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Doug Ghim follows father’s advice, all the way to U.S. Amateur final

Doug Ghim watches his approach shot at the fifth hole during his semifinal match against Theo Humphrey on Saturday at Riviera Country Club.
(Robert Laberge / Getty Images)
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He didn’t hold on for too long to the intense bitterness of that crushing defeat from three years ago, but the pain of that moment has never been far from Doug Ghim’s mind. Saturday, he purged it from his memory bank.

Ghim, the seventh-ranked amateur golfer in the world, defeated Theo Humphrey, 2 and 1, at Riviera Country Club to reach Sunday’s 36-hole final of the U.S. Amateur championship.

He will take on Doc Redman, a 19-year-old sophomore at Vanderbilt who defeated Virginia Tech junior Mark Lawrence Jr. of Richmond, Va., 1 up, in the other semifinal.

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Redman, runner-up in the Western Amateur two weeks ago, has spent the last three summers caddying at a club in North Carolina, though he has played more competitive events this summer.

He likes the idea of returning to caddying to make a little money next summer, but he’ll be busy in April and June. Both finalists, as long as they remain amateurs, earned an exemption into the 2018 U.S. Open and a likely invitation to the 2018 Masters. The U.S. Open trophy was perched next to the first tee Saturday as a reminder.

Three years ago, Ghim, a 21-year-old senior at Texas from Arlington Heights, Ill., held a one-stroke lead going into the 36th hole of the U.S. Amateur Public Links championship. When he lost that hole and the championship on the first playoff hole, he also lost out on the invitation to play in the Masters that went with it.

On the 17th hole Saturday, Ghim drained a curling 5 1/2-foot par putt that closed out his match against Humphrey. After an instinctive fist pump and yell of celebration, he embraced his father Jeff, who caddies for him and has been his golf coach and mentor since Ghim first picked up a club.

What did he say to his son? “We’re going to the Masters.”

Ghim had built a four-hole lead with six holes to play, but bogeys on the par-three 14th and 16th left him 2 up with two holes remaining. He needed to make that putt on 17 to keep the match from going to the 18th.

“If he missed that putt, there would have been a lot of pressure on 18,” Jeff Ghim said. “He and I found the spot to hit on the putt; I told him to wrap it up.”

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Easy instruction. Carrying it out? That’s another matter.

“Man, I was just trying to feel my hands,” Ghim said. “I’m sure it was visible I was trying to calm myself down. So many thoughts in your head at that moment….

“Like, you know, for me I’ve got a little bit of demons because of the Pub Links from three years ago. I was just trying to make sure I stayed calm.”

He hit his spot.

He and his father have been almost inseparable in amateur tournaments since Ghim played in his first tournament at 7, winning an event for 12-year-olds. As a youngster, he spent hours hitting hundreds of balls a day in a cage built by his father because the family had trouble affording the cost of using a driving range daily.

Once he began playing competitively, thanks in part to some help from an American Junior Golf Assn. program, his game took off. At 11, in his first full season of playing AJGA tournaments, he won 12 of 16 events.

Asked after his round what his father has meant to the growth of his game, Ghim composed himself and said, “I’m not sure I can quantify what it means to me to be out there with him tomorrow.

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“We’ve shared so many good moments and so many really difficult ones.”

Then referring to the loss in the Public Links, he said, “The difficult part was knowing that I could have walked out on the fairway of Augusta with my father, and that was basically taken away from me.”

After Saturday’s round, Jeff Ghim was asked whether he’d carry his son’s bag next April at Augusta. He said that would be Doug’s decision.

Doug Ghim had a simple answer when he was asked if his father would caddie for him: “Yes.”

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