Golf can be a difficult, frustrating game. At times this season, though, Servite’s Patrick Cantlay made it look easy, almost effortless, by driving greens, holing birdie after birdie to post four consecutive rounds in the 60s and go 22-under par in his first four CIF postseason matches.
His scorecards looked like this: 8-under at Tijeras Creek, 2-under at Rancho San Marcos, 7-under at Skylinks and 5-under at Hacienda. In those 72 holes, he had only two bogeys and he finished each of those tournaments at the top of the leaderboard.
Along the way, the Servite junior helped the Friars to the Southern Section team championship, claimed the section individual title and was selected the Register’s 2009 Player of the Year.
The 8-under round at Tijeras Creek equaled a career-best for Cantlay. The last time he went that low was at last summer’s Hogan Cup, when he tied the competitive course record at Riverside Country Club in Portland, Ore.
“I have watched high school golf for 15 years, and I have never seen a player get on that kind of a roll,” Servite coach Dan Jako said. “But it’s not just the roll that he got on, it was the ease that he played with. He let the game come to him.”
Cantlay, Jako said, became the “heartbeat and stability” of the Friars this season, his teammates “feeding off of his success.” When word got around the golf course that Cantlay had carded another birdie, Jako said he could see the Friars start to play looser, more relaxed.
“Everyone just relied on him to go out there and do his thing,” Jako said.
Cantlay was a 15-time medalist or co-medalist this year for the Friars, who finished 23-0. His 2-under 33 in the season-finale at Western Hills Country Club in Chino Hills helped Servite shoot a course-record 169. His scoring average for the year was 34.97, which is .95 under par for nine holes.
Cantlay has become one of the top junior golfers in the United States.
In the most recent edition of the Golfweek junior rankings, which features 6,360 players, Cantlay came in at No. 16 with a 70.16 rating. Last month, he entered first-round qualifying for the U.S Open in Industry Hills and posted a 1-over 73 on the 7,127-yard Eisenhower Course. He finished in a tie for 18th, missing the cut to have a chance to advance to the next stage of qualifying by three strokes.
“I just took everything this year one round at a time,” Cantlay said. “I have been practicing real hard, and I have been playing well. I knew that I was capable of doing something like this (his 22-under total in the CIF postseason), but you never expect it.”
