Cui advances at Junior Am

The top 64 finishers after two rounds of stroke play advance to a knockout-style bracket — much like the NCAA basketball tournament in which No. 1 plays No. 64, winner advances. Last year, Cui advanced to the quarterfinals of match play as the No. 21 seed before being eliminated by eventual champion, 52nd-seeded Bryan Kim.

Cui was one of nine players to finish even after the two rounds of stroke play. Tiebreakers will determine seeding, with Blades Brown of Nashville, Tennessee earning the top seed after a second-day score of 2-under 68 and a two-day total of 6-under 134.

Cui started Tuesday’s round in a tie for 7th place after a 2-under 68 Monday. For the second day in a row, Cui got off to a wild start, starting with a bogey on the 150-yard, par-9 10th. He followed that with a triple-bogey 7 at the par-4 11th to not only give back all his strokes from Monday, but suddenly found himself at 1-over for the tournament after the first two holes.

But Cui rallied, big time, carding three straight birdies at 12, 13 and 14 before parring the rest of the back nine and heading to the first tee even for the day and back to 2-under for the tournament.

He birdied the first before reeling off six straight pars. He did end his day with a pair of hiccups coming in, with bogeys at Nos. 8 and 9.

James Lee, a rising senior at Nueva School, followed an up-and-down first round with an even worse second round, finishing with a 10-over 80 and a two-day total of 155 and a tie for 193rd place in the 264-person field.

It was another solid start for Lee, followed by a second-nine collapse. Lee birdied the second hole, but gave it back, and then some, with a double-bogey at the par-4, 420-yard 7th hole.

He opened the back nine with three straight pars before the wheels came off: double-bogey at the par-3 13, bogeys on 14 and 15, triple-bogey 7 on the par-4 16th, followed by back-t0-back bogeys to end his day and his tournament.

At the California Women’s Amateur Championship, hosted by San Mateo’s Peninsula Golf and Country Club, Hillsdale rising senior Ashlyn Johnson had a second round to forget as she failed to qualify for match play on her home course, finishing 10-over for the day and 14-over for the two rounds of stroke play and a tie for 108th.

Johnson had work to do after a first-round 5-over 76 that left her in 82nd place out of 136 golfers, but within striking distance of a projected top-32 cut of 1-over. But starting on the 10th hole Tuesday, she went backwards right away, with a double-bogey on her opening hole. She rebounded with a birdie 4 on the par-5 11th, but went bogey-double bogey on 12 and 13 to drop to 9-over.

She birdied the par-4 14th and then closed out the back 9 with four straight pars and was 8-over heading to the first. Things didn’t get much better, however, with bogeys at 1, 2 and 5; a triple-bogey on the par-3 7th and another double-bogey to end her round.