Bringing the best players from across California for the most prestigious championship the Golden State has to offer, the California Amateur Championship teed off at Hacienda GC on June 22 with two rounds of stroke play before cutting the field down to the top 32 players and transitioning to a match play format.
Mitchell Hoey, of Alamo, Calif., was dialed during round one of the championship. Teeing off in the afternoon wave, Hoey would birdie three of his first nine holes, putting him into a great spot heading onto the back nine. A bogey on No. 3 would drop him back down to two-under before going on a tear to close out his round. Hoey would follow up the bogey with back-to-back birdies on Nos. 4 and 5 before an eagle on No.7 would put him at six-under with two holes to play. He would go on to birdie No. 8 and finish his round out with a par, walking off the course in the lead at seven-under, one shot away from tying the long-standing course record held by the legendary Tiger Woods, who set it when he won the SCGA Amateur Championship in 1994.
Hoey would be part of the first group out on the course for the final day of stroke play and although he had a different starting hole, his second round would be eerily similar to his first. Back-to-back birdies on Nos. 3 and 4 would put him at two-under early, but a bogey on No. 6 would cut that in half and he would finish out his front nine at one-under for the round and eight-under for the championship. Much like his first round, Hoey would kick it into another gear on the back nine, picking up five birdies and no bogeys, including three-in-a-row on Nos. 14, 15 and 16 to close out his second round at six-under. Hoey would finish the stroke play portion of the championship at a staggering 13-under, nine strokes better than the runner-up and placing him as the number one seed heading into match play, with the round of 32 starting on June 24.
The final spots in the match play bracket were decided by a playoff, with seven competitors competing for two spots. Broken down into one group of three followed by a second group of four, the playoff kicked off on No. 1 with the group featuring Nik Neal, Eddie Zhang and Avery Lazarski teeing off first. All three competitors would make par on their first playoff hole, with the second group of Jared Abercrombie, Andrew Rodriguez, Nathan Tseng and Cory Chavez all getting the memo and cashing in for par to ensure all seven players would advance to the second playoff hole. No. 9 would serve as the second playoff hole and prove to be a much more formidable task for the remaining players. Chavez sealed his spot in the match play bracket after a long putt birdie just trickled in over the edge of the hole, while pars from Lazarski and Zhang would be enough to see the pair advance to a third playoff hole, where they would face off for the final spot in the match play bracket. The third playoff hole would take place on the treacherous par-3 No. 16, and after a fantastic tee shot from Lazarski, he would drain an uphill 12-foot putt to claim the final spot advancing to match play as the 32 seed in the bracket as the sun set on a beautiful day at Hacienda GC.