There is some amount of timing involved in making a run at the Walker Cup, the top line on many an amateur player’s goal sheet. Win the Sunnehanna Amateur, and you can guarantee a pretty hard look for that team. In the case of Trent Phillips, however, the clock will likely run out on his amateur career before another look for the team in 2023.
Phillips, who appeared on a Walker Cup practice squad after his freshman year at Georgia and is about to enter his senior season there, has teed it up in competition four times at Sunnehanna Country Club in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. This trip is likely to be his last, but he’ll go out on top after a one-shot victory on Saturday over Ian Siebers, a Duke freshman, and that’s a good enough line on the resume for him.
Phillips and the rest of the Sunnehanna field faced some amount of wind every day. “The weather was a little weird today,” as Phillips said on Saturday afternoon, which caused the greens to get a little soft in the final round. In his mind, that made the course play even harder.
“The greens are wicked and they have so much slope that the balls were almost plugging and landing on spots where they would normally funnel down to the low areas,” he said.
Scores: Sunnehanna Amateur
The Inman, South Carolina, native approached the final round wanting to play aggressively and keep his foot on the gas. He had a one-shot lead after three rounds and didn’t want to fall into the trap of coasting it home. He couldn’t, as it turns out, with Siebers firing a 65 behind him plus Travis Vick (third) bringing in a 66 and Leo Oyo (T4) a 64 behind that.
Travis Vick, Ian Siebers and Trent Phillips at the Sunnehanna Amateur. (Photo: Barry Reeger)
Phillips thinks the challenge at Sunnehanna lies in placing it on the right spots on the greens.
“For me, and I feel like a lot of people would say this too, just keeping it underneath the hole and hitting fairways. That rough out there is super thick…” he said. “So keeping it in the fairway is important and keeping it under the hole to have uphill putts.”
On his way to a final-round 68 (which left him at 9 under for the week), Phillips “drove it fantastic,” hitting every fairway as well as 14 greens.
As the No. 48-ranked player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, Phillips’ summer continues with more of the best stops on the amateur calendar: next week’s Northeast Amateur then the Western Amateur and the U.S. Amateur in the following months.
The Sunnehanna breakthrough could lead to more.
“My past couple summers just haven’t been great. I’ve had great college season and then I come play summer golf and it’s just not all there,” he said. “So this was really important for me to get off to a good start in the summer, especially heading into my senior year.”
Phillips thinks it was as much about what was going on in his mind as it was being a younger player without so much awareness of his golf game. Simple mistakes add up.
“When you grow up, you get better each year, that’s kind of what I’ve learned throughout college,” he said. “Each year I’ve gotten better, and my scores may not show it each week but I’m learning and you just learn each week some new things that you can carry on with you.”
Back home in South Carolina, Phillips works on his game with Tommy Biershenk and Taylor Crosby. But after three weeks on the road – Phillips competed for the victorious Americans last week in the Arnold Palmer Cup – he’s not rushing back to the range.
The ability to lay low may be one secret to Phillips’ newfound good headspace, even though it’s been something he’s always practiced.
“I like to kind of stay away from golf sometimes when I get back from long trips and stuff like that,” he said, “just because I don’t get a whole lot of time to myself, especially with golf and the college season so when I get a chance I like to take advantage of it and just practice when I can.”