won his U.S. Amateur semifinal match.

Strafaci and Osborne hadn’t met until they greeted each other briefly on Saturday morning. Osborne figures to get a feel for his opponent early on Sunday. Strafaci, ranked No. 56 in the WAGR after winning this year’s North and South Amateur and Palmetto Amateur, has had a much more tumultuous route to the final. He was part of the rules snafu on Thursday when the caddie for Segundo Oliva Pinto brushed the sand on the 18th hole—a violation called out by the elder Stafaci that resulted in a lost hole and match.

In the quarterfinals, Strafaci twice lost a 2-up lead to mid-am Stewart Hagestad before prevailing on 18, and on Saturday, Strafaci stormed to a 4-up lead on Gupta, only to be caught by the 17th hole. He prevailed when Gupta drove into a bunker at 18 and took three shots to escape.

“Another weird finish. I don’t know how to describe it,” Tyler Stafaci said. “Still, it was a great match. I still played solid. [Sunday] I’ve got to do a better job if I get ahead to keep the pedal down.”

Strafaci admitted he had to overcome jangly nerves before he teed off. He said he spoke to former roommate and last year’s U.S. Amateur champ Andy Ogletree on Saturday morning. “I said, ‘Bro, I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty nervous. I’ve never been in this spot before.’” Strafaci said. “He was very good. He told me, ‘You just have to understand, the other guy is as nervous, if not more nervous, than you are.’ That kind of got me in a better mindset.”

Both finalists are playing with hope and expectations on their shoulders, provided by their universities’ rich tradition. Strafaci is seeking the fourth title for Georgia Tech, whose three champs include a legend, Bobby Jones [and his five U.S. Am wins]. SMU has four U.S. Amateur winners, with Bryson DeChambeau being the most recent in 2015.

Strafaci hung out and watched TV with the Havemeyer Trophy on the coffee table when he lived with Ogletree. Osborne has been bombarded with texts this week from some of the past Mustang champs, and, not surprisingly, he insists that doesn’t add to the pressure.

“It actually kind of calms me down to hear, and they are telling you that you’ve got the game, just kind of do you,” Osborne said.

Fathers and sons will no doubt be themselves on Sunday, and that’s all the theater we could ask for.

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