What a Father's Day gift from Wilson Furr!
Posted on: June 21,2015
Bill and Wilson Furr share Father’s Day victory smiles.
So, Dads, what did you do on your Father’s Day?
Here’s what Bill Furr did. He rode in the golf cart with his 16-year-old son, Wilson, who became the youngest champion in the 100-year history of the Mississippi State Amateur.
“That was a blast!” Bill Furr said.
Cleveland
Had to be.
It was fun to watch even if you weren’t the father.
Wilson Furr, who hits the ball every bit as purely as most any PGA Tour pro, shot a final round 71 for a 72-hole total of 14-under par 274 on the 7,000-yard-plus Country Club of Jackson course.
Want a comparison? Nick Taylor won the PGA Tour’s 2014 Sanderson Farms Championship with a 72-hole total of 272. Multi-tournament winners Jason Bohn and Boo Weekley finished second to Taylor at 14-under par, the same score as Furr shot.
Wilson Furr won the Centennial State Am by a whopping eight shots. Had he not been playing, it would have been a heckuva finish. There was a four-way tie for second.
For a while, it didn’t look like it was going to be that easy. Wilson Furr began the day with a 5-shot lead. His lead was down to just two shots when he reached the 11th tee on Saturday.
“I was just swinging at it too hard,” he said, afterward. “I just had to back off some.”
No, Bill Furr said, he didn’t have any sage advice for his oldest son at that point.
“To tell you the truth, I was just making small talk,” Bill Furr said. “I’m pretty sure I was a lot more nervous than he was.”
Wilson played the last eight holes in 3-under par while the others faltered.
Naturally, Bill Furr was quite pleased with how Wilson dealt with the nerves and the pressure of playing in front of a big gallery at his home club.
“It was a good test for him,” Bill Furr said. “That’s something you can’t practice. That’s something you can only do by experiencing it. He handled it well.
“I’m really proud,” the father continued. “To me this is really huge. Wilson plays in a lot regional and national junior tournaments that are really important. But this is the state championship, the 100th one in history. Twenty years from now, this is going to be a really nice memory.”
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