An 11-hole (!) sudden-death playoff made the most grueling tournament in amateur golf even more grueling

It’s quite the accomplishment to win the Western Amateur under “normal” circumstances. The 125-year-old event has a tournament format that includes 72 holes of stroke play qualifying over three days to cut the field to 16. Then there’s two days of two rounds of match play to determine the winner.

That would have been exhausting enough for Ian Gilligan or Jack Turner, teammates at the University of Florida who survived and advanced their way to the 18-hole championship match at Moraine Country Club in Dayton, Ohio, on Saturday. But since the two were all square at the end of regulation, it was on to sudden-death stroke play.

And on … and on … and on … 11 holes later, Gilligan a rising senior from Reno, Nev., made an eight-foot birdie putt to claim the title seven hours after the match began.

"Definitely the craziest match I've ever been a part of or heard of," Gilligan said. "I think I owe an apology to the everyone for making it so long."

Indeed, Gilligan had a 2-up lead with two holes to play. But Turner won the 17th with a par and then the 18th after Gilligan missed a short par putt to secure the win.

During the playoff, the two halved the 20th hole with bogeys, the 26th with birdies and the 28th with bogeys before Gilligan clinched things on the 29th hole. The match topped the record for longest ever in Western Amateur history set by Mitch Mooney and Scott Hoch's 26-hole match in the 1979. The longest previous Western Amateur final was a 22-hole affair featuring Norman Xiong and Doc Redman in 2017.

"Jack and I were talking about it on our ninth playoff hole and decided we were ready for it to be over," Gilligan said with a laugh. "But I just kept telling myself you're playing for a tournament of the biggest magnitude and need to keep going."

The last time two college teammates faced off in the Western Amateur final was when Wake Forest’s Curtis Strange beat Jay Haas in 1974.

To get to the finals in the first place, Gilligan (ranked 14th in the WAGR at the start of the week) had to beat another Florida teammate, Parker Bell, in 19 holes in the semifinals, Ben James (a U.S. Walker Cup team member in 2023) in the quarters and Blades Brown (reigning medalist at the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Junior) in the Round of 16.

All told Gilligan played 154 holes on the week.

Gillgan’s impressive play is even more notable given his backstory. At age 15, he was diagnosed with stage-4 ALK-negative large cell lymphoma, a form of cancer typically found in the elderly. Gilligan spent more than 50 days in the hospital and 10 in ICU, followed by seven months of chemotherapy treatment. For a detailed story on his heroic fight, check out this GolfChannel.com profile from November 2022.