Woods-Daly duel highlights St. Charles Men's quarterfinals

ST. CHARLES – In years past, if you saw the two names "Woods" and "Daly" at the top of a golf tournament leaderboard, it was a heated battle on the PGA Tour.

But this is a local rivalry, notably at the St. Charles Men's Golf Tournament, between defending champion Matt Daly and 2011 winner Jon Woods.

In match play Sunday as part of the quarterfinals at Pottawatomie Golf Course, Daly got the better of Woods – just barely – and advanced to next weekend's semifinal round with a 1 up victory in 20 holes over his friend.

"That was the closest match I’ve ever played in my life, and I have the utmost respect for Jon," Daly said. “He is a grinder and we both grinded it out.”

Facing elimination and the opportunity to defend his title in next week’s round, Daly was down two holes with two to play, but he found his niche just in time to pull out the win.

“I was in panic mode,” Daly said. “But I made an amazing bunker shot on the second hole…what can I say, I’m … beat and I’ve never gone 20 holes.”

Daly started his round rather routinely, but things started to swing to the dark side on the back nine and his ‘B’ game started to creep up.

“I just could not find the fairways,” he said. “I was having trouble even with four irons and five irons to find the fairways and just couldn’t do it and I had to scramble.”

It wasn’t until the final two holes, Nos. 17 and 18, when Daly officially made his comeback to force the extra match play.

“I won 18 and that got it back all square,” Daly said. “I hit a six iron out of the trees from about 150 (yards) and rode it. He made six and I made five and kept it going on to the next hole. It was just amazing.”

Weather didn’t play much of a factor in Daly’s game as he was treated with sunshine, mid-70s temperatures and very little wind, but he did have a little trouble reading the greens.

“The brightness caused that a little but I couldn’t ask for anything better than this,” Daly said. “If this is the worst thing that happened to me, I’m very happy with that.”

In other championship match play, David Lanciotti will face Daly in the semifinals as he defeated Brian Charles, 2 up, while Chris Jones moved on with a 4-3 victory over St. Charles East product Richard Geier. The final quarterfinal of the day involved another East graduate in Sean Lenchner, who lost a close 2-1 decision to Chris Thomas.

Daly, who thinks that the worst is behind him now, hopes to take the tournament championship and is confident he can do so.

“I’m going to win the show,” Daly said. “But I’m not going to think that far ahead. I’m thinking first tee shot, first hole [next week]. I need to defend this [title] so I can’t get too far ahead of myself. It’s got to come one shot at a time and that’s going to be my approach.”