Scan Shannon Johnson’s scorecard from her quarterfinal match at the Massachusetts Women’s State Amateur on Thursday and one number will leap out at you: her 2 on the par-5 18th hole.
An albatross.
The rarest score in golf. A one-in-6 million shot, according to several published estimates.
But this story isn’t really about Johnson — it’s about her opponent, 19-year-old Lillian Guleserian, who is a rising sophomore at Penn State, where she plays on the women’s golf team. Guleserian, who is from Westwood, Mass., has had herself a nice summer. In early June, she finished 5th at the Women’s Southern GA Amateur, which she quickly followed up with a win at the New England Women’s Amateur Championship. Then, late last month, came a 3rd-place finish at the Francis Ouimet Memorial Tournament.
All of which is to say Guleserian was among the favorites when the 123rd Massachusetts Women’s Amateur got under way at Oak Hill CC, just west of Boston, earlier this week. Guleserian blazed through the two rounds of stroke-play qualifying, shooting 72-75 to finish 4th among the 32 players who advanced to match play. In her first-round match, she dusted her opponent, 7 and 6. In the Round of 16, more of the same: a 5-and-4 romp.
That set up Guleserian’s Thursday-morning quarterfinal showdown with Johnson, a five-time Massachusetts Women’s Mid-Amateur champion and also a five-time winner of the state stroke-play title. Early on, Guleserian cruised, building a 3-up lead through 12 holes. “Felt pretty good the whole match,” Guleserian told GOLF in a phone interview Thursday afternoon. “Then made a few mistakes.”
Those hiccups led to bogies on 15 and 16. When Guleserian and Johnson arrived on the 18th tee, Johnson had cut Guleserian’s lead to one. Johnson stepped in and laced a drive. Guleserian followed with a good one of her own but was 10 yards behind Johnson’s tee shot, meaning Guleserian would play from the fairway first.
Yardage: about 210 but playing more like 220.
Club choice: 4-hybrid.
“I’d been going for that green pretty much all week, so I knew I felt pretty good there,” Guleserian said.
She hadn’t hit the green, though, with her nearest attempt creeping onto the fringe.
The shot came off low and hot and on a good line but, Guleserian thought, seemingly with not enough oomph. “I thought it was going to be short because it landed pretty short of the green,” she said.
But the ball refused to quit. It bounced once, twice, three times on the slope in front of the green and, when it arrived on the putting surface, kept enough pace to keep rolling toward the pin. Ten feet . . . 20 feet . . . 30 feet . . .and here, on Mass Golf’s video of the shot that has been making the rounds on social media, you can hear two greenside voices exclaiming, “Oh my god!”
The witnesses sensed what was about to happen.
After another 10 or so feet of roll, the ball vanished into the hole.
An albatross.
To win a state amateur match.
Back in the fairway, Johnson’s own second shot had suddenly become moot — but, in a stroke of scorekeeping weirdness, also conceded. A conceded albatross. It’s right there on the card, a pair of matching 2s on the 18th hole.
We’d like to tell you that Guleserian rode her high into the finals. She didn’t. In her Thursday-afternoon semifinal match against Molly Smith, Guleserian lost, 5 and 4. “She was making a lot of putts,” Guleserian said of Smith.
When Guleserian checked her phone afterward, the gravity of what she’d done on the final hole of her morning match hit her in the form of a crush of messages from friends and loved ones who’d seen the video. Those well-wishers knew the unlikeliness of what Guleserian had accomplished. Guleserian, of course, knows that, too.
“It’s crazy,” she said. “An albatross. I never thought I would get one.”
