FALMOUTH – Challengers to Mark Plummer of Manchester in the Maine Amateur Golf Championship are like bowling pins.

The Maine State Golf Association, which conducts the tournament, keeps setting them up, and Plummer keeps knocking them down.

Plummer swept two more matches Friday at Falmouth Country Club to win his third straight Maine Amateur title and 13th overall since 1973.

Plummer, 50, held off 19-year-old James Frost Jr. of Calais for a 3 and 2 victory in the afternoon title match after beating Scott Dewitt of Biddeford 4 and 3 in a morning semifinal. Frost topped Todd Kirn of Sanford 1-up in the other semifinal. Frost was up by three holes after the 12th, but Kirn came back to tie it before Frost prevailed.

Plummer was up four holes after 10 against Frost, but then the ride started getting a little bumpy on the hot and humid day in the Falmouth countryside.

“I was running out of gas,” said Plummer.

The problem wasn’t that he would be unable to swing properly, it was that he might make bad decisions.

“The fatigue factor is almost more mental than physical,” said Plummer. “You can always make yourself swing the club.”

Plummer had to make himself swing the club a little more often than he might have thought as Frost made his comeback.

“I know I can play, I’ve got the confidence,” said Frost, who was playing in his first match-play tournament. “I thought if I could steady myself, I could get back in the game.”

He did, and won 11, 12, and 13 to cut Plummer’s margin to one hole.

As he left the 13th green, Plummer unleashed a four-letter expletive at himself.

“To end up losing a hole to a bogey, that should never happen,” said Plummer.

Now Frost was on a roll.

“I was very worried, very concerned,” said Plummer. “[No. 14] would have been a big hole if he had won that.”

Instead, Frost’s tee shot went through the fairway and into the far side of a bunker. He drilled it out into the fairway, but was left with a 210-yard third shot over a pond and bunkers to a wide, but not-very-deep green.

“I tried to hit a 4-iron,” said Frost. “I’m not sure what happened. I must have come over the top a bit.”

The ball sailed to the left deep into a lateral hazard. After taking a drop, he hit his fifth shot onto the back collar.

Plummer, meanwhile, was lying 3 in a back bunker. He knocked his next shot 4 feet from the cup. Frost rolled his first putt 6 feet past, then missed the comebacker and conceded the hole.

“I had three bad swings out there,” said Frost. “[On holes] 2, 3, and 14, and they cost me.”

Plummer said, “To get out of that hole with a win was big.”

Frost had a chance on 15 to close the gap again, but a train whistle appeared to derail that hope, although Frost said it had little effect.

“It kinda did, but I had a tough lie in the bunker,” said Frost of his third shot. It came out weakly, only a few feet onto the green.

Plummer, meanwhile, had expended another coarse word when he saw his tee shot down the middle had traveled more than 300 yards into a hazard which crossed the hole. He was able to advance it into the fairway, but his short pitch from inside 50 yards came up short of the green.

Plummer putted from off the green, but ran it about 7 feet past the hole. Frost’s first putt curled away and he had to settle for bogey. Plummer made his downhill putt to halve the hole.

“You can make up for a lot of bad shots with one putt,” said Plummer. “That was an unexpected surprise.”

Plummer closed out the match on the next hole, a 151-yard par 3.

His ball was on the front edge of the green about 38 feet from the pin, while Frost was on the front collar, about 6 feet farther away.

Frost’s putt from the collar was long enough, but curled to the left about 3 feet away.

Plummer’s putt curled around the right side of the hole and stopped inside a foot, which Frost gave him.

Frost’s putt didn’t break as much as he thought and when it rolled by the hole, the match was over.

Plummer won the second and third holes to get ahead early and he said that helps in match play.

“It’s always nice to have that little cushion,” he said. “It allows you to play more conservatively and forces them to play more aggressively.”

Plummer also knows he has to play well all the time to win.

“Against any one of [his opponents], if I’d had a bad day, or even a mediocre day, I would have lost,” said Plummer.