Curry Diehl, on Play Xclusive, scores a 224 to lead the Classic Non-Pro first go-round at James Brown Arena. The top 55 horses with scores of 212 or better advanced to the second go-round. Special

His parents own a vast tomato farm. Yet, Curry Diehl is a ketchup kind of guy.

"I had enough of them (tomatoes) growing up," he said.

Diehl squeezed the most out of his run atop Play Xclusive on Tuesday afternoon. The pair rung up 224 to win the Classic Non-Pro first go-round at James Brown Arena.

The top 55 horses with scores of 212 or better advanced to today's second go-round. The finals will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday.

The 22-year-old Diehl of Millsap, Texas, posted the highest score of the 28th annual Augusta Futurity. He and his 6-year-old mare also recorded their best run together by two points.

"Hopefully," he said, "we can do that again."

Runs like that are rarely seen from the position Diehl found himself in. He rode last in the group of 11 horses, and the previous two horses had been run over by cows.

"There's not much down there to cut at all," he said. "The cows try to run you over all the time. Even some of the second and third horses got run over. It's the luck of it, I guess."

There was little luck involved when Diehl's parents, Frank and Ora, purchased Play Xclusive two years ago. The horse, previously trained by Roger Wagner, is by Playdox out of Xclusively Sugar. Playdox is the sire of the past two Augusta Futurity Open finals champions, including Pet Squirrel, ridden by Wagner in 2006.

Curry Diehl said there's plenty to like about his mount.

"She's a good little mare," he said. "She's solid. She's honest. She just has a lot of heart.

"She's real quick and she can stop real hard. She's athletic. Especially how small she is. She's real fluid. She has a lot of look to her."

But as much as Diehl raves about his horse, he knows it's a different story when he's in the heat of a cutting competition.

"She's not real easy to ride," he said. "That's the only thing about her. She drops her front end out from under you. Especially if a cow's hitting you real hard. She'll drop that front end to try and cover that cow. She'll just leave you over there if you're not careful."

Diehl was trying to be careful about the cows he cut Tuesday. He decided to let his trainer, Kory Pounds, choose his targets. The plan didn't exactly work out.

"We really didn't know what we wanted to cut," he said.

"Kory kind of threw some cattle at me. I was trying to drive them up, but they didn't want to drive up. So I just cut whatever was going away from me. I just let it happen."

From the Thursday, January 24, 2007 edition of the Augusta Chronicle