Good Old Reliable Nathan....

Has anybody tuned in to the U.S. Amateur?  I thought not, but it's really your loss....

I finally had a chance to tune in last evening, and I'm quite glad I did.  Front and center was our old friend Nathan Smith.  Smith is a bit of a Mid-Am legend, having won four of them and played the last three Walker Cup teams.  Theresa and I had the pleasure of meeting him when he was paired with our friend, evening golf partner and A-No. 1 Caddie client Kent St. Charles in U.S. Open Sectional qualifying.  

I'll let Alex Miceli bring you up to date:

Nathan Smith needed 21 holes to dispatch reigning U.S. Amateur Public Links champion

Nathan Smith makes a return visit to Unplayable Lies.

Byron Meth and advance into the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur at Atlanta Athletic Club on Thursday afternoon. 

Smith, 36, had to summon all the energy he could muster on a day when the rounds of 32 and 16 were played. 

In the morning, Smith had a relatively easy time with long-hitting Brandon McIver in a 4-and-3 victory. 

It was the shortest match Smith has had in match play at the U.S. Amateur, allowing him to conserve energy before his tussle with Meth, a senior at Pacific.

Smith barely made it to match-play, surviving a multi-player playoff to grab the No. 64 seed.  But how much fun is this, as he's giving up 50 yards off the tee to some of these youngsters?  Kind of like my evening matches against Kent, well except for the five strokes I get on our back nine...

There's simply nothing like match-play for drama, and this was quite good.  Smith should have won it in regulation, but missed a 4-footer badly on the 18th green.  Despite all his Mid-Am success, he's never gotten this deep into the U.S. Am, and you could see him fighting his nerves, mostly successfully except for that one putt.  In fact, he was so nervous he actually took a practice swing at one point, something Kunta Kente probably never saw in 36 holes in June.

If you were with us in June or click through the link above, you'll know that Smith is just a genuinely nice guy, and he and Meth got on famously:

Interestingly the talk on the front nine was about golf, Smith said, but not so much about the

Byron Meth.

amateur. Rather, they discussed a venue some two hours down Interstate 20.

Next year, Meth will be making his first trip to the Masters, a major that Smith has played four times as U.S. Mid-Amateur champion. 

“We were talking about the Crow's Nest, the course and what to look forward to, just the week itself,” Smith said. “He's going to have a blast. You can see the glow in his eyes. He's really excited to get down there and be a part of that.”

Byron, make the most of your week at Augusta National.  And should you get married and have a daughter, please don't name her Crystal. Just trust me on that...

Our man will play Frederick Wedel in the quarterfinals.  Shackelford has the links to a heartwarming story about Wedel's father, a quadriplegic who saw his son play for the first time in years at the Alister MacKenzie Invitational.   

The USGA has a good "Meet the Quarterfinalists" page here.  

The one downer is the television coverage, as in there's little.  After teasing me with live coverage yesterday, the only coverage today will of the tape-delayed variety starting at 8:30 p.m., dangerously close to your humble blogger's bedtime.  Unforced error, Golf Channel, which prefers instead to show us a Web.com event