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U.S. MID-AMATEUR

Hagestad Takes 5-Up Lead Halfway Through Mid-Am Final

By Ron Driscoll, USGA

| Sep 30, 2021 | Siasconset, Mass.

Southern Californian Stewart Hagestad is halfway home to claiming his second U.S. Mid-Amateur title in five years. (Chris Keane/USGA)

40th U.S. Mid-Amateur Home

What Happened

Stewart Hagestad, 30, of Newport Beach, Calif., won his semifinal match in convincing fashion on Thursday morning, then took a 5-up lead over Mark Costanza, 32, of Morristown, N.J., in the first 18 holes of the final match of the 40th U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Sankaty Head Golf Club.

The second 18 holes of the 36-hole final will begin at 7:30 a.m. EDT on Friday, the championship having been delayed several hours by fog during Round 1 of stroke play on Saturday.

“It’s the mindset in match play, where you have to assume the other guy is going to do the unthinkable or always hit the really good shot and knock it in there close,” said Costanza, who played at St. John’s University. “Even though that’s your mindset, the other guy doesn’t always do it, but he [Hagestad] seemed to do it today. Good playing by him.”

Through 11 holes, Hagestad had amassed a 7-up lead, but Costanza, the 2020 Metropolitan Golf Association and New Jersey Player of the Year, steadied himself and won two of the final seven holes to end the day with a less daunting 5-down deficit. Costanza won Nos. 12 and 18 with pars and made a couple of other par-saving putts to halve holes.

“I haven’t done a thing,” said Hagestad, who improved his match-play record in this championship to 19-3 with his 4-and-3 win over No. 64 seed Hayes Brown on Thursday morning. “[Costanza] gave me a couple holes early, but he’s got a ton of firepower. It’s a good start, but it’s not much more than that.”

Costanza got off to a rocky start, hooking his tee shot on the par-4 opening hole to lose his ball and the hole with a double bogey. After the players tied three holes with pars, Hagestad won the par-4 fifth hole with a short birdie putt and the par-3 sixth when Costanza made bogey from a greenside bunker. The lead grew to 7 holes when Hagestad reeled off four consecutive winning birdies on Nos. 8-11 – a two-putt birdie on the par-5 eighth, a conceded birdie after Costanza missed his par putt on No. 9, and short birdie putts after impressive approach shots on Nos. 10 and 11.

Hagestad, the 2016 champion who is competing in his second final, ended the improbable run of Brown, 32, of Charlotte, N.C., in the morning. With four match wins this week, Brown had already won two more matches than any previous No. 64 seed in this championship, and he was bidding to become the first No. 64 player to win any USGA championship since seeding began in match-play championships in the mid-1980s.

“[Hagestad] really makes no mistakes. He was hitting greens, and it’s hard to gain ground unless you're making a bunch of birdies. In that wind, birdies are definitely tough to come by,” said Brown, who began his run of victories by knocking off the medalist, Yaroslav Merkulov, 1 up, on Tuesday.

Costanza earned his spot in the final with a 2-and-1 victory on Thursday morning over Nick Maccario of Haverhill, Mass. Costanza, who is competing in just his second USGA championship, got married on Sept. 18 and his wife, Meredith, is caddieing for him this week. His win thwarted the bid of the 59th-seeded player from the Bay State, who also got into match play via the same playoff as Brown.

“On the first nine, I hit a lot of good putts that I thought were going to go in that didn’t go in, and he played phenomenal – he made no bogeys and shot 4 under,” said Maccario of Costanza. “At the beginning of the back nine, I said, I have to do to him what he did to me, more or less. I made two or three birdies on the back side, and he matched them for the most part.”

What’s Next

The final match will continue on Friday at 7:30 a.m. Admission is free and spectators are welcome. The champion will earn a gold medal and possession of the Robert T. Jones Memorial Trophy for one year, as well as an exemption into the 2022 U.S. Open Championship at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., the 2022 Masters Tournament, the next 10 U.S. Mid-Amateurs and the next two U.S. Amateurs, along with other exemptions. The runner-up will receive a silver medal as well as an exemption into the next three U.S. Mid-Amateurs and the 2022 U.S. Amateur, among other exemptions. 

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Mark Costanza finds himself in a deep hole going into the second 18 of the 36-hole championship match at Sankaty Head. (Chris Keane/USGA)

Notable

  • Stewart Hagestad’s caddie is Peter Kiley, 18, whose family belongs to The Los Angeles Country Club, where Hagestad plays. Kiley has worked the past four summers at Sankaty Head’s famed caddie camp, a program that began in 1930 and provides each year’s class of caddies the opportunity to live in on-course lodging provided by the club and work for 10 weeks, looping for members and their guests. It has proven a life-changing experience for many young men over its 90 years, and Kiley has brought some local knowledge as well as a sounding board for Hagestad. “He’s 18, but he’s much more mature than I was at 18,” said Hagestad on Wednesday. “He’s not afraid to call me off and tell me no and give me a little sass. I think that he’s learned a couple things from me, and I’ve learned a couple things from him. I owe a tremendous amount of credit to him for helping us get this far.”

  • This is the second time that two previous Metropolitan Golf Association (MGA) Players of the Year have met in the U.S. Mid-Am final. Hagestad was the 2016 MGA Player of the Year, the year he won the U.S. Mid-Am, while Mark Costanza is the 2020 MGA Player of the Year. The other occurrence was in 2002, when George Zahringer beat Jerry Courville Jr., 3 and 2, at The Stanwich Club in Greenwich, Conn.

  • Hagestad is looking to join three other players as two-time champions of the U.S. Mid-Am: Jim Stuart (1990, 1991), Tim Jackson (1994, 2001) and John “Spider” Miller (1996, 1998). Only two other players have won more than two: Nathan Smith is a four-time champion (2003, 2009, 2010, 2012) and Jay Sigel won three (1983, 1985, 1987).

  • A No. 64 seed has never won a USGA amateur championship conducted at match play since seeding began in the mid-1980s. Hayes Brown’s run ended after he won two more matches than any previous No. 64 seed in this championship. Also on Thursday, Aliea Clark came up one victory short as the No. 64 seed in the concurrent U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur Championship at Berkeley Hall Club in Bluffton, S.C., losing to Blakesly Brock, 5 and 4. Only one previous No. 64 seed had ever reached a final match: Alexandra Frazier lost to Mina Hardin in the 2010 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur at Fiddlesticks Country Club in Fort Myers, Fla. Three No. 63 seeds have won a title, most recently Jensen Castle, who captured the 121st U.S. Women’s Amateur in August at Westchester Country Club in Rye, N.Y.

  • Hagestad’s four straight birdies on hole Nos. 8-11 in the final match mirrored what he did in his Round-of-32 match against Marc Dull, the 2015 runner-up in this championship. It gave him an identical 7-up lead, in a match he went on to win, 4 and 2.

Quotable

“I was 3 up through 6 and lost to a guy a week ago [to Michael Muehr in the Crump Cup at Pine Valley], so a lot can happen in match play. You need to have a good game plan and think right and execute. Yeah, it doesn’t mean anything.” – Stewart Hagestad, on his 5-up lead after 18 holes

“I’ll do the same thing I did last night: Try and be in bed at a relatively good hour, eat, stretch, just go relax, just keep my phone in airplane mode. Not a whole lot.” – Hagestad, on his plans for Thursday evening

“As the pressure was building a little bit [in the semifinal], I thought back to the New Jersey State Open when there was a big crowd watching and the pressure mounting a little bit. If I hadn’t been in those situations and come through victorious in New Jersey and in the Met section, I think I would have been feeling a little bit more uncomfortable. To have those experiences to fall back on is really important.” – Mark Costanza, on his mindset during his semifinal win

“When I made the [birdie] putt on 13, I started to hear, ‘Come on, you can do this,’ which is fantastic. There were a fair amount of people out there the whole week, telling me, Massachusetts is rooting for you. The goal was to try to get to The Country Club next year. The goal is still to do that, but now I have to do it in a little bit harder way.” – Maccario, on his Bay State support

“I think the whole experience between the holing out and making it this far, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that most people dream of, I got to experience it, so that’s pretty neat. I think I just proved that I’m good enough to be here.” – Brown, who earned the last spot in match play by beating five other players with an eagle 2

“I just did a great job of picking targets, and Pete [Kiley, his caddie] did a great job of giving numbers. We worked well together this morning. I think we just thought really well and then we executed really well, too. We made him go out there and beat me.” – Hagestad, on his semifinal victory

Ron Driscoll is the senior manager of content for the USGA. Email him at rdriscoll@usga.org.

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