If nothing else, next week’s Pacific Coast Amateur should be a very formidable test for the three players representing Colorado.
After all, the field includes the top three players in the World Amateur Golf Rankings — Braden Thornberry (1), Justin Suh (2) and Collin Morikawa (3) — and roughly 30 percent of the top 100.
In addition, the 52nd annual Pac Coast will be contested July 24-27 at The Olympic Club’s Lake Course (left) in San Francisco, which has hosted five U.S. Opens, most recently in 2012.
Besides being a 72-hole stroke play event for participating individuals, the first two rounds will include the 36-hole Morse Cup, in which 15 teams from the western U.S. and Canada will vie for the title. The best two individual scores each day will count toward the team total. The Colorado team has finished 10th each of the last four years in the Morse Cup and has never captured the title.
Representing Colorado next week in the 90-player event will be Jake Staiano of Cherry Hills Village, Chris Korte of Littleton and Chris Thayer of Golden. It will be the second Pacific Coast Amateur for Korte, who also played in 2016, and the first for both Staiano and Thayer.
Staiano, a senior-to-be on the Colorado State University golf team, was the CGA Les Fowler Player of the Year in 2017. Staiano finished eighth in last year’s CoBank Colorado Open, capturing low-amateur honors. He’s competed in two U.S. Amateurs, in 2015 and ’17. He went to the quarterfinals of last month’s CGA Match Play.
Korte, who recently wrapped up his college career at the University of Denver, has won both the CGA Amateur (2016) and Match Play (2017). He made it to the quarterfinals of this year’s Match Play.
Thayer, the lone mid-amateur on this year’s Colorado team, has won two of the last four CGA Mid-Amateurs (2014 and ’17) and was runner-up the two years in between. He’s been the CGA Mid-Amateur Player of the Year three years running (2015, ’16 and ’17).
For Tuesday’s first-round pairings at the Pacific Coast Amateur, CLICK HERE.
