James Whitworth could have spent his walk toward the green fuming over a tough break.
Instead, he used those strides to keep his perspective forward focused.
Whitworth, who recently completed his freshman season with the University of Hawaii men’s golf team, went to Oahu Country Club’s 18th tee tied with two-time defending Manoa Cup champion Peter Jung in their round of 16 match on Thursday.
Whitworth sent his second shot right at the pin, only to see his ball stall in the wind, catch the downslope, spin back off the green and roll into the fairway.
“I have a tendency to get mad sometimes,” Whitworth said. “But I tried to tell myself, ‘Here’s an opportunity to pull this next shot off. Don’t be mad about the previous shot.’ ”
Some 35 yards out, Whitworth took a shallow stroke through the ball and watched it hop and settle 8 inches from the cup for a gimme par. Jung, a rising junior at Washington State, also needed to get up and down from the fairway to extend the match. But his two-year Manoa Cup reign ended when his par putt slid by the hole to give Whitworth a 1-up win and a spot in today’s quarterfinal round of the state amateur match-play championship.
“Overall I did a very good job of not thinking about the result of the match,” Whitworth said. “Early in the day I struggled settling in … and the last five holes when the stakes were the highest was when I played my best golf.”
He saved one of his best shots for last with the decisive chip.
“It brings you back to all the time you’ve spent hitting chips as an 8-year-old, 10-year-old, on the practice putting green,” Whitworth said. “It’s literally the same shot in a way, so just to be able to hit the same shot under the most pressure and be able to execute that shot feels really good.”
Whitworth was 4 down with six holes to play in his first-round match against Robert Berris on Tuesday before rallying to win in 20 holes. He extended his Manoa Cup debut by denying Jung’s bid to become the first player to win three consecutive titles since Francis Ii Brown’s run from 1930 to ’32.
“This week wasn’t really great golf, just felt like I was hanging in there a lot and just hit a lot of bad shots you’re not supposed to hit,” Jung, a Maryknoll graduate, said. “I just didn’t play as well, and hats off to James. He hung in there, he played well and he made the putts when he had to. “
Whitworth, originally from Carlsbad, Calif., is one of three Rainbow Warriors in the Manoa Cup’s final eight. He takes on 17-year-old Kihei Akina — a 5-and-3 winner over Punahou’s Justin Todd on Thursday — in today’s first quarterfinal match. The winner returns in the afternoon to face the survivor of a neighbor island duel between Katsuhiro Yamashita (Kailua-Kona) and Anson Cabello (Kahului).
On the other side of the bracket, UH junior Isaiah Kanno faces qualifying round medalist and two-time Manoa Cup runner-up Evan Kawai in today’s 7:27 a.m. tee time. Warriors sophomore Josh Hayashida takes on Keanu Akina, Kihei’s older brother, at 7:36.
The semifinals are scheduled to start at noon, with the winners advancing to Saturday’s 36-hole championship match of the event run by the Hawaii State Golf Association.
Today’s play at OCC opens at 7 a.m. with the women’s division final between longtime friends Kellie Yamane and Karissa Kilby.
Yamane, an ‘Iolani alumna and Hawaii Pacific University junior, survived a three-way playoff just to earn the final spot in the bracket in Monday’s qualifying round. The 16th seed now finds herself in the final after a 3-and-1 win over 14-year-old Alexa Takai in a semifinal match on Thursday.
“It’s so surreal I was able to first of all get through the playoff because I was playing against really good people just to get into the tournament,” Yamane said, “and then just to get here I played really good girls. It was really a battle the whole week.”
Kilby is playing in her first Manoa Cup since falling to Danielle Ujimori in the 2019 final and returned to the event coming off a first-team All-Conference USA performance at Florida International University.
The Punahou graduate held off Chloe Jang 2 and 1 to return to the final, capping the match by nearly driving the green on the par-4 17th. Jang took three shots to find the green and conceded the hole after Kilby chipped to within a couple of feet of the pin.
Kilby caddied for Yamane during the playoff on Monday and Yamane had offered to reciprocate. Instead Kilby carried her own bag up and down OCC’s layout throughout the week and will end the week sharing a tee time with Yamane.
“Beforehand we’ll both tell each other good luck, give each other a hug, and afterwards it’ll end with a hug and someone will say good job,” Kilby said.
In between, they’ll try to claim the Manoa Cup’s eighth women’s championship.
“I think it’s just staying in the present every single shot,” Kilby said, “Everyone out here is good competition, so you have to step up and hit the best shot you can with every single one and hope for the best.”
