As soon as Frankie Capan received his invitation to play the Maridoe Amateur, he knew he wanted to be there. Over the course of 2020, as the club in Carrollton, Texas, hosted tournament after tournament, it built a reputation for attracting strong fields at every level of the game.

Starved for tournament starts, like many players, Capan watched from afar.

“I saw the other tournaments going on at Maridoe and kind of wished I was playing,” he said.

Capan, who grew up in North Oaks, Minnesota, saw Maridoe for the first time the day before this event began. He arrived for his practice round with just enough time to register and snag a yardage book. He didn’t even get a chance to warm up. Capan usually isn’t the kind of guy who likes to play practice rounds, but at Maridoe, you have to know where to place it.

Scores: Maridoe Amateur

Despite the limited reps, Capan returned for Monday’s opening round and fired a 2-under 70. He birdied the final three holes of the back nine (he started on No. 10), and after a long day of brutal North Texas wind and temperatures near 40 degrees, Capan came out with a share of the lead.

Leo Oyo, who transferred from San Diego State to Oklahoma State, is also 2 under through 16 holes. Oyo was among a handful of players who didn’t finish the first round on Monday. Those players will wrap up their final holes Tuesday morning before the second round begins. After 54 holes, the 92-man field will be reduced to 64 men, who enter a match-play bracket that will play out much like a USGA championship – with a 36-hole final on Sunday and all.

Capan said he expected the conditions at Maridoe to be British Open-like this week, though quickly corrected himself to say U.S. Open-like. Perhaps both are true.

“I ended up bogeying the first hole but I’ve been playing pretty well the past few weeks so I wasn’t really beating myself up too much because I knew everyone was going to make some bogeys out there,” he said.

Capan’s only start since a match-play run at the U.S. Amateur in August was a College Golf Fellowship-sponsored event at Trinity Forest, just south of Maridoe in Dallas. That was early October. He finished 12th.

After COVID cut short his sophomore season at Alabama last year, Capan entered the transfer portal. While Alabama was a special place, he knew it wasn’t the best fit for him.

Fellow Minnesotan Van Holmgren had recently transferred from North Dakota State to Florida Gulf Coast. Holmgren stayed with Capan during quarantine and Capan picked his brain about the Florida school.

Even though Capan has been based in Fort Myers, Florida, this fall, he’s only been to the library and to team workouts. It’s a funny feeling after leaving Tuscaloosa.

“It was weird not being on campus at all,” he said, “after coming from one of the biggest campuses.”

Since announcing his decision to transfer in July, Capan won the Minnesota Amateur and finished second at the Minnesota Open. He also played the Sunnehanna Amateur and the Western Amateur, barely missing the 16-man match-play bracket in the latter. In 2019, Capan played his way to the quarterfinals of the grueling Midwest event.

Capan admits to feeling a bit more freed up since making a major change in his golf life.

“I think there’s something about being excited for a clean slate somewhere and I think that subconsciously might have freed me up a little bit,” he said.

Asked for his match-play record, Capan put it this way: He thinks he’d win seven out of 10 matches. His history in the format certainly backs up that thinking.

“I just really like the fact that it’s me versus you,” he said of match play. “The golf course is standing in between us. I’ve always been a fan of other sports and in football, I used to play defensive linemen when I was young. It was always me versus the guy in front of me. I think it’s such a cool concept especially in the game of golf.”

More on the Maridoe Amateur…

The Maridoe Amateur came to fruition after the club hosted the Southern Amateur in July. It was a way for Nathaniel Crosby, the U.S. Walker Cup captain, to see the nation’s best amateurs play a match-play event at Maridoe.

The field, which started Monday at 96 players, was selected mostly by ranking and with priority given to U.S. players. The top 150 players in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (after the U.S. Amateur) were invited in addition to any player inside the top 200 in the Scratch Players World Amateur Ranking. Players who made the Round of 32 at the U.S. Amateur or the Sweet 16 at the Western Amateur – who weren’t inside that top echelon of the rankings – were also invited, and so were all Palmer Cup players.

With six rounds of match play coming later in the week, the Maridoe Amateur certainly will provide a telling look at the nation’s top talent in a head-to-head format. Last week, the USGA announced its 16-man Walker Cup practice squad that would meet at Bay Hill in December. The Walker Cup will be played May 8-9 at Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Florida.

As for the Maridoe Amateur? It will be played annually and is expected to return in the summer of 2021 with the field likely doubling in size.