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Pinehurst, N.C. – Georgia Tech senior Andy Ogletree won two matches Thursday and advanced to the quarterfinal round of the 119th U.S. Amateur at the Pinehurst Resort, his farthest advance in the U.S. Amateur in four tries.
Ogletree breezed into the quarterfinals with a 5 and 4 rout of Blake Hathcoat, a rising senior at St. Mary’s College. The Tech senior won five consecutive holes early in the match (3 through 7) with four pars and a birdie to take a commanding four-hole lead. After halving the next three holes, Hathcoat won the 11th with a par, but Ogletree took 12 with a birdie and 14 with a par to clinch the match.
“This is my fourth U.S. Amateur, but I also played one U.S. Junior, and I made it to the quarterfinals there and got eliminated. So a little extra motivation for this one,” said Ogletree. “I hit a lot of fairways. He didn’t play as good as I’m sure he wanted to, and just kind of took advantage of that, and every time he was out of position, I seemed to hit a pretty good shot.”
In the morning round of 32, Ogletree needed 19 holes to subdue Maxwell Moldovan, a 17-year-old Unionville, Ohio, high school senior. In a see-saw match that Muldovan led by one hole through 13, Ogletree tied the contest with a birdie at 14, and the two players parred in before the Little Rock, Miss., native won the match with a par on the first extra hole.
“He didn’t miss a fairway. Devin (Stanton, his caddie) and I were talking earlier, he hit 14 fairways, which is pretty impressive out here, so I felt like every time I thought I had that hole, or every time I’d smoke a driver, just something like that, he answered,” said Ogletree. “You can look at the score cards, and it was just back and forth on the back nine. We both shot under par, and unfortunately he bogeyed the playoff hole. But it was a really good match, and it was definitely not given to me, so that was huge for my confidence going forward.”