Highland • The State Amateur’s longest final match in 83 years officially was over, and Blake Tomlinson wanted to replay the tournament’s last shot. He grabbed his golf ball, returned to the front portion of Alpine Country Club’s No. 3 green and stroked the 12-foot, uphill putt.
He missed again.
Tomlinson’s 39-hole duel with University of Utah golf teammate Martin Leon of Chile on Saturday will have multiple distinctions in the State Amateur’s 123-year history, mostly for Leon’s becoming the first international player to win the title and partly for Tomlinson’s repeatedly coming close – only to have another Ute beat him.
“I’m glad I just hit good shots at the right moment,” said Leon, who redshirted in 2020-21 after arriving on campus, while Tomlinson played as Utah’s No. 1 golfer.
Leon said after Friday’s semifinals that he would be “super, super happy” to have Tomlinson beat him, knowing what the State Am means to the Skyline High School graduate, while promising to make his teammate work for the win. Leon won the par-4 No. 3 with a birdie in the morning round and never trailed over the next seven-plus hours. Tomlinson tied him twice on the back nine in the afternoon, before Leon’s par on their third trip to No. 3 was sufficient in the end.
Leon hoped that spending the summer in Utah and improving his game would help him make the Ute lineup in 2021-22. A tie for third place in the Salt Lake City Amateur with a closing 65 at Bonneville Golf Course in June was a good sign of his ability; this State Am performance said even more about him, after he chose Utah because of the school’s Pac-12 affiliation and pre-med program.
“I’m super proud of Martin,” Tomlinson said. “Hopefully, he continues this play for us in the fall season.”
Tomlinson, meanwhile, is the first golfer to lose in consecutive State Am finals since former Ute golfer Doug Bybee in 1981 and 82. Tomlinson fell to Mitchell Schow last September at Jeremy Ranch Golf & Country Club; he also reached the semifinals in 2018 before being eliminated by teammate Kyler Dunkle.
So he will likely turn pro prior to the 2022 State Am, moving on with a 13-3 record in match play.
“I’m just proud of myself for making it here. It’s just a long week,” Tomlinson said. “Although I didn’t win, I’m still happy we had two Utes in the final match. I always want that.”
The All-Ute final pairing was only the fourth in tournament history, and probably the most surprising. Even with BYU stars Carson Lundell and Cole Ponich focusing on their national schedules, the combination of other Cougars and strong players with Alpine ties made this Ute trek to the final match more challenging. He needed a total of 39 holes to win two matches Wednesday. Leon also had a tough quest as the No. 63 seed, having made a late birdie in the stroke-play qualifying portion and then surviving a 16-for-11 playoff to get into match play.
Leon had joked about being eager to play with Tomlinson because he was “tired” of the Cougars, but he has succeeded in taking down home-course player Elijah Turner in the first round, followed by Keanu Akina and Spencer Dunaway in the semifinals. Tomlinson took 20 holes to beat Alpine’s Evan Lawrence of nearby Lone Peak High School in the round of 32, then took a 2-and-1 win over Alpine member Carl Jensen, a former Ute golfer and 2003 State Am runner-up, in Friday morning’s quarterfinals. Tomlinson was 2 down before winning four straight holes in the middle of the round.
Leon’s 30-foot birdie putt from well off the green on the 19th hole (the par-4 No. 1) lifted him over 2008 champion Dan Horner in the quarterfinals.
Such full-length (or longer) matches were creating a theme of the 2021 State Am. Of the tournament’s first 60 matches, 24 went to No. 18 or beyond. The two semifinal matches defied that trend, Tomlinson and Leon needed a total of only 27 holes to end their matches, but then they tied the 39-hole record from 1938, when Abel Larson outlasted Arn Goff at Fort Douglas Country Club.
The two Utes “probably didn’t play our best” Saturday, Leon acknowledged in his victory speech. That’s true, compared with how Tomlinson and Schow performed last year. As Tomlinson said, “We had a couple bad holes, but that happens at the end of the week.”
Some of their best and worst stuff came on No. 14 in the afternoon. Tomlinson played conservatively, using an iron off the tee on the narrow, par-5 hole. His shot went out of bounds on the right, so he teed off again (with a driver) and salvaged a bogey with a two-stroke penalty. Leon’s troubles led to a double bogey, as Tomlinson tied the match.
Leon responded by holing a bunker shot for a birdie on No. 15, before Tomlinson tied him again with a birdie on the par-5 No. 17 and they kept going for four more holes, into the history books.
Donate to the newsroom now. The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) public charity and contributions are tax deductible