Annie wins 1st match, loses 2nd

JEREMY RANCH — When Annie Thurman's extraordinary run at the Men's State Amateur finally came to an end Friday afternoon at The Jeremy Golf & Country Club, she wasn't about to go easily.

She was, shall we say, a little ticked off after losing her afternoon match to Brandt Hoffman 2-up. The fact that she did better than approximately 150 of her male competitors this week wasn't any consolation prize to the first female ever to compete in the 106-year-old tournament.

"I just didn't execute today," she said. "If I put forth my best effort, then I'm OK with it. But I don't feel that I did."

Up until that Friday afternoon defeat, this State Am could have been dubbed "Annie's Amateur."

From the moment the announcement of her invitation a week earlier, Thurman's name was in the headlines and the lead story on sportscasts.

The 21-year-old from Highland, who will be a senior at Oklahoma State, more than proved she deserved an exemption as she beat more than 130 players to join 31 others in match play Friday. Then, in match play she won her first match over Matt Stalsberg 5 and 4 before losing to Hoffman, one of her many friends in the tourney, on the final hole.

Hoffman, a 19-year-old from Kaysville who plays for the Weber State golf team, joined four other collegiate golfers, two recent college golfers and a high schooler in today's quarterfinals. The Elite Eight will tee off beginning at 7:30 this morning and by late afternoon, just two will be left to play in Sunday's 36-hole final.

Defending champion Tommy Sharp won his two matches rather handily and will play Hoffman in the first match of the day. Eric Rustand, a former golfer for UVSC and BYU, will play 17-year-old Steele DeWald, who spends his winters skiing and attending the Winter Sports School in Park City.

The other side of the bracket is dominated by college golfers, including three from BYU. Cougar teammates Jake Ellison and Clay Bingham will face each other, while another Cougar, Todd Miller, takes on Weber State sophomore Ben Smuin in another quarterfinal.

As it was the first two days of the tournament, much of the attention was focused on Thurman Friday.

In the morning, she burst out to a seven-hole lead over Stalsberg and ended up winning, 5 and 4, who was in the unenviable position of being the first golfer to face a woman in the State Am. Unenviable, because he'd get grief no matter what happened — for losing to a woman or for knocking her out of the tournament.