VIS golfer Brett Coletta finished second in the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship, one shot behind overall winner Curtis Luck (WA) at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club in Incheon, Korea.
Coletta led heading in to the final round and was aiming to lock in a spot in the US Masters with a win, before struggling to a three-over-par 75.
Only the winner gained an automatic start at Augusta, and with Luck the only player in the 118-man field who already had his hands on a Masters invitation courtesy of his win in this year’s US Amateur, Coletta finished as the disconsolate runner-up, a shot back.
Luck felt for Coletta who came so close, but missed out on a dream Masters start - and Luck empathised with his Australian teammate.
“I did go through exactly what Brett’s going through at the moment,” Luck said of the 2015 WA Open.
“It was tough after a pretty heartbreaking loss and it took me a few months to get over. Fortunately you learn a lot more from your mistakes than you do from your rights, so I can say pretty confidently that Brett’s going to come back bigger and better over the next year, and I hope he does.”
“Brett’s a really close friend of mine, so I obviously understand about the opportunity of what he’s just missed out on, so I will say that I feel a little guilty and a little bad, but unfortunately that’s the spot we’re in, and I’m so competitive that I couldn’t give up the chance to win an event like this, but I definitely feel for Brett.”
