PEBBLE BEACH — Matt Wotherspoon of Buckingham shot an 11-over-par 83 at the Spyglass Hill Golf Course in Pebble Beach during first-round play Monday at the 118th annual Northern California Golf Association Amateur Championship.
A former four-time All-Coastal Mountain Conference golfer at Kelseyville High School as well as a member of the highly regarded Cypress Junior College golf team in Southern California for the past two years, Wotherspoon will be attending Cal State University San Bernardino on a golf scholarship beginning later this month. He qualified into the NCGA Amateur in July when he carded an even-par 72 during a regional qualifier at the Haggin Oaks Golf Complex in Sacramento.
Wotherspoon began play with a birdie on Spyglass Hill’s opening par-5 hole. He had a hiccup on the difficult par-4 sixth hole where he recorded a triple-bogey seven, and he went on to shoot a 5-over-par 41 on the front nine.
On the back nine, Wotherspoon picked up four bogeys along with a double-bogey on the par-4 18th hole for a score of 42 and an 18-hole total of 83. Along with his opening-hole birdie, Wotherspoon recorded eight pars, seven bogeys, a double-bogey and a triple-bogey. He is currently tied for 109th place.
Spyglass Hill played brutally tough Monday for the 156 golfers in the field. It is ranked within the top 50 golf courses in America by Golf Digest, has been a host rotation course for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am on the PGA Tour since 1964, and was the co-host along with Pebble Beach for the 1998 United States Amateur.
Fresno State’s Kevin Huff was the only golfer in the field to card an under-par round Monday as he shot a 1-under-par 71. Tied for second place at even-par 72 were Owen Avrid, a member of the golf team at the University of Oregon, and Curtis DaSilva of Monterey, a 15-year-old who will be starting his junior year next month at Robert Louis Stevenson High School in Pebble Beach. As a brief aside, RLS High School sits adjacent to the 17th and 18th holes at Spyglass Hill.
The low 32 golfers after two rounds of play advance to single-elimination match play beginning Wednesday morning. After Monday’s round, a score of 4-over-par 76 was good enough to finish within the top 32. If the course setup and conditions are similar during Tuesday’s second-round play, it is a good guess that 8-over-par for 36 holes should be enough to advance into match play.
Depending on how the field plays Tuesday, Wotherspoon probably needs to play under-par golf during the second round to have a chance at reaching Wednesday’s match play.
