Around the Green

Quarterfinal Matches Set for Saturday Morning at the Public Links

Friday brought the top 32 players from the qualifying round
back to Avery Ranch Golf Club for the first and second rounds of match play.
Players were seeded based on their qualifying positions and placed into the
match play bracket accordingly.

The Round of 32 matches started at 7:30 AM with the
qualifying round medalist and 1^st seed, Tyler Thomas, pitted against
a survivor of the qualifying round playoff and 32^nd seed, Bryan
Neuhaus. Thomas continued his great play early, winning four of the first seven
holes, and went on to win the match 6 and 4. The third match of the morning
featured Blake Pugh of Southlake and Patrick Halden of Fort Worth. Pugh
immediately took a commanding 4-up lead, making birdie on his first four holes.
With six birdies in the ten-hole match, Pugh closed out Halden 9 and 8.
Christopher Wheeler of Addison, and Joshua Aguilar of Round Rock had different
plans for their match. The players took turns with the lead before finishing
the 18^th hole all square. The two continued on to the first tee and
proceeded to match pars on the 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st
holes. On the 22^nd hole, Wheeler made par to win the match and move
on to the next round.

Winners of the morning matches had time to grab lunch and
warm up before heading back out onto the course for the Round of 16 matches
which started at 1:00 PM. In the second match of the afternoon, the consistent
play of Zander Winston proved too much for Blake Pugh. Winston took the lead at
the 7^th and never looked back, closing out the match 4 and 2. In
similar fashion, James Glenn of Houston took the lead in his match against
Logan Philley of Robert Lee and never gave it back. Glenn would go on to lead
the match 6-up at one point before closing out Philley, 4 and 3. Two other
matches were forced to go extra holes but ended on the 19^th when
David Cha and Lance Ester each made birdies on the first extra hole to claim a
spot in Saturday’s Quarterfinals.

Quarterfinals matches are set to take place Saturday morning
at 7:30 AM off of the first tee at Avery Ranch Golf Club. Semifinal matches
will start that afternoon at 12:00 PM. For pairings and scoring, please visit
WWW.TXGA.ORG.