LACONIA – He’s played in 13 New Hampshire Amateur Golf Championships. He’s reached match play 12 times. He won it all in 2011. All that experience helps, but nerves still get to Jim Cilley, and they were acting up during his Round of 16 State Am match on Thursday at Laconia Country Club.
“The first few holes of the afternoon match, I didn’t hit it great. I felt rushed. I felt like I was rushing myself, so I actually walked a lot from five in on the front,” said Cilley, who works out of Concord, lives in Tilton and has his handicap at Ridgewood Country Club. “I just wanted to slow myself down, breathe a little bit, loosen my grip pressure a little bit.”
The walking worked. Cilley, the No. 2 seed, was down two to No. 50 Ryan Friel (The Overlook Golf Club) after four holes, but he squared the match after six, carded a momentum-changing birdie on the 10th hole and claimed a 3-and-2 win to advance to today’s quarterfinals.
“At this point in the tournament, we’re all about the same ability level. It’s how you handle the insides that really matters,” Cilley said. “And fortunately I have enough years now, I feel like I’m one of the older guys left, that I’ve been able to kind of rely on some of that.”
Cilley also had some experience with Friel, who he beat in the State Am quarterfinals in 2014, 5-and-3.
“There’s a comfort level knowing that you beat somebody before that’s a good player, somebody who is annually in the Round of 16 or the quarterfinals,” Cilley said. “So to be able to beat him before gives you a little confidence playing again.”
Before Cilley could get to Friel, however, he had to face Nate Choukas (Hanover Country Club) in Thursday morning’s Round of 32.
“(Choukas) played pretty well and kept hanging around,” Cilley said. “I kept going, ‘I’ve got to shake him, I’ve got to shake him.’ But I couldn’t because there was really nothing that was going too well. I didn’t hit it that great, didn’t hit my numbers with my yardages. It’s funny, I actually felt stronger in the afternoon. I felt tired in the morning. It took me a while to wake up.”
He did wake up enough to claim a 3-and-2 win over Choukas to advance to the Round of 16. After squaring that match on the sixth hole, Cilley three-putt the ninth and Friel went back up by one.
Cilley then hit his drive on the 10th hole into the woods, but he punched it out with an 8-iron from about 110 yards to within four feet then birdied to even the match.
“By hitting that shot it’s almost like I stole momentum back,” Cilley said. “And you could almost see it on (Friel’s) face.”
Cilley carried that momentum into the par-4 11th hole, which he birdied. He went 2-up with a birdie on the par-5 13th hole and closed out the 3-and-2 win with a tricky seven-foot par putt on the 16th hole.
Cilley will face No. 10 Jamie Ferullo (Rochester Country Club), who reached the semifinals last year, in this morning’s quarterfinal.
“Ferullo probably has more talent than any of us,” Cilley said. “When he gets it going, he can just be explosive.”
The winner of that match will face the winner of the match between No. 6 Matthew Paradis (Concord Country Club) and No. 30 Nick MacDonald (Hanover).
Paradis won his Thursday morning Round of 32 match against another area golfer, No. 38 Bob Landry (Loudon Country Club), 2-and-1.
“That was a pretty good battle,” Paradis said. “Bob played pretty well, I just pretty much made a lot of pars, which was good enough out there today. With the wind kind of blowing and the greens fast, it was playing pretty tough. So I just tried to keep consistent and that got the job done.”
That win put Paradis head-to-head with his good friend and Southern New Hampshire University teammate, Josh LaCasse, who is from Bow and plays out of Pembroke Pines Country Club. LaCasse cruised to a 5-and-4 win in the Round of 32 against Eric Foster (Laconia Country Club), but both he and Paradis struggled in their Round of 16 matchup.
“We’re used to playing against each other and we just wanted to go out there and both see each other play well, but that didn’t really happen today,” Paradis said. “I just couldn’t roll in a birdie putt for the life of me … He ended up bogeying 10 and 11 which gave me a two-shot lead and from then on, I just figured I had to stay steady, try to hit the middle of the greens and I pretty much parred out until the 16th hole where we walked off tied with bogeys to end the match.”
Paradis won, 3-and-2.
LaCasse will caddy for Paradis today (that was the deal, loser carries the bag for the winner) in the matchup against MacDonald, the 2010 State Am champ.
Defending Concord Country Club champion Will McLaughlin won his Round of 32 match against Justin Dockham (Laconia Country Club) in 20 holes. McLaughlin lost the 17th hole to fall behind by one, but he made a 12-foot birdie putt on 18 to force the playoff, which he won by parring the second extra hole.
But McLaughlin ran into No. 9 Damon Salo (Bretwood Golf Club) in the afternoon and fell, 3-and-2.
“I played great this afternoon against Damon. It was probably the best round I played all week, but that’s match play for you,” McLaughlin said. “You can play great but just get a bad matchup, and Damon is a really fantastic player.”
Other area golfers in action Thursday included Bow High grad Jeremy Duhamel, who lost to Ryan Kohler in the Round of 32 in 19 holes; Concord High grad Kurt Eddins, who lost to Chris Houston in the Round of 32, 1-up; and Travis Landry (Loudon Country Club), who lost to Friel in the Round of 32, 2-and-1.
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341 or at tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20)