Marc Dull put the odds at 10 percent, and he was on the wrong end of that estimation in the Round of 16 at the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball on Tuesday morning. Two against one didn’t seem like a fair fight.
Dull and his fellow Floridian, Chip Brooke, advanced through 36 holes of stroke play and the first round of match play (beating former champions Nathan Smith and Todd White) at Plainfield Country Club in Edison, N.J. But Brooke had known before play began that if the duo went deep in the championship, he would have to miss Tuesday for his daughter’s graduation. He asked Dull if he still wanted to try.
“Yeah, let’s do it. Why not?” Dull recalled saying. “If we get there, we’ll just cross that bridge when we get there.”
The bridge ended up being paved with Dull’s own impressive play, as the longtime caddie at Streamsong Golf Resort shot three under par, including concessions, and beat John Ramsey and Chadd Slutzky, 2 and 1, to reach the quarterfinals on Tuesday afternoon.
The feat was historic, with Dull, 39, becoming the first solo winner in the Four-Ball Championship’s 10-year history.
Through 11, Dull trailed by one hole, but he flipped the match by capturing three straight holes, with birdies on 12 and 13, and a par on 14.
“I knew it was going to be a strong task … but just trying to make no mistakes,” he said. “I wasn’t super patient, just trying to make them make birdies to beat me, and I made a few putts today. I was down two early, made a couple birdies on the front to kind of turn at even, and with nine holes to play, I’m like, I’ve got a chance. I’ve got a chance.”
If anything, Dull felt like the pressure was on a twosome trying to beat a single.
“I would say the pressure was more on them,” Dll said, “but I wouldn’t say it frees me up because out here you can’t play golf like that. Like everything has to just be playing the golf course. You can’t be aggressive out here. You can’t take on shots that you can’t hit.
“I will say this is the right golf course to be able to do that, where you don’t need to go shoot seven or eight under. You can go shoot two or three under and have a chance because this golf course is so hard. So I told my caddie [Brian Davidson, a fellow caddie at Streamstrong], if I drive it well and drive it in the fairway, I have a chance. And I do. I just drove it so well today.”
Dull was deft with his putter too and recounted making four or five efforts in the four- to eight-foot range early. “They’re probably assuming I’m going to miss one or two of them [and] we do; we work for a living; we’re not professional golfers. But I made them all.”
As the match went on, Dull said he could sense the frustration growing in his opponents.
“There was definitely some frustration because I get it … if me and my partner are playing one guy, I would get frustrated, too; why are we not killing this guy. 100 percent. The thought would be he can’t keep doing this, like he’s got to screw up somewhere.”
In the afternoon, Dull was playing in the last quarterfinal match of the day against Carson Looney and Hunter Powell, and he was 2-down through five. He admitted after the morning play that he had to keep driving the ball well to give he and Brooke a chance to fight on come Wednesday.
“I’m mentally exhausted, but not physically because I caddie every day,” Dull said. “But, mentally, I just have to kind of refocus and get the mind back where it is. We were just on top of our numbers all day, like didn’t get overly aggressive, just kind of hit what the golf course gave to us.”
USGA officials said that Brooke intends to return to play in Wednesday’s semifinal match if Dull is about to pull out the quarterfinal victory on Tuesday afternoon.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
