OAKMONT, Pa. -- The kid from Down Under is turning the U.S. Amateur upside down.
Too bad his friends and family back in Australia don't yet fully comprehend how big an accomplishment it is for Nick Flanagan to make the semifinals in his first Amateur.
On his first trip to Oakmont Country Club. On his first trip to America. Against the only world-class amateur competition he has encountered since first picking up a golf club six years ago, all because he wanted to play like Tiger Woods.
Two more days and two more victories on a historically difficult course that isn't supposed to yield so easily to a player with such limited experience, and Flanagan will be just like Tiger. He'll be a U.S. Amateur champion.
"Over here it's the best amateurs in the world, the best courses in the world and it's just a different level," the 19-year-old Flanagan said Friday. "We don't have any of this kind of stuff back home. This is completely new to me."
He's not alone, even if the two Australian golfing buddies who accompanied him to the United States a couple of months ago to play against superior competition have gone back home.
All four of Saturday's semifinalists are 22 or younger, including two teens, Flanagan and 18-year-old Casey Wittenberg. Even in a tournament dominated in recent years by youth, this is an eclectic, unpredictable and unlikely bunch.
David Oh, whose most impressive victory to date was in the Long Beach Open, continues to surprise -- mostly himself. After beating tournament favorite Trip Kuehne on Thursday, he ousted the very accomplished Bill Haas, the son of PGA Tour pro Jay Haas, 2 and 1 Friday.
"I'm not going to lie, I'm surprised," said Oh, a Southern Cal player. "For me, for this to be happening right now, it's too great for words to describe."
Flanagan, who took out 44-year-old Jerry Courville 1-up, is also having trouble relating how he feels because he has never been in this kind of atmosphere before.
Flanagan's biggest victory to date came in the Tasmanian Open. Now, he's having a devil of a time in a tournament far bigger than anything in Australia. There are no such things as national TV coverage, big galleries or media tents in Australian amateur golf.
"The most people I've ever played in front of before was maybe 100 people," he said. "To play in front of thousands of people like were out there today, that's different. ... I want to get a videotape of this so my family can see it, because people don't realize how big this thing is."
Two more days and they might.
The other semifinal matches the closest thing to a favorite, Oklahoma State freshman Wittenberg, against Auburn junior Lee Williams. Each is playing in his first amateur.
Wittenberg is the nation's top-ranked amateur and the only one of the eight U.S. Walker Cup team members chosen so far still in the field.
Despite his ranking, Wittenberg said, "Match play is a dangerous game. Rankings don't mean much in match play. This isn't like tennis or some other sport where physically a No. 1 player is better than another."
Wittenberg, from Memphis, had the look of a No. 1 on Friday, never trailing in a 1-up victory over 50-year-old George Zahringer.
It was a turnaround from Thursday, when Wittenberg rallied from four holes down in one match and three in another.
"To win the U.S. Amateur, you have to make clutch putts," Wittenberg said. "You don't necessarily have to make tons, but you have to make the ones that are important."
Wittenberg's nothing-gets-to-me demeanor is uncharacteristic for one so young, and it partly explains how he is one more victory away from playing in Sunday's 36-hole final.
"I like to think I'm pretty level-headed about everything that I do," he said. "People have different ways of acting and showing their emotions, and I'm just trying to keep everything even keel. That's just my personality."
Williams, from Alexander City, Ala., defeated 35-year-old Pat Carter, from Huntington, W.Va., 4 and 3. Carter, Zahringer and Courville each defied the recent trend of youth-dominated amateurs, at least for a couple of rounds, by reaching the quarterfinals.
This may be Williams' first U.S. Amateur, but that doesn't mean he's isn't thinking about winning it.
"It's a horror to get here because there's so many good players that try to qualify," he said. "So you get here, you might as well be thinking about winning, especially when you've put in a long, hard summer's worth of work."
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