KEENE – Lightning and heavy rains halted play at the New Hampshire State Amateur Golf Championship on Wednesday afternoon. Kurt Eddins didn’t mind the interruption.

Eddins, a 2008 Concord High graduate, was down a hole and playing poorly in his Round of 32 match against No. 8 Michael Mahan when the horn sounded and play stopped at Bretwood Golf Course. Eddins headed for the clubhouse, ate a hot dog, hit a few practice putts, felt like a new man when he got back on the course about an hour later and eventually pulled out a 1-up win.

“That rain changed the whole thing. Because I just wasn’t hitting it well and he could have run away with it,” Eddins said. “Sometimes you just need a break.”

There was still plenty of work to do for Eddins, (the match was only three holes old when the rain came), but the break clearly helped. He won the fifth hole with a birdie and took the sixth with a par to go 1-up. Mahan squared things again quickly, the two stayed tight on the back and they went into the 18th all square.

Eddins, the No. 40 seed who plays out of Pease Golf Course, teed off first on the final hole and decided to play it safe, hitting a 5-iron to within 80 yards of the green. Mahan (Cocheco Country Club) went for the win, but the driver that was supposed to reach the green wound up in the hazard and Eddins claimed the hole, and the match, with a steady par.

“I was just fine with going extra holes and he wanted to go for the win,” Eddins said. “I just wanted to have wedge in and see what happened. Worst case I’m going to have 15 feet, which is what I had.”

Jim Cilley faced the same situation – all square on 18 – in his Round of 64 match on Wednesday morning against No. 52 Sylvain Foster. No. 13 Cilley, a Belmont native who plays out of Ridgewood Country Club, watched Foster (Hanover Country Club) hit a driver just short of the green and figured he could reach it with his driver. The aggressive plan worked for the 2011 champ as he stayed well away from the water hazard on the right and bounced the ball off the rough and onto the green.

Cilley was still looking at an 18-foot birdie putt with a double break, but he felt good as he stood over the ball.

“I thought to myself, you’ve made putts like this before, it would be pretty cool if you knocked this one with everybody watching,” Cilley said. “And I just happened to hit it at the right pace and it crawled in.”

That 1-up win for Cilley meant a Round of 32 match against No. 20 Cameron Salo, a quarterfinalist in last year’s state am who was playing on his home course this year. After grinding through the first few holes, Cilley birdied the sixth and seventh to go 2-up. He butchered the 11th and his lead was cut in half, but Salo hit it into a hazard on the 12th to give Cilley his two-hole lead back. Eventually Cilley hit a five-foot par putt on the 17th for a 2-and-1 win.

Eddins claimed a 2-and-1 win his Round of 64 match in the morning against No. 25 Brian Nowack (Amherst Country Club). The pair stayed even all morning until Eddins birdied 16 after an approach that left him within three feet. He followed that up with an up-and-down birdie on 17 for the win.

Eddins will now face No. 9 Craig Steckowych, the 1990 and 1998 champ out of the Portsmouth Country Club, in the Round of 16. No matter what happens in that one, this will still be the best state am result for Eddins.

“This was my goal, to get to 16,” Eddins said. “I mean, I have a job, I only play once or twice a week.”

The other local golfers who will be joining Eddins and Cilley in the Round of 16 are No. 1 Matt Paradis and No. 50 Will McLaughlin, who both play out of the Concord Country Club. Paradis, the 2016 runner-up, rolled to a 5-and-4 win against No. 64 Nate Gardner in the morning and then beat No. 32 David Larrivee, 1-up. Paradis will face No. 16 Phil Pleat in the next round.

McLaughlin pulled off a 2-and-1 win against No. 15 Ryan Kohler in the Round of 64 and then beat another local, Bow’s Josh LaCasse, 3-and-2, in the Round of 32. No. 18 LaCasse had a 2-and-1 victory over Eric McCory (Nashua Country Club) in the Round of 64.

LaCasse’s Southern New Hampshire University golf teammate John Clancy (Concord Country Club) just missed out on a trip to the Round of 16. Clancy looked ready to take a 1-up win over No. 19 Jamie Ferullo in the Round of 32, but Ferullo (Rochester Country Club) chipped in from a distance to extend the match and eventually won in 21 holes. Clancy beat No. 51 Alex Brunelle (Atkinson Country Club) in the morning, 1-up.

No. 43 Travis Landry (Loudon Country Club) advanced with a 3-and-2 win against No. 22 Stephen Puzas (Wentworth Golf Club), but then lost in the Round of 32 to No. 11 Andy Hunnewell (Carter Country Club), 2-and-1.

Other locals who played on Wednesday were No. 26 AJ Correia (Laconia Country Club), who lost to No. 39 Sam Barton (Kingswood Golf Club), 4-and-3; and No. 35 Bob Landry (Loudon Country Club), who lost to No. 30 Josh Kibbe (Green Meadow Golf Club), 2-1.