The second day of the Western Amateur Championship at Knollwood Club in Lake Forest began with minimal fanfare.
The first pairing teed off at 7 a.m. Wednesday, with no one but themselves to applaud each other as the starter read their names.
But down the right side of the fairway, a tall man with a baseball cap and a cup of coffee was waiting for an important update.
“Hey,” said golfer Andrew Price upon spotting his dad.
“How are my girls?” replied Rick Price, referring to his year-old twin granddaughters.
Such is the intersection of life, golf and business for the 34-year-old Price, a Lake Bluff native and one of the top amateur golfers in the Chicago area. He works with his father at the family-owned Price Insurance in Lake Forest, but he squeezes in some time at the driving range before work twice a week and plays whenever he can.
Which, as a father of two with a full-time job, isn’t all that often.
“I still get a fair amount on the schedule. Just ask my wife, she’ll tell you I play all the time,” he quipped. “I play with my dad every once in a while on a Sunday morning, but other than that, I never play with my friends at all. It’s just hard.”
Price might sell insurance, but he sure didn’t give himself any Wednesday in the second round of the Western Amateur.
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That seems to be a trend here for the Lake Forest graduate.
A day after hitting his tee shot into the water on the final hole and scrambling for a bogey, he missed a makable par putt on the 18th to fall to even for the day and 2-over for the championship. His best shot Wednesday came on the par-4 sixth, the course’s hardest hole, where he birdied from 73 yards with a well-placed lob wedge.
His group was the first off the course, meaning he had to wait all day to find out that he made the initial cut from 156 golfers to the 44 who will return Thursday for 36 holes of stroke play.
Which is harder?
“Waiting,” Price said. “Playing is the easy part. … I’ve got to see what the office looks like. If it’s busy, I might have to go back to work.”
The Western Amateur has been a frequent stop — but not always a smooth one — on Price’s amateur circuit. His best performance came in 2004, when he shot a final-round 68 to tie for 14th at the end of stroke play and earned a spot in the match play Sweet 16. But he mistakenly signed for a 69 on his scorecard, which dropped him into a five-way playoff for the last spot. His run ended there.
Price was a three-sport athlete at Lake Forest and led the golf team to the 1999 Class AA state title. He went on to a successful college career at Kansas, where longtime coach Ross Randall noticed that his big game outshined his quiet nature and slender frame.
“You watch a guy that’s real quiet when he gets here, and you watch him mature and grow up,” Randall said. “He was mature and a fun guy and appreciated the opportunity we provided for him. He played at a good time when we had eight or nine (players) out of 12 turn pro.”
Price turned pro after college, but his career never gained traction. The insurance business was a nice fallback plan, and he re-applied for amateur status with the USGA. His 2014 Illinois State Mid-Amateur title and Chicago District Amateur title in June show he’s still got it.
“He (plays) so fast tee to green, and then on the green he’s so deliberate,” Price’s longtime friend and caddie Bill Bohr said. “He’s one of the best putters I’ve ever seen.”
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