The patience and resilience that is always required to raise the Havemeyer Trophy as U.S. Amateur champion will be brought to the fore in match play, after storms hit the area and halted play for nearly four hours on Tuesday afternoon and four hours more on Wednesday at Oakmont Country Club.

The schedule for the six rounds of match play has been compressed because of the rain delays. The Round of 64 did not begin until 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday and so will be completed a day late, on Thursday. The two rounds that were supposed to be contested on Thursday will spill over into Friday, with the weather also bringing up the possibility of various scenarios in an effort to get back on schedule and ensure a Sunday conclusion for the championship.

Here are 3 Things to Know for the match-play rounds at Oakmont:

What's an Upset?

The deepest field in amateur golf starts with 312 players, and only 20 percent of those competitors advance to match play. This begs the question of whether any match-play result is a “major” upset in this championship. In the past six years, three players who were in the top 10 of the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) have reeled off six wins and raised the trophy: (No. 7 Bryson DeChambeau, 2015; No. 7 Curtis Luck, 2016; No. 5 Viktor Hovland, 2018), while the other three champions were No. 56 (Tyler Strafaci, 2020), No. 70 (Doc Redman, 2017) and No. 120 (Andy Ogletree, 2019). The biggest outlier in recent years is Gunn Yang, who was No. 776 in the WAGR when he prevailed over Corey Conners (No. 44), but the depth of the 64-player field has only strengthened in recent years along with the ranks of the amateur game.

Consider this statistic from Justin Ray of 21st Group: since the 2010 championship, more players who were seeded No. 41 or lower in match play won two matches to reach the Round of 16 than players who were seeded No. 10 or higher. The breakdown: 44 players seeded No. 41 or lower got to the Round of 16, to 38 players who were among the top 10 seeds.

Ornery Oakmont

One match-play mantra you often hear is to play the golf course, not your opponent. Oakmont will provide a sturdy foe, having hosted nine U.S. Opens and five previous U.S. Amateurs, with several future championships on the docket, as announced on Wednesday.

Although the rain may have taken a little of the firmness out of Oakmont’s fairways and greens, the Henry Fownes masterpiece played to a stroke average of 76.07 in the two rounds of stroke play. The closing trio of holes presents an interesting contrast, however. No. 16 is a 228-yard par 3 that played as the toughest of the one-shotters in stroke play (3.42) and the renowned No. 18, at 488 yards, played as the toughest hole overall (4.66). Between those two daunting holes, the 17th at 312 yards presents a classic risk-reward option for players looking to catch up.

For example, 2018 U.S. Amateur runner-up Devon Bling drove the green and made a 12-foot putt for eagle in Tuesday’s stroke play. The flip side is Jim Furyk, the 2003 U.S. Open champion who had a chance to win here in 2007, but made bogey when he attempted to drive the green and ended up losing by one stroke to Angel Cabrera.

Western Union

On July 31, Michael Thorbjornsen won the prestigious Western Amateur, which has been played since 1899 and like the U.S. Amateur, features a grueling format, although only 16 players advance to match play after 72 holes of stroke play. Thorbjornsen, the 2018 U.S. Junior Amateur champion at Baltusrol, also captured the Massachusetts Amateur last month, defeating another USGA champion, Matt Parziale, in a 36-hole final match in which Thorbjornsen made 18 birdies.

The last player to win the Western Amateur and the U.S. Amateur in the same year was Danny Lee in 2008. Thorbjornsen, who earned the No. 3 seed here with rounds of 65-69, reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur last year at Bandon Dunes. If Thorbjornsen, of Wellesley, Mass., were to pull off the Western Am-U.S. Am double, he would join some pretty heady company. Along with Lee, of New Zealand, only five other players have done it in the past 40 years: Hal Sutton (1980), Justin Leonard (1992), Tiger Woods (1994), Bubba Dickerson (2001) and Ryan Moore (2004).

An interesting side note: all four players who Thorbjornsen defeated in match play in the Western Am – Maxwell Moldovan, Ricky Castillo, Austin Greaser and Gordon Sargent – also reached the 64-player bracket here. The earliest possible rematch would be with Moldovan, if both were to reach the semifinals.

Ron Driscoll is the senior manager of content for the USGA. Email him at rdriscoll@usga.org.