GLENCOE, Ill. — David Chung of Fayetteville, N.C., survived 36 holes and seven hours of high pressure match play golf Saturday to win the 108th Western Amateur at historic Skokie Country Club.
The 5-foot 9-inch, 160-pound junior from Stanford defeated UCLA junior and PAC-10 rival Gregor Main, 2 and 1, in the compelling final match played before hundreds of spectators, who viewed the action close-up under sunny skies and a warm afternoon breeze.
“The Western Amateur is definitely the biggest tournament I’ve won,” Chung said after receiving the George R. Thorne championship trophy that goes to the tournament winner.  “It’s held on one of the most prestigious courses in the nation, it’s a grueling format, and the match play element of it makes it mentally demanding. It’s a lot of golf.  It’s an endurance test.”
Chung, 20, who won the Porter Cup last week in Niagra Falls, came back from two holes down early in the final match, birdieing five of his first six holes on the back nine. Chung, who uses a long putter, was playing so well that when Main reeled off three consecutive birdies on holes 11, 12, and 13, he picked up only one hole, and the match remained tied as the two players walked to the 448-yard par 4 14th.
On the 14th, Chung drained a 20-foot uphill putt for birdie while Main’s tee shot hit a tree and dropped down into a fairway bunker 195 yards from the green.  Though he hit the green from the bunker, Main had little chance to hole his cross-country 60-foot birdie putt – and didn’t. Advantage, Chung.
“That was a great putt to have go in,” said Chung, who had missed a couple of putts earlier in the match. “It was like retribution.”
On the driveable par 4, 325-yard 15th, Main’s tee shot just missed hitting the flagstick by inches and wound up just over the green in the rough. Meanwhile, Chung smiled and high-fived his caddie and
Stanford teammate Wilson Bowen of nearby Winnetka, Ill., after they watched his high-draw tee shot fly the pin and end up on the green some 40 feet past the hole.
Main’s eagle chip from the rough slid six feet past the hole and he missed the come-backer that would have given him another much-needed birdie.  Chung lagged his first putt to just over two feet and calmly made birdie to go 2-up with three holes to play. Both players bogeyed the par 3 250-yard 16th, where Main drove into the greenside bunker and Chung three-putted; still Chung was dormie.
Chung closed out the match on the par 4 454-yard 17th, when he got up and down from the right greenside bunker, making a 4-foot par putt while Main missed the 30-footer for birdie he needed to win the hole and extend the match. Chung won 2 and 1. On Friday, Chung got up-and-down from the same bunker to save par against Jeffrey Kang before winning the match on the 18th hole.
Afterward Main complimented Chung saying, “His swing is just solid. He doesn’t make mistakes with that long putter∑It came down to a putting contest and he made a few more than I did.”
Main said his grandparents had been members of Skokie in the 1970s before moving to California, but he never had played the course.  Moreover, he said, he had not played a match play event since his freshman year with the Bruins. “I’m looking forward to playing this event again next year,” Main said.
Chung said he began using the long putter last summer and immediately won the North South Amateur, so he has stuck with it ever since.  Before adopting the long putter, he said, “I’d putt really, really well but I was very streaky. My coach, Conrad Ray, suggested I try the long putter.”
Two weeks ago, he visited his swing coach, Adam Schrieber in Michigan and underwent a “full-swing refinement” that has paid dividends with victories the last two weeks.
Chung also chatted after his round about having dinner two years in a row with prominent Stanford alum and former Western Amateur and multiple Western Open champion Tiger Woods at his home in Isleworth, where Stanford plays a tournament every year.  “I was very nervous freshman year,” Chung said.  “He was very, very down to earth. He came out and watched us play a little bit.”
Chung said his major influence was his father, Chris, who flew in from Raleigh on Friday evening after his son got into the semifinals. “There is no chance I would be here without him,” Chung said. “I have had no better supporter than him.”
Both morning semifinal matches went to 19 holes after Chung and Australian Kieran Pratt birdied the 18th hole to square their respective matches to force sudden death.
Main defeated Pratt on the first extra hole when Pratt hit his approach shot from the left rough above the hole on the severe back-to-front tilting No. 1 green and couldn’t stop his first putt from rolling 10 feet past the hole despite merely tapping it. Meanwhile, Main hit his approach onto the green below the hole and two-putted for par to win the match.
Chung tied Chan Kim on No. 18 by consciously hitting his tee shot into the first fairway, firing his approach to five feet, and draining the birdie putt while Kim missed hit 20-foot birdie putt.
Chung closed out the match on No. 1 when he hit his approach below the hole and Kim’s wound up 25 feet above it.  Kim hit his putt at a 90-degree angle, saw it turn right and head down the hill toward the hole, missing the left edge by an inch and trundling six feet past. Chung drained his 6-foot uphill putt for birdie and Kim missed to give Chung the victory.

108th Western Amateur Match Play Results
Skokie Country Club, Glencoe, Illinois
Par 71 Yardage: 7,091
First-Round Match Play (Friday, Aug. 6)
Gregor Main, Danville, Calif., d. Cheng-Tsung Pan, Taipei, Taiwan, 2 and 1
Travis Woolf, Ft. Worth, Tex., d. Andres Echavarria, Medellin, Colombia, 2 and 1
Yaroslav Merkulov, Penfield, N.Y., d. Blayne Barber, Lake City, Fla., 2 and 1
Kieran Pratt, Melbourne, Aus., d. Henrik Norlander, Stockholm, Sweden, 3 and 1
Lower Bracket
Chan Kim, Honolulu, Hawaii, d. Tom Hoge, Fargo, N.D., 3 and 2
Cam Burke, New Hamburg, Ontario, Can., d. Ethan Tracy, Hilliard, Ohio, 1 up
David Chung, Fayetteville, N.C., d. Scott Pinckney, Scottsdale, Ariz., 21 holes
Jeffrey Kang, Fullerton, Calif., d. Lion Kim, Lake Mary, Fla., 3 and 2
Quarterfinals (Friday, Aug. 6)
Main d. Woolf, 3 and 2
Pratt d. Merkulov, 3 and 2
Kim d. Burke, 2 and 1
Chung d. Kang, 1 up
Semifinals (Saturday, Aug. 7)
Main d. Pratt, 19 holes
Chung d. Kim, 19 holes
Championship Match (Saturday, Aug. 7)
Chung d. Main, 2 and 1