Eldrick
(Tiger) Woods needed only a bogey on the first extra hole to become the
youngest player ever to win the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship.
Woods, 15,
of Cypress, California, won five consecutive holes beginning with the
398-yard eighth, but he gradually lost his advantage until a bogey on
the 18th hole allowed Brad Zwetschke, 16, of Kankakee, Ill., to send the
match to extra holes. Zwetschke, however, double bogeyed the 19th, and
Woods' bogey was good enough for him to claim the title.
Zwetschke
held the early lead, jumping out to a three-hole advantage by the sixth
before Woods began his comeback. Woods, who reached the semifinals a year
ago before losing to Dennis Hillman, of Rye, N.Y., had little trouble
working his way through match play at Bay Hill. He never was extended
to the 18th hole in his five matches leading up to the final and, in fact,
won two of his early matches by lopsided margins of 8 and 7, and 5 and
3. He went on to defeat Kevin Mihailoff, of Naples, Fla., in his semifinal,
5 and 4.
In two days
of stroke play qualifying, Woods again was in front of the pack with his
4-under-par total of 140, four strokes ahead of Justin Klein, of Phoenix,
Md., who was upset in the first match play round. Zwetschke, who qualified
at 151, won a couple of his matches by a margin of 2 and 1. One of them
was his win over Mark Slawter, of Winston-Salem, N.C., in the semifinals.
In his third-round match, he edged John Lawrence, of Houston, Texas, 1
up.
The championship
was hampered by six delays for thunderstorms, totaling more than 10 hours
of stopped play and pushing the final back one day. Woods is the second
15-year-old to win the Junior, and is one month younger than was Michael
Brannan when he won the event in 1971.