A month after narrowly missing the cut for the NCAA Division II national championships, Chris Morrow secured a bid to an even more prestigious national tournament.
The Edmonds native and 1999 King’s High School graduate qualified for this week’s 78th U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship at Blue Heron Pines Golf Club in Galloway, N.J.
Following Tuesday’s second and final round of stroke play, the field of 156 qualifiers was trimmed to 64 for match play. Morrow’s two-day total of 7-over 149 on the 7,127-yard, par-71 course placed him in a tie for 39th.
“It’s good experience seeing where I fit in with the other amateurs in the nation,” said Morrow, a four-time state qualifier at King’s.
Match play runs through July 19.
“That’s the first mission,” Morrow said of surviving stroke play. “After that, you never know what will happen in match play.”
The Public Links Championship is open to amateur golfers who have played public courses since Jan. 1 and haven’t been members of private clubs closed to the general public.
Morrow earned his ticket to nationals by claiming one of two berths up for grabs at a qualifier tournament June 16-17 at Trophy Lake in Port Orchard.
He was alone in first after shooting an opening round 68, then closed with a 74 to finish three strokes behind Yelm’s John Cassidy.
“I played real well the first round,” Morrow said. “Then I started off the next round with a triple bogey on the second hole. I was real solid after that.”
Morrow filled the top slot on the Saint Martin’s College men’s golf team the past three years, advancing to the NCAA Division II West Regional as a junior and senior.
Saint Martin’s coach Kurt Kageler called Morrow the team’s “best and most consistent player in recent years.”
“Chris has been a terrific young man to have in our golf program,” Kageler said. “He’s the kind of person you can really get behind and root for and want to be successful.”
Morrow received academic All-American honors his junior year and bounced back from an unexpected health setback to finish out his senior season on an upswing.
In March, one of Morrow’s lungs collapsed the day before he was set to leave for a match in Palm Springs. He spent a week in the hospital and was sidelined for two more weeks.
“It was definitely a scary time,” Morrow said. “I didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t breathe.”
Morrow returned in time to snag an individual berth to regionals May 3-7 in Littleton, Colo., where he was edged out of a trip to the national championships by just two strokes.
“He works so hard at his game and he’s a good student of the game,” said Saint Martin’s assistant coach Todd Abbott, who served as Morrow’s caddy at the Public Links Championship. “He has taken every opportunity that has been given to him and succeeded.”
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