Amateur Career
In 2006, Fujikawa qualified for the U.S. Open at Winged Foot by winning the Hawaii sectional qualifier(67-69-136), becoming the youngest player in history to qualify for the tournament. At the U.S. Open, Fujikawa shot 81-77(158) and missed the cut by nine strokes.
Fujikawa made his second PGA Tour start (2006 U.S. Open was the first) at the 2007 Sony Open in Hawaii, having gained entry by shooting 67 in the Open Qualifier (PGA Tour Exemption Category #17). In the second round of the Sony Open itself, Fujikawa became the youngest player in nearly 50 years to make a PGA Tour cut. A birdie on the 16th hole put him within the cut line, but it was his 15-foot eagle on the 18th hole that was his most memorable shot of the day. With that shot, Fujikawa secured a 4-under-par 66 and made the cut by three shots.
Fujikawa followed up his history-making cut by shooting a second straight 66 in the third round, a score which, on that day, was bettered only by tournament leader Charles Howell III. Fujikawa made a 51-foot birdie on the 11th hole, finishing the third round tied for eighth place, along with Chad Campell and Tom Pernice Jr.
Fujikawa shot 2-over-72 in Sunday's final round,which only included 2 birdies. He finished the tournament tied for 20th place at 5-under-275.
One month after his record-breaking showing at the Sony Open in Hawaii, Fujikawa won the Hawaii Pearl Open, Hawaii's most lucrative local golf tournament, held annually since 1979. Fujikawa was the first amateur since 1992 to win the tournament.
Read more about this topic: Tadd Fujikawa
Famous quotes containing the words amateur and/or career:
“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)