By Justin Pelletier,Staff Writer

BOOTHBAY – Corey Poulin had been there before, and the memories were less than pleasant.

In the 2001 Maine Amateur, leading by three holes with three to play against then-defending champion Mark Plummer at Plummer’s home course, Augusta Country Club, Poulin collapsed and lost in extra holes.

Friday, with a chance to put himself ahead three holes with three to play, Poulin again stumbled, three-putting the 15th green from 12 feet.

He managed to tie that hole, but two-time defending champion Ricky Jones, fueled by the miss, birdied the 16th hole to pull within one with two to play.

“It was there,” Poulin said of the memory. “I started thinking about it there. I think my nerves got the best of me on that putt.”

Nerves turned to joy on the 17th green, though, when Poulin hit the flagstick with a putt from the fringe and then tapped in for par to defeat Jones 2-and-1 to claim the 86th Maine Amateur title at Boothbay Country Club.

“I never play that hole well,” said Jones, who was bidding to become just the third player in the history of the event to three-peat (Mark Plummer did it twice and Dick Diversi won five in a row in the 1950s). “If you don’t hit the ball to the right place on that green, it’s an impossible putt.”

“I was peaking before I came here,” said Poulin, “which was good, since I wasn’t playing well earlier in the year. Match play suits my game well, though. I can be more aggressive, especially on a course like this.”

After five years of match play, though, the Maine Amateur, which will be at Portland Country Club in 2006, will revert to three days (54 holes) of stroke play. There will be a cut to the low 40 players and ties after the first two rounds.

If Friday’s final match between Poulin and Jones was the last one under the match-play format, it went out in style.

Both players parred the opening hole, Poulin sank a 5-foot putt on the par-3 second for par to take a 1-up lead. Although the match returned to all square twice more, Poulin never trailed.

“I struggled all week trying to read the greens,” said Jones, who had fallen behind early in three of his four previous matches. “I could see the breaks when I went out behind the hole to look, but standing over the ball you couldn’t figure out how they’d break that way. It was tough.”

Even when Jones did make birdies to claw his way back into the match, Poulin would match him. On the fifth hole, with the match back at even, Jones hit a 12-footer for birdie, only to see Poulin do the same from 18 feet. After losing the sixth to a birdie and the eighth to a par, Jones parred the ninth and got a hole back when Poulin found the woods with his second shot. On the 10th, it looked as though Jones would easily square the match after hitting a remarkable shot from the fescue left of the fairway to six feet. Poulin, though, stuck his shot inside of Jones’ ball, at about four feet, and both golfers made birdie.

On the 12th hole, after Jones did finally square the match for the final time, Poulin made a birdie from the fairway, and followed it with a scrambling birdie on the 13th to regain his 2-up advantage.

“He made two great birds there,” said Jones. “I just didn’t have it in me to make a birdie of my own until the 16th.”

“I was trying to get the ball close,” Poulin said of his second shot into the 13th green. I couldn’t really see the flag all that well, and the next option was just to get it to the green.”

Poulin lofted the shot from the left rough over a grove of birch trees, which landed on a mound in the green and rolled to six feet.

The players halved the 14th before the intensity heightened at No. 15.

In the semifinals earlier in the day, Poulin never trailed in upending Joe Alvarez of Bangor 3-and-2. He capped that win with a birdie on the 16th hole.

Jones, meanwhile, disposed of Todd Kirn, formerly of Rumford and now of Kennebunk, 5-and-4. In classic Jones style, he fell behind by one after the first hole, but won three straight at Nos. 5, 6 and 7 to take a 2-up lead that he never relinquished. Kirn three-putted three times in 13 holes.

“I never got the putter going at all,” said Kirn, who was playing in his second final four in four years. “I ran out of putts, I guess.”

Kirn did make another eagle Friday, this time from the middle of the 10th fairway on a 90-yard approach with a wedge. Less than 24 hours earlier, Kirn won his quarterfinal match with a pitch-in eagle on the 18th hole.

“I hoped that would turn things around,” said Kirn. “That gave me hope for a short while.”

Kirn three-putted the 11th green, though, and never recovered.