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By The Associated Press
Arizona Daily Wildcat
August 21, 1996
CORNELIUS, Ore. - Looking every bit like the two-time champion he is, Tiger Woods was the best of 312 golfers with a 7-under-par 136 at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club to top qualifying for the U.S. Amateur Championship.Woods, trying to become the first player to win three consecutive Amateur titles, shot a 67 Tuesday and now has a chance to be the first stroke-play medalist to win the tournament since Phil Mickelson in 1990.
The 20-year-old Stanford student birdied four of the last seven holes on the difficult par-72 Witch Hollow course to slip past Bo Van Pelt, who finished at 138.
Van Pelt shot a 70 on the par-71 Ghost Creek course. Jay Tewell and Chad Wright finished behind Van Pelt at 3-under-par 140.
The low 64 scores in the two-day medal qualifier advanced to six rounds of match play, culminating with a 36-hole final Sunday.
''That wasn't the plan,'' Woods said about being medalist. ''The plan was to just go out and shoot right around par.''
He was much better than that, turning the front nine in 35 and then rolling in four birdie putts in the 12- to 18-foot range on the back nine.
''I guess the putter got hot a little bit,'' he said about his backside 32.
The way Van Pelt started his round it looked like he might struggle just to qualify for match play. The Oklahoma State junior went out in 38 but rallied to come back in 32.
''After making three bogeys the first five holes I was just saying, 'You better hit this solid or you're going to miss the cut,''' Van Pelt said. ''No. 6 I hit a bad shot in that fairway bunker and I hit a good shot in there about 10 feet and that kind of turned my day around.''
The last two men Woods defeated in the Amateur finals also advanced to match play. Buddy Marucci, who lost to Woods 2-down in the 1995 final, finished at even-par 143. Trip Kuehne, Woods' '94 victim, got in at 1-over-par 144.
Ten men played off for the last eight spots and six got in on the first extra hole with one birdie and five pars. Another advanced on the second hole and the final spot - the player who meets Woods in the first round - went to J.D. Manning on the third extra hole.
The last time Woods lost in the U.S. Amateur was in the second round in 1993 when he was defeated by Paul Page of England 2 and 1. Page isn't playing this year.
Since then Woods has defeated 12 consecutive opponents.
Now he faces one match Wednesday, two Thursday and one opponent Friday, Saturday and Sunday - if he advances that far.
''It means I've got to get up early tomorrow,'' Woods joked about the 9:30 a.m. tee time the medalist gets, going out in the first group of the day.
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