BATON ROUGE – LSU golfer Cohen Trolio, who played some of the best golf in the tournament field in the second and third round, just missed out on advancing to the final 16 in match play after a sudden death playoff Thursday in the Western Amateur at the Exmoor Country Club in Highland Park, Illinois.
Trolio, finished 72 holes in a tie for 15th place, and joined seven golfers trying to get the final two spots in the round of 16 match play. However, he was eliminated on the first playoff hole.
Trolio started with a 3-over round of 74 on Tuesday, before rallying to make the top 44 in the first cut with a strong second round on Wednesday of 4-under 67 to get back into red figures at 1-under 141.
That advanced him to two rounds on Thursday to try to get to match play. Starting on hole 10, Trolio posted three birdies on his first nine holes to quickly begin moving up the leaderboard and had three birdies with just one bogey on the front nine to shoot 6-under 65 to go to 7-under entering the afternoon round.
Trolio birdied the 14th and 15th hole in the afternoon (his fifth and sixth holes of the day to get to 9-under par for the tournament, but a rough stretch on the turn would eventually put him at 5-under entering the final. A crucial birdie on the par 4 seventh hole, his 16th of the round would get him back to 6-under par and get him into the playoff.
Trolio shots rounds of 74-67-65-72 for a four-day total of 6-under 278 as he now preps for the United States Amateur which begins in Paramus, New Jersey on Aug. 15.
The West Point, Mississippi native qualified for the Amateur last month in a qualifier at the Ole Miss Golf Course in Oxford. He will be one of four LSU golfers in the Amateur.