BATON ROUGE, La (BRPROUD) – About 144 amateur golfers teed off Thursday morning at the Country Club of Louisiana with the goal of being crowned the best in The Boot. Only 62 survived the cut to tee off Sunday, and just one ended the day atop the leaderboard.
Greg Berthelot, a Baton Rouge native and Catholic High School graduate, won his third Louisiana Amateur Championship behind a 6-under final score after 72 holes. The 2011, 2022, and current amateur title winner finished each round at or under par to win the tournament.
Berthelot prepared to turn in a great scorecard for his final round, entering the 18th hole at 3-under and a 4-shot lead. Yet an errant drive went right, an approach shot ended up in the water, and a putt rolled past the hole to drop Berthelot’s lead to just one stroke. Yet he knocked down a manageable putt for triple-bogey and the victory.
“I felt like I was the old man out there. Everybody was in college, so being able to still compete with the college players is good,” Berthelot said.
Jannik Sinner is No. 1 in the rankings for the first time and already is looking ahead to Wimbledon For the first time, this year’s champion gets an exemption into the 2024 United States Amateur Championship. The event will be played at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota, a former site of the Ryder Cup.
Berthelot has attempted to qualify in the past for the U.S. Amateur, but never qualified.
“I’ve never made it to the qualifying and then I hadn’t been able to try every year. So being able to get there without qualifying is great. I’m not a good qualifier,” Berthelot said with a smile.
“I actually got to play Oak Hill last year and that was pretty cool. It was a month after the PGA was there, so I know it’s going to be a tough course because that course was really tough and major championship courses are big ones.”
The 2024 U.S. Amateur is set to take place August 12-18.
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