Florida’s Ian Gilligan wins Western Amateur after 29-hole final

Two Florida Gators

48 holes of golf.

One champion.

Florida teammates Ian Gilligan and Jack Turner played 13 hours of golf on Saturday at the Moraine Country Club in Dayton, Ohio before Gilligan finally prevailed after 11 holes of sudden death to win the 122nd Western Amateur.

Gilligan, a senior from Reno, Nevada, made an 8-foot birdie putt on the final hole to win the match. He had missed a birdie attempt on the 18th hole win the championship, and then the two matched each other for 10 holes.

Both players won 19-hole semifinals

What makes their marathon match more impressive is that the two won semifinal matches in the morning that lasted 19 holes. Gilligan defeated another Gator teammate, junior Parker Bell of Tallahassee, and Turner, a sophomore from Orlando, edged Henry Guan of Irving, Texas.

“Definitely the craziest match I’ve ever been a part of or heard of,” Gilligan said during his post-round news conference. “I think I owe an apology to everyone for making it so long. It was a battle of energy levels and so hard to stay focused all day, but it ended up being an unbelievable day. I can’t even put it into words.”

Suffice to say it was the longest match in the history of the nation’s third-oldest amateur tournament. The previous record was 22 holes between Norman Xiong and Doc Redman in 2017.

What was the longest U.S. Amateur match?

The longest match 18-hole match in the history of the U.S. Amateur went 10 extra holes, with Maurice J. McCarthy beating George Von Elm in the second round at Merion in 1930.

Championship matches in the U.S. Amateur are 36 holes, and the most playoff holes ever was three, which happened twice: Sam Urzetta beat Frank Stranahan at the Minneapolis Golf Club in 1950; and Jeff Quinney beat James Driscoll at Baltusrol in 2000.

The Western Amateur is a grind under normal circumstances. Instead of a 36-hole stroke-play qualifier, such as USGA Amateur championship, the Western requires 72 holes of stroke play. Gilligan played 154 holes, 72 in stroke play and 82 in match play, while Turner played 152 holes.

“Jack and I were talking about it on our ninth playoff hole and decided we were ready for it to be over,” Gilligan said. “But I just kept telling myself you’re playing for a tournament of the biggest magnitude and need to keep going.”