Sports
Golfer from St. Charles Opens Strong at U.S Amateur
Blake Biddle plays "lights-out" golf in first round on Monday.
Playing your first round in a United States Golf Association championship, on a future U.S. Open course, is never supposed to be easy. Certainly, of St. Charles never expected it to be.
However, Biddle played lights-out golf in Monday’s opening round of the U.S. Amateur, firing a 5-under par 67 in ideal morning conditions at Erin Hills Course in Erin, WI.
“As weird as it sounds it was kind of kind of an easy round,” said Biddle, who was an alternate for the 2011 U.S. Open. “I just hit it awesome today, only missing one fairway and just two greens all day.”
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With the wind down as he teed off, Biddle’s round started fast on the course’s back nine. The UNLV sophomore-to-be managed birdies on three of his first five holes on his way to 4-under on Erin Hills’ longer back side.
“I got a lot of momentum going early with those early birdies,” Biddle said. “But the one that sticks out the most is the 20-foot side-hill putt I made for birdie on No. 4 to push it to 5-under.”
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Biddle coasted home from there, parring out to post the morning’s low round.
“My main goal today was to keep it in play and not make any big numbers,” Biddle said. “I practiced a lot on five-footers back at home because I expected to have a lot of those for pars. (Instead), I had a lot of them for birdies today.”
Biddle’s round matched Gregor Main of Danville, CA (5-under 65 at Blue Mound Country Club) for the lead after the morning wave. More impressively, Biddle topped defending champion Peter Uihlein by a shot.
“Five-under par out here?” asked a surprised Uihlein when he heard about Biddle’s number. “The morning was certainly the time to shoot that kind of score. We had great conditions out there.”
Despite his great score, Biddle has mind set on bigger goal.
“I just want to play my way through to match play competition,” Biddle said. “Winning the stroke play portion doesn’t do me a thing unless I play well during the week.”
The U.S. Amateur continues Tuesday with a second round of stroke play, after which the field of 312 will be cut to 64 for head-to-head match play competition through Sunday.
