In a race against darkness, the weather, and the rest of the field, Justin Hastings beat the lot of them, tapping in after sunset to capture the Latin America Amateur Championship at Pilar Golf Club in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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The 21-year-old San Diego State senior finished at 16 under, one shot ahead of Peru’s Patrick Sparks, to become the second LAAC winner from the Cayman Islands, a British overseas territory south of Cuba with a population under 90,000 and just two golf courses. The winner’s trophy presented to Hastings in near darkness after the final putt fell is just the start of the rewards. He earned a spot in this year’s Masters, U.S. Open, Open Championship, U.S. Amateur and British Amateur Championship.
Anticipating rough weather on Sunday, tournament organizers opted to play both the third and fourth rounds on Saturday, hoping all 56 players who made the cut could complete 36 holes before sunset. Hastings caught fire in the third round, making nine birdies and a single bogey to post a tournament-best 64 and carry a significant lead into the final round.
But with the pressure mounting, and Sparks charging from behind, he ran into trouble on the back nine, hitting a shot out of bounds on 13 and narrowly avoiding the hazard on his approach into 15. He escaped with bogey on both holes, but Sparks poured in a dramatic birdie putt on 16 to tie the leader with two holes to play.
Just a hole later, though, Sparks missed a short but tricky downhill par putt, handing the lead back. Playing past the 8:08 p.m. sunset on 18, Hastings hit a low, fading drive into the fairway, and hit his approach into the bank at the back of the green. As the ball rolled to 15 feet, it became clear that Sparks would need to sink a miracle birdie to tie, which he almost did. But when that attempt broke away from the hole, Hastings completed the simple two-putt for the title.
“The game plan was to extend the lead, and I didn’t necessarily do that,” he joked after the round. “I made it a little more interesting than I intended on. But it’s all about just staying in the moment, which is way more difficult than it sounds. Just focus on the shot in front of you … you can’t let yourself get wrapped up in the next few holes, much less the next few months.”
Now that he’s won, the next few months look plenty intriguing for Hastings. At San Diego State, he currently owns the lowest scoring average in record program history—71.48—just edging out the program’s most famous alum, Xander Schauffele. He’s one of 25 players on the Haskins Award Watch List, which goes to the top male U.S. collegiate golfer, and has earned a number of honors in his playing career, including a Golf Channel Preseason All-American honorable mention this year. Now, he’ll get to test his skills in three majors and the two most prestigious amateur events in the world.
His rival for the title, Sparks, is a recent graduate of UNC-Wilmington, where he now serves as an assistant coach. Despite the disappointment of losing, he was happy even in the immediate aftermath, and excited for the tournament to come to his native Peru next year.
“I’m unbelievably proud,” Sparks said. “If you had told me at the start of the week I’d be in the final group, fighting with the leader, I wouldn’t have believed it. I’m going to remember it for a long time.”
Hastings improved on his fourth-place finish last year at this event, and joins his friend Aaron Jarvis (2022) as winners from the Cayman Islands.
“It’s unbelievable,” Hastings said of their achievements. “It seems like a statistical improbability, but I think it just speaks to what we’ve got going on down there. You don’t necessarily need 100 nice golf courses to produce good players and to work hard, so to see Aaron and I come from where we have on that beautiful little island, it’s cool for us and hopefully others.”
The LAAC is a joint venture of the Masters Tournament, the R&A, and the USGA, created in 2014 “to further develop amateur golf throughout this region, and specifically in South America, Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean.” This is the 10th staging of the event and past winners include Joaquin Niemann (2018) and Alvaro Ortiz (2019).
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
