Field complete for 49th Palmetto Amateur following Monday qualifier

Luke Walmet had to sit around and wait for a few hours Monday afternoon.

A rocking chair on the porch at Palmetto Golf Club is a fine place to do that, but Walmet's wait was slightly more stressful than for most others hanging around nearby at the qualifier for the 49th Palmetto Amateur.

Walmet's round of 1-under 69 wasn't quite low enough that he could feel free to leave the golf course assured he had already locked up one of the three spots up for grabs in this week's tournament like playing partner Maddox Whittington, a rising junior at Gardner-Webb who scorched Palmetto for a 65 that may end up being the best score of the week.

Walmet had a bit of a safety net, though, as he was trailing only Whittington and his score was one shot better than a trio of players as he waited some three hours for the rest of the scores to trickle in.

At long last, the final group putted out on the 18th green and turned in scorecards - and Walmet had his answer when he saw Adam Friedman, Wyatt Harrill and Nick Karageorgos heading to the first tee to begin a playoff for the third and final available spot. Walmet was in.

"That feels amazing," said Walmet, a rising sophomore at William & Mary. "The waiting can be a little bit of a sweat, but this is what you want to get out of it so I was super happy about it. And I'm just excited I get to take a few more loops around this place. It's going to be an awesome week."

Walmet has good memories of Palmetto, as it was his par putt on the 18th hole last year that clinched a long-awaited team title at the Southern Cross for Bishop England High School by a shot over A.C. Flora.

Now he'll look to have some individual success at the Palmetto Amateur, scheduled for 72 holes running from Wednesday through Saturday, and he can draw on lessons he learned while helping his team to a championship.

"You don't have to do anything crazy out there in terms of making a ton of birdies or going super low," he explained. "I mean, par is a great score on this golf course. It's always going to be. So just keeping it in front of me, keeping it simple, missing in the right spots. Just doing all of that stuff right, and hopefully keeping big numbers off the card and making a lot of pars is the way to do it."

Monday qualifiers usually do require that mindset of needing to make birdie after birdie, which Whittington did in carding seven of them, but that's not a winning strategy here - especially not this version of Palmetto after last year's renovations.

"It's playing difficult," Walmet said. "It's very firm right now, but if you're in control of your golf ball you can do it. I just kept everything in front of me, kept it pretty simple. That's kind of my game. That's what I'm going to try to keep doing. Fortunately got a few putts to go today, so hopefully that keeps happening this week."

With Whittington's and Walmet's spots spoken for, there was still the order of the playoff to determine the last man into the field of 81. Friedman bogeyed the first playoff hole and was eliminated, and Karageorgos, a former Erskine College golfer, outlasted Harrill to win it with a par on the fifth.

Qualifiers have held their own at the Palmetto Amateur in recent years, highlighted by Bobby Bai's victory in 2017. Caleb Surratt, the 2023 SEC champion at Tennessee who is now a member of LIV Golf, held the 18-, 36- and 54-hole leads in 2020 as a 16-year-old.

What's in store for this year's qualifiers will play out over the next four days, but just having that opportunity means a lot after they started the day without a spot in the field.

"The competition is going to be awesome, and I'm sure this club is going to do a great job, but I'm just really excited to get to play this course a few more times," Walmet said. "It's one of my favorites anywhere. So, honestly, it'll be great to be around some good people and have some fun, but I'm really excited to have hopefully four more cracks at this course."