Wi Chips Away After Poor Shot to Advance in State Amateur : Golf: Former champion makes round of 16 for fifth year in a row.

The worst-looking shot Charlie Wi hit on Wednesday produced the best-looking results. That’s the way it goes sometimes at Pebble Beach Golf Links. Other days, it’s vice versa.

“You can’t get down on yourself,” Wi said. “If you lose confidence here, you can lose hole after hole after hole. . . .”

That wasn’t the story line for Wi in the 83rd State Amateur Championship as he advanced to the round of 16 for the fifth time in as many years.

Wi, a Westlake High graduate who lives in North Hills, was the only area player from a group of three to survive the first round of match play. He easily defeated Mark Miller of Antioch, 4 and 3.

Wi, 22, will face Mark Johnson of Helendale in the second round today at 6:36 a.m.

For Wi, the 1990 State Amateur champion, momentum picked up on the fifth hole, a 166-yard par-three. He missed the green with a five-iron, but chipped in for birdie from 40 feet.

“(The tee shot) was pretty ugly,” Wi said. “But chipping in got me rolling.”

Miller, 42, was soon rolled asunder. Wi then birdied the par-five sixth to go 2-up and parred the ninth to move 3-up. Putting the match away was simply a matter of time.

“You just have to play steady,” Wi said. “Don’t blow it.”

Wi, a senior at Cal, closed out Miller with a routine par on the 15th hole.

Johnson, the defending Southern California Mid-Amateur champion, played the toughest match of the day. He defeated Joey Ferrari of Lodi, the State Amateur runner-up in 1993, on the third hole of sudden death. Both players birdied the first two playoff holes before Johnson won with a birdie on the third hole.

Jamey Forsyth of Chatsworth and Chad Wright of Ventura had decidedly more mixed results.

Forsyth, 25, never had a chance in an 8 and 6 defeat to Steve Woods of Upland and San Jose State. It was an all-out blitz.

Woods, the event’s stroke-play medalist, was 4-up after four holes. It ended on the par-three 12th hole when Forsyth hit his tee shot out of bounds and conceded the match. Woods was two under at the time.

“Geez, shaking hands on the 12th hole is pretty brutal,” said Forsyth, who was competing in his first State Amateur. “That’s disappointing. I didn’t even put up a fight.”

Wright, a sophomore at USC, fought back and then some. Wright was all but dead in his match against Ed Cuff of Temecula when he made a spirited comeback.

Cuff was dormie after the 13th hole--he held a five-hole lead with as many to play. Cuff, 32, mentioned to Wright on the front nine that he was a former pro who had played on the Asian Tour and assorted stateside mini-tours before regaining his amateur status three years ago.

“Before that, I was thinking, ‘Who is this guy and where did he come from?’ ” said Wright, 18.

The next question might have been, What is he doing? Wright, facing elimination if he so much as halved a hole, won three holes in a row heading to the storied 17th. Wright parred, but Cuff got up and down from a greenside bunker to save par and win, 2 and 1.

Wright was one-over for the day, but Cuff was three-under on the front nine alone and didn’t make a bogey until the 11th.

Against tough competition on a demanding course such as Pebble Beach, it’s difficult to gain ground because birdies are hard to come by, Wright said.

“I thought I played pretty well,” Wright said. “But I didn’t make up anything until the end of the round.”