When you are dropping in bombs from 25 and 30 feet on your final nine holes you don’t need to see a scoreboard to know how you are doing,

Garrett Cooper never has been much of a scoreboard watcher and he wasn’t during the final round of the Rice Planters Amateur at Snee Farms.

Cooper started the day two shots off the lead playing in the second to last group.

“I didn’t get off to a very good start,” Copper recalled. “I had a pair of bad bogeys, but it made me focus harder,”
he said.

Cooper decided if he could get back to even by the turn he would have a chance.

After the rough start he carded three birdies, but bogeyed his ninth hole and made the turn even as he hoped.

On the back nine Cooper’s putter was on fire. A birdie on number 10 was followed by another one on 13.

“I was rolling the ball so good I thought everything was going in,” he said, and he was pretty close to right.

On his 14th hole he dropped a 30 footer in the cup and followed it with a solid birdie on his 15th hole.

As good as Cooper was playing so was University of Tennessee golfer Bruce Murphy, who until the 15th hole, had matched the Chanticleer golfer.

Cooper got the lead with his birdie and Murphy’s par on 15.

On the 16th hole Cooper dropped another bomb. His 25 foot birdie putt found the cup and even with Murphy also making birdie on the hole, Cooper knew he had it,

“When that putt went in I knew I was going to win, I had to make pars on the last two holes, but that was a turning point for me,” he said.

His final round 5-under par 67 included the four straight birdies that earned him the major amateur championship.

Cooper finished at 10-under par for a 206 total.

The one shot victory for the Chesnee High School grad easily goes on the top of his list of golf achievements.

Copper adds his name to a list of winners which includes Andy Bean, Hal Sutton and Brooks Koepka among the champions who went on to PGA Tour stardom.

“This tournament has been around for a long time and a lot of great players have won it. For a South Carolina kid to win it puts it at the top of my list,” he said,

Cooper will return to Coastal for a fifth year in the fall, but between now and then he hopes to use the success he had in the Rice Planters at a few more high level amateur events.

“I’ve got a couple to play and then the state am (at Musgrove Mill). I was able to stick to my game plan and not push things and when I can do that I can have a good positive attitude and play well, like this week,” said Cooper.

Several other South Carolinians had good showings in the event,

The 2023 SC AAAA High School champion Davis Neal from North Augusta finished in a tie for sixth with Charleston golfer Max Dupree.

Greenville’s Rafe Reynolds tied for eighth place.

Rice Planters Amateur Scores https://www.golfgenius.com/pages/9630061167665743782