Andy Ogletree adds his name to U.S. Amateur lore

Little Rock, Mississippi native Andy Ogletree beats John Augenstein in Sunday’s final to win the 119th U.S. Amateur at Pinehurst

The town of Little Rock, Mississippi is 570 miles from Pinehurst, 280 miles from the campus of Georgia Tech, and a million miles from golf immortality. With a population of barely 2,000 and no traffic lights, it’s the type of place you would least expect a national champion to come from.

Little Rock is hard to find on a map, but on Sunday at Pinehurst, native son Andy Ogletree put it there. Ogletree, a bespectacled 21-year-old senior at Georgia Tech, defeated John Augenstein 2&1 in the championship match to win the 119th U.S. Amateur title.

Ogletree advanced to the final with wins over Chandler Phillips, Maxwell Moldovan, Blake Hathcoat, Spencer Ralston and, finally, teenager Cohen Trolio in the semifinals. That earned him a matchup with Augenstein, who blew past his opponents all week and trailed for just one hole through five matches. And after tying the opening hole of the 36-hole final in the morning, Augenstein then looked like he was going to make Ogletree just another obstacle in his way.

Augenstein won four holes in a row to take a 4-up lead after just five. Ogletree, though, continued to play well and by the time the morning 18 holes were done, he had closed the deficit to just two holes. He said afterward that he realized he needed to stay patient to remain in the match.

“To be honest, I didn’t play that bad. John just got off to a great start,” he told Fox Sports at the trophy presentation. “It’s a long day, 36 holes is a lot of golf. You can’t really beat yourself up over the first six. I really did a good job of staying in it. I just knew that if I kept hitting fairways and greens and keep putting myself in position it would work out.”

Work out, it did. By the 12th hole in the afternoon session, the 31st of the match, Ogletree was down by just one when he spun his approach shot back toward the hole to set up an easy birdie. The match now tied for the first time since the first hole, Ogletree won the next, the 32nd, with a par to take the lead for the first time. It was only the second time all week that Augenstein, a junior at Vanderbilt, found himself behind in a match. There would be no comeback for him, though, and the match came to an end when Augenstein made double-bogey at the 17th.

The Havemeyer Trophy is a stunning gold-plated cup, the names of each of the previous 118 champions engraved on its base. Since it was first handed out in 1895, the oldest golf championship in the United States, names like Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods have hoisted it and called it there own. They were phenoms, pegged for stardom from a young age.

Ogletree wasn’t one of them. The 120th-ranked amateur in the world, he was making his fourth appearance in the U.S. Amateur but had never advanced past the opening round. But now he gets to add his name alongside those legends. He joins Jones, a five-time champion, and Matt Kuchar as the only Yellow Jackets to win the championship. In addition, he gets a pairing with Tiger Woods at the Masters next April and an exemption into the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. Those places must seem like fairytales for a kid from Little Rock, but Ogletree says he isn’t looking that far ahead.

“I don’t know if I’ve gotten that far yet. But it’s a reality now, and it’s unbelievable,” he said.

Fairytales sometimes do come true, even in a quiet place like Little Rock.