From the Herald-Sun, May 26, 2008DURHAM -- Even after he shot a 64 on Saturday to take a four-stroke lead heading into the final round of the 35th Durham Amateur, Bryce Mueller didn't win the tournament until the 16th hole on Sunday.
When the Duke graduate stepped onto the tee of the short par-4 at Hillandale Golf Course, he might have needed a Tums to calm his turbulent stomach. His nearest competitor, Riverside's Jack Garrett, was in the midst of a back-nine 31 and had just pruned Mueller's lead to one with birdies on three of the previous four holes.
Not only that, Garrett had piped his tee shot down the middle.
Not only that, the 3-wood in Mueller's hands felt all wrong.
He'd taken a 2-iron off the tee the day before, but with the pin on the back of green on Sunday, Mueller wanted to get the ball farther down the hill for a better look at the flag. So, despite his misgivings, he hit 3-wood, coming over the top and hooking the ball toward the road on the left.
For a fleeting second, it looked like the ball would sail over the white out-of-bounds stakes and start bouncing off the pavement into someone's front yard.
"It looked like it was going out, but someone said it hit a tree," Garrett said.
Still, Mueller was nervous enough that he walked down the fairway motioning to his left and then to his right, which was his way of asking if the ball had stayed in or not.
It had by about four yards. But it had also come to rest in a crevice not far from a tree. When Mueller inspected his ball, he put his hands on the hips of his white pants and thought of his options.
He had 125 yards to a downhill pin, a tricky number since he normally hits his sand wedge 110-112 yards. But after plucking a blade or two of grass behind the ball, Mueller figured he had a flyer and trusted his sand wedge.
"I knew it was juiced up and tried to put it back in my stance and contort it a little bit and get a little extra out of it," Mueller said.
The final result was an approach to 12 feet, not a bad result considering it looked like he might be hitting 3 off the tee.
Farther down on the right side of the fairway, Garrett watched and waited for the third member of the group, Eric Ardery, to play up. Just about everything about Garrett's game is quick -- his pace on the course, his short backswing and the speed he generates through the ball, just to name a few.
So after Ardery went just over the green, it wasn't out of character that Garrett only took a second or two before thumping his wedge at the ball. The ball never left the flag, coming to rest maybe 10 inches from the cup for a tap-in birdie.
As the pro-Garrett cheering section roared its approval, Garrett began preparing for the final two holes, assuming that he and Mueller would be tied at 6-under.
"That's what you're thinking -- I've got a chance now," said Garrett.
As Mueller sized up his birdie putt, he used Garrett's shot as motivation. Maybe not so much the shot as what happened immediately after. There were maybe 30 people following the final group, but based on the boisterous reaction to Garrett's shot, 25 of them were cheering for Garrett.
"As a Duke fan, I'd rather have people cheering against me than for me, so that got me pretty fired up," Mueller said.
The putt was simple enough: 12 feet, left edge, don't leave it short like Mueller had been doing earlier in the round, which had led to a rash of three-putts and a squandered four-stroke lead.
"It was one of those gut check putts," Mueller said. "You've either got it or you don't. I knew it was in as soon as I hit it."
When the putt tumbled over the front edge, Mueller took a step toward the hole and punched the air straight ahead of him. First he had imitated Tiger Woods by making a clutch birdie from the trees, then he had mimicked the world's greatest player with the emphatic reaction. Alas, Mueller was wearing a blue-striped shirt, not Woods' Sunday red.
The tournament wasn't over at that point.
Mueller still needed to flush a 6-iron on the par-3 17th for a routine par and then get up-and-down for birdie from right of the green on No. 18, making a 3½ footer to hold Garrett at bay. It was only when that putt dropped that Mueller (64-70--134) finished the tournament at 8-under, one ahead of Garrett (68-67--135), four in front of Dalton Rich (69-69--138) and six clear of Caleb Corry (72-68--140).
But when it was finished, there was little debate where the tournament turned.
"That was the tournament for me," Mueller said of No. 16. "He's younger than me and I felt like I had the experience and everything. Coming down the stretch, I was confident in myself that I wasn't going to mishit golf shots, so that putt was huge for me. I felt like when I made that putt -- now I've got two hands on the steering wheel and it's my tournament to lose at that point.
"It was a great feeling."
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