Men’s State Am: Defending champ Bowen Mauss will meet Cameron Crawford in championship match

MIDWAY — The annual Utah Men’s State Amateur is supposed to be a young man’s golf tournament to win, but organizers apparently failed to get that message across to 38-year-old Cameron Crawford this week.

Crawford, a former Utah Tech golfer when that St. George institution was known as Dixie State College 16 years ago, won both his matches on Friday at Soldier Hollow Golf Club — including one that went five extra holes — in the quarterfinals and semifinals despite entering the day as the only golfer older than 25 remaining in the longest continuously held golf tournament in the world.

Crawford won both his matches in spectacular fashion, albeit in entirely different ways. After he outlasted BYU sophomore Jackson Mauss with a par on the 23rd hole of their quarterfinal match, he edged Utah State golfer Noah Moody in the semifinals by making an eagle 2 on the par-4 18th hole.

After Moody squared the match with a birdie on No. 17, Crawford drove the green on the 347-yard, downhill 18th hole and made a 10-footer for eagle to win it.

On the other side of the bracket stands the defending champion, Arizona State sophomore Bowen Mauss, a Draper native and former Corner Canyon High star. Bowen is the younger brother of Jackson, who came up two wins short of engineering the first matchup of brothers in State Am finals history.

Bowen Mauss, who won the 127th State Amateur title last year at Logan Country Club, defeated two fellow collegians Friday to advance.

The 36-hole championship match pitting Bowen Mauss and Crawford will begin at 7:30 a.m. Saturday and will be contested entirely on Soldier Hollow’s Gold Course.

Returning to defend his title “is definitely something that I wanted to do,” Bowen Mauss said after rolling past Lehi’s KJ Ofahengaue in the semifinals. “I have no reason not to play in this. It is one of the best events of the year, and I want to win it as much as I can.”

Bowen Mauss closed out Ofahengaue, who is transferring from Utah Tech to Utah Valley, 3 and 2 with a par on the 16th hole after Ofahengaue hit his approach shot into the weeks left of the par-3 hole and conceded the match.

“Yeah, I’m really excited (to be in the championship match again),” Bowen Mauss said. “It’s one of the funnest matches you can possibly be in, and I hope to repeat.”

Mauss’ quarterfinal win in 19 holes over Layton’s David Liechty, who is transferring from Utah Tech to BYU, was a rematch of last year’s semifinal match at Logan CC and just as competitive. Liechty led by two holes on the front nine, the first time all week that Mauss has trailed in a match. But Mauss rallied to tie it with a birdie on 11.

On the par-3 14th hole, Liechty took the lead again when Mauss missed a tricky 6-footer for par, and held it through the 17th hole. Mauss made a clutch putt on No. 17 to stay alive.

“Yeah, I was just hoping he’d give me another chance, and I luckily made that … 12-footer, and then I made a good birdie on 18, and, yeah, it was good,” Mauss said.

To win 18, Mauss had to drive the par-4 hole — just as Crawford would do some eight hours later — and get the easy birdie. Liechty missed the green left and lost the hole, and the lead, with a par.

On the first playoff hole, Liechty’s tee shot was short and found the right rough.

“You gotta be kidding, dude,” he yelled at himself after what was ostensibly his only bad shot of the day. “What are we doing?”

Mauss won the hole with a par when Liechty’s 15-footer just missed, and moved on to the semifinals for the second straight year.

All four quarterfinal matches went to at least the 18th hole, and two went beyond that, as previously noted.

Crawford needed 23 holes to eliminate Jackson Mauss, and what a match it was.

Jackson Mauss, a returned missionary who will be a sophomore at BYU this fall, made a birdie on the 18th hole to force extra holes, nearly driving the green and then getting up and down to prolong the match.

Crawford looked dead on the second playoff hole, but rolled in a 20-footer for birdie to halve the hole.

Twice on the next two holes, the 21st and 22nd holes of the match, Jackson Mauss figured a long birdie putt was going to drop, and started walking towards the holes only to see both attempts slide just past the hole.

“I thought I had made both of those,” he acknowledged in the clubhouse after the match.

On the fifth playoff hole, the par-4 fifth hole, Jackson Mauss hit his tee shot into a fairway bunker, then his approach settled off the green and above the hole. He couldn’t get up and down from there — his 5-footer for par lipped out — and Crawford was the winner of the longest match to date in the tournament, a match that lasted a bit more than six hours.

Moody fell behind Brigham City teenager Kanyon DeRyke by two holes early in their quarterfinal match, but finished with a flash, making an eagle on the aforementioned short par-4 18th to win 2 up. Coincidentally, Crawford turned the tables on Moody on the 18th hole in the semifinals.

Moody was 4 up through 13 holes on DeRyke, but the Box Elder High star won holes 14, 15 and 16 to close the gap.

Moody is the son of Riverside Country Club head professional Chris Moody and recently completed his sophomore season playing for Utah State after beginning his college career at North Idaho College.

Ofahengaue never trailed in his 2 up victory over Carter Frisby in Friday’s other quarterfinal match, but never had a lead larger than two holes against Lehi’s Frisby, a former golfer at the University of Idaho.