Shintaro Ban not only won the 113th Northern California Golf Association Amateur Match Play Championship, he made a bit of history.
Ban, a junior at UNLV from San Jose, routed Eddy Lai, also of San Jose, 10 and 9, in the scheduled 36-hole final to become the 10th player in more than a century to win the NCGA title and the California Amateur Championship in the same year at Spyglass Hill Golf Course in Pebble Beach.
“It’s unreal; it means a lot,” said Ban, who has been friends with Lai for several years since they met playing junior golf. “I didn’t expect myself to win. … As the week progressed here, I felt like I was more and more finding my game.
” … It’s tough. We were trying to have fun, but in the end we also knew that only one of us was going to win.”
The 20-year-old Ban played the first 13 holes of the morning 18 in 6-under-par to take a 6-up lead with four straight birdies and never was threatened by Lai, 17, who was the tournament’s stroke-play medalist.
In the semifinals, Ban defeated Stanford senior Viraat Badhwar of Australia, 2 and 1, while Lai, a senior at Bellarmine High in San Jose, downed Greg Gildea of Fresno, 4 and 2.
Others who have won the Cal Amateur and the NGCA Amateur in the same year include Jack Neville (1913), Charles Seaver (1933), Michael Brannan (1976) and Spencer Levin (2004).
Ban captured the California Amateur in June at Valencia Country Club, a year after his brother, Shotaro, claimed the same title.
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