It’s about 900 miles from The Oaks Golf Course in Cottage Grove to Saucon Valley Country Club in the Lehigh Valley countryside of eastern Pennsylvania.
As Kade Wieland played the 15th hole Thursday at The Oaks, wrapping up the weather-delayed Final Qualifying for the U.S. Junior Amateur Championship, Saucon Valley might just as well have been 9,000 miles away given where the University of Wisconsin commit from Milton stood among those trying to get there. He was two shots out of the mix — there were three spots for the 82 golfers who started play Wednesday — and he had four holes left to get there.
Wieland finished birdie-birdie-bogey-birdie — note the bump in the road that made No. 18 birdie or bust — and then eagled the first hole of the 5-for-2 playoff that earned him the second U.S. Junior Am berth behind medalist Michael Jorski, a rising high school junior from Clarendon Hills, Ill., and the reigning Illinois Junior Boys champion. That left Ryan Swanson of River Falls and Sammy Forslund of Middleton to battle for the final spot and, after they both went birdie-birdie-par, Swanson won with a par on the fifth extra hole.
“I will say I wanted to make it back so bad,” Wieland wrote in a text message to Wisconsin.Golf, referring to his U.S. Junior Am debut last year in Dallas where he shot 80 at Brook Hollow GC and 77 at Trinity Forest GC and missed qualifying for match play by 13 strokes. “Last year, I played pretty bad in the tournament, so I wanted redemption (and) it feels so good to make it back. Now I know what kind of good I need to play to make it to the match play.”…