Virginia, United States: Japan-bound Lukas Michel and Ryan Ang have missed out on progressing to the match play phase of the 43rd US Mid-Amateur Championship.
Australian Michel returned rounds of 70 at Independence Golf Club and 73 at Kinloch Golf Club. His 36-hole total of two-over 143 was one stroke too many with only the top-64 players from stroke play qualifying for the match play stage.
Singaporean Ang posted an opening 75 at Kinloch followed by a 72 at Independence.
Michel and Ang are both in the starting line-up for the 15th edition of the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship (AAC), to be held at the Taiheiyo Club's Gotemba Course in Japan from October 3-6.
In 2019, Michel became the first international player to win the US Mid-Amateur when he defeated American Joseph Deraney in the 36-hole final at Colorado Golf Club.
Now aged 30, Michel, who earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Melbourne, works as a golf course design associate for a London-based group.
He grew up playing with Curtis Luck (2016 AAC and US Amateur champion) and Oliver Goss (2013 US Amateur runner-up) after his father, Ivor, immigrated from communist Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s. Michel posted top-25 finishes in this year’s Australian Amateur (tied 21st) and Australian Master of the Amateurs (tied 16th).
Ang, who was exempt into the US Mid-Amateur because he was among the top-40 age eligible points leaders in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), is currently 177th in the WAGR.
This year, 25-year-old Ang, who served in the Singapore Navy from 2018 to 2020, won the Kuala Lumpur Amateur Open and topped the individual standings in the Southeast Asian Amateur Team Championships.
Last year, he tied for 19th in the AAC at Royal Melbourne. He also made the cut in the 2022 AAC at Thailand’s Amata Pring Country Club.
The US Mid-Amateur Championship is open to any amateur golfer who was 25 years old by September 21 with a Handicap Index not exceeding 2.4.
This year, the USGA accepted 6,054 entries, the second-highest total in championship history. The record was established last year when 6,060 entries were filed. The 5,000-mark has been surpassed five times, including 2022 when 5,708 entries were accepted.
Among the benefits received by the 2024 US Mid-Amateur champion will be an exemption from final qualifying for the 2025 US Open Championship (if still an amateur) and a likely invitation to the 2025 Masters Tournament.
