PEBBLE BEACH — Matt Wotherspoon of Buckingham shot a 13-over-par score of 85 during second-round play and missed the cut Tuesday during the 118th annual Northern California Golf Association Amateur Championship at the Spyglass Hill Golf Club in Pebble Beach.
Following his first-round 83 on Monday, Wotherspoon completed 36 holes of stroke play with an aggregate total of 168, finishing in a tie for 123rd place. The low 32 golfers after Tuesday’s round moved on to the match play single-elimination format Wednesday, with the eventual champion needing to win five matches over the course of the final three days of the competition.
A 36-hole total of 9-over-par 153 was needed to advance to Wednesday’s match play.
Wotherspoon, who will be attending Cal State-San Bernardino later this month, opened play on the back nine Tuesday morning. After recording a par on the 10th hole, Wotherspoon struggled with double-bogeys on the 11th, 16th and 18th holes. He bogeyed the par-4 13th hole and picked up a stroke on the field with a birdie-three on the 17th hole. He finished with a back-nine total of 6-over-par 42.
Playing the front nine, he made bogeys on the second, third, fifth, eight and ninth holes to go along with a double-bogey-six on the sixth hole for a second-nine total of 43 and an 18-hole score of 85. Wotherspoon’s round included one birdie, seven pars, six bogeys, and four double-bogeys.
The only other Redwood Empire golfer in the 156-man field, Kaden Thurston of Ukiah, recorded rounds of 84 and 85 for a 169 total and finished tied for 125th place. Thurston will be starting his senior year at Ukiah High School later this month.
The NCGA Amateur marked Wotherspoon’s first experience with the Spyglass Hill Golf Course, which is historically ranked among America’s top 50 courses and is an annual venue for the PGA Tour with the playing of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February. It is a demanding course that is a great test of golf shotmaking as well as requiring solid short-game skills. Next up for Wotherspoon is college golf at San Bernardino. He will not be defending his Lake County Amateur title next weekend because it conflicts with the opening of school. The 38th annual Lake County Amateur takes place Aug. 21-22 at Adams Springs Golf Course.
None of the golfers in the NCGA field finished under par or even par through the first two days of competition. The low two-day score belonged to Ian Dahl of Carmel with rounds of 75 and 70 for a 1-over-par 145 total. Dahl is a staff member with the NCGA and played college golf at Cal-Berkeley and Seattle University from 2007 through 2012, making him one of the older golfers in the field.
One stroke farther back at 2-over-par 146 was Jacob Westberg of U.C. Davis. Westberg was the Big West freshman of the year last season.
Rounding out the top five with a 36-hole total of 3-over-par 147 was the trio of Owen Avrit of the University of Oregon, Wanxi Sun of Seton Hall University, and Matt Cohn of San Francisco, the 2016 NCGA Public Links champ as well as the winner of the 2018 NCGA Mid-Amateur.
