Fitzpatrick & Goss Reach U.S. Amateur Championship Match


England's Matt Fitzpatrick defeated Canada's Corey Conners in one semifinal of the U.S. Amateur Saturday, while Oliver Goss beat co-medalist and fellow Australian Brady Watt in the other.

The two winners will face off in the 36-hole championship match Sunday at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass.

Fitzpatrick, the low amateur at last month's Open Championship at Muirfield in Scotland, beat Conners by a 2-and-1 margin. Conners is a senior at Kent State. The 18-year-old Fitzpatrick is seeking to become the first Brit to win the U.S. Amateur since Harold Hilton in 1911.

“I am very happy, as you can probably imagine,” said Fitzpatrick, who is Northwestern University-bound and No. 2 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. “I am very pleased with the achievement, really. It’s just a nice feeling to have.”

Goss, like Watt a resident of Perth, edged his friend 2-up in their semifinal. Watt shared medalist honors following 36-hole stroke-play qualifying with Neil Raymond of England.

“I used a lot of my experience from last year,” said Goss, who reached the 2012 U.S. Amateur quarterfinals. “I can remember a lot of the shots I hit and a lot of the feelings that I had. I used a lot of that last year to do as well as I could today.”

This is the first year in 112 previous versions of the U.S. Amateur when an American didn't reach the semifinals - or the championship match.

Brad James, the director of Golf Australia, the country's developmental program, was excited that two of his graduates made it to the semifinals.

"Just to get two guys here in the quarterfinals is a great accomplishment, for them to get to the semis, fantastic," James said Friday night. "Those guys are fantastic friends, they've built a great relationship over the years, they've had some great competition with each other the last couple of years."

The winner of Sunday's championship match receives an automatic invitation to the 2014 Masters and U.S. Open.

For all the match-play scores, visit http://www.usga.org/ChampEventScore.aspx?id=17179869326&year=2013&type=reversetree.