Top 10 amateur storylines of the decade: Major feats and new frontiers
The excitement in amateur golf can sometimes go overlooked. It rarely gets the headlines or the TV time that professional golf or even college competition gets. Despite that, the stories of underdogs, comebacks, record rounds and breakthroughs are seemingly never-ending.
The following list represents the most impactful moments in the game over the past decade, from players who accomplished meaningful things to opportunities that changed the amateur landscape forever.
10. The USGA calendar gets a makeover
In 2013, the USGA announced that it would do something it had never done before: Retire a championship. The following year, the U.S. Amateur Public Links and U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links were played for the final time. It was a big deal, considering that a Masters invitation was on the line for the winner of the APL. The hallmark of the Public Links championships was the opportunity they provided for the “everyman” golfer. Part of the USGA’s reasoning in ending them was the feeling that the tournaments ceased to serve their original purpose of creating opportunities for true public golfers.
The Public Links were replaced by the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball and U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball in 2015, tournaments played in the late spring that overlap the college postseason.
A side effect of the Public Links retirement that’s worth noting is that it becomes that much harder for a player to win multiple USGA titles in one season. Eun-jeong Seong was the last player to do that in 2016 when she won the U.S. Girls’ Junior and U.S. Women’s Amateur. For five of the eight players who have won multiple USGA titles in one season, a Public Links title accounted for one of those wins.
It’s worth noting that in 2017, the USGA also retired the State Team Championship, which had been played biennially since 1995.
9. A loss for the Americans, a win for the Cup
The U.S. has an overwhelming all-time lead in the Curtis Cup, to the tune of 29-8-3. The 2012 GB&I victory at Nairn Golf Club in Scotland ended a streak of seven matches won by the Americans (dating to 1998) and was enormously important in keeping the goodwill competition relevant.
GB&I won the matches 10.5 to 9.5 despite the fact that the U.S. swept the first foursomes session, 3-0. It was a huge victory for the home team. Consider, too, some of the players on that GB&I squad: Charley Hull, Bronte Law, Leona Maguire and Stephanie Meadow all went on to successful professional careers.
It can’t go without mentioning, however, that the decade ended with the Curtis Cup back in the hands of the Americans. The U.S. team won by a record 17-3 margin in 2018, but there’s always next year in Wales.
8. First a picture of youth, then of amateurism
Lucy Li burst onto the amateur scene in 2014 when she played the U.S. Women’s Open at Pinehurst as an 11-year-old. There will always be the iconic image of Li fielding questions in a press conference that week while eating an ice cream cone.
Over the next five years, Li grew to be one of the world’s best amateurs. The highlights of her amateur career – which ended this fall when she advanced to the second stage of LPGA Q-School, earned Symetra Tour status and subsequently turned professional – include low amateur honors at the 2017 ANA Inspiration, a made cut at the 2018 U.S. Women’s Open, a quarterfinal run at the 2019 U.S. Women’s Amateur and a turn on the victorious U.S. Curtis Cup team in 2018. She first competed in a USGA event, the 2013 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links, at 10 years, 8 months, 16 days old.
Li will long remain on the list of young amateur phenoms who impacted the game, but she’ll be remembered for something else, too: Coming under fire for violating the USGA’s Rules of Amateur Status. Early in 2019, a 16-year-old Li drew the attention of the USGA for her appearance in an Apple Watch “Close Your Rings” advertising campaign.
The USGA ultimately decided that Li did commit a violation but allowed her to keep her amateur status. The organization gave Li a one-time warning.
7. Qualifying streaks set up major opportunities
In June, 28-year-old Stewart Hagestad qualified for his third consecutive U.S. Open the hard way, which is to say that he advanced through local and sectional qualifying.
Rewind to 2017, when he played the U.S. Open as the reigning U.S. Mid-Amateur champion. The USGA did not yet award an Open berth for that accomplishment so still had to make it through qualifying. In June 2019, Hagestad became the first player to accomplish the qualifying hat trick since Jay Sigel, who qualified for three straight as an amateur from 1983-1985.
Interestingly, Stanford graduate Brandon Wu also qualified for the 2019 U.S. Open in Pebble Beach, though it was his first successful run through qualifying. Wu became not only the first amateur in this decade to qualify for both Opens in the same calendar year, but the first to do so since Joe Carr in 1967.
6. No one said a USGA title would come easily
To win an USGA amateur title is to show that you not only have the game but the stamina to advance through two rounds of stroke play plus an additional six rounds of match play (the final one being 36 holes). Stamina was perhaps never so important as it was at the 2018 U.S. Girls’ Junior.
The championship schedule was repeatedly thrown off by a marine layer that crept over Poppy Hills Golf Course in Pebble Beach, California, and backed one round right into the next one (nearly 16 hours of delays in all). A hazy, er, crazy week ended when Yealimi Noh defeated Alexa Pano in 33 holes of the scheduled 36-hole final. But here’s the catch: Noh had also completed the final 16 holes of her semifinal match that morning, which made her championship run a 49-hole day. It is believed to be the most holes of golf ever played on the final day of a USGA championship dating to 1895, the year the USGA began conducting national championships.
5. Creating opportunities all over the world
At the start of the decade, the Asia-Pacific Amateur was a totally new concept. It was a joint initiative, started in 2009, put on by the Asia Pacific Golf Confederation, the Masters Tournament and The R&A. A Masters invitation was on the line for the winner.
The tournament took off over the course of the next decade, highlighting up-and-comers from the Asia-Pacific region from Hideki Matsuyama, winner in 2010 and 2011, to Curtis Luck, who won in 2016 just months after also winning the U.S. Amateur.
In 2015, the Latin America Amateur Championship was created. A Masters invitation is also awarded to that winner. The LAAC also features a top regional field, and perhaps the most notable winner of the event has been Joaquin Niemann in 2018. At the time, Niemann was the top-ranked amateur in the world. He has since won his first professional title at the 2019 Military Tribute at the Greenbrier.
4. The U.S. can still win the Walker Cup abroad
Before the 2019 Walker Cup at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, England, an American team hadn’t won on the road since 2007. With an 8 to 2 performance in Sunday singles, the U.S. pulled it off in September to take the Cup into the next decade.
So how did the U.S. do it? Increased attention to foursome preparation likely played some role. The Walker Cup has also become the carrot in men’s amateur golf, though that’s nothing new this decade. John Augenstein won the clinching point for the Americans in England, and he had boldly stated a month earlier during the U.S. Amateur that he cared first about making the team, and second about winning the Havemeyer Trophy. (He accomplished the former, but fell one win short of the latter.)
3. Lydia Ko's impressive Women's Am encore
This list is about ranking the moments that resonated within amateur golf, not the players who put together the best careers. It’s still worth noting that Ko, a New Zealander who burst onto the scene as a 14-year-old at the 2011 U.S. Women’s Amateur, spent 130 consecutive weeks atop the Women’s World Amateur Ranking at the start of the decade.
The feat that truly set Ko apart, however, came in 2012. Ko, then 15, had been the U.S. Women’s Amateur champion for two weeks when she won the CN Canadian Women’s Open on the LPGA. At 15 years, 4 months and 2 days old, Ko became the youngest player in LPGA history to win an event. She was still an amateur, and thus had to forfeit her winnings.
Interestingly, Ko defended her Canadian Open title the following year, and turned professional as a 16-year-old in October 2013.
2. Amateur golf may never see another 57
Not one college golfer fired a 59 in competition during the past decade, or at any point before in history. A college golfer, playing in a summer amateur event, did post a 57 in 2019, however.
On a 36-hole day at the Dogwood Invitational in June, Alex Ross rebounded from a morning 73 at Druid Hills Golf Club in Atlanta with an afternoon round of 15-under 57. It was a course record by three shots, and while it wasn’t enough for Ross, a junior at Davidson, to win the 72-hole event, it was enough to leave him on the right side of the 54-hole cut.
Ross’ round included 13 birdies and an eagle. It’s scary to think it could have been even better. Ross left his eagle putt at the par-5 ninth hole short to end his round (he had started the day on No. 10) and also missed a 10-footer for eagle at No. 7 – which he set up with a 188-yard 7-iron.
1. Kupcho, Fassi put on the duel of the century
Down the stretch in the final round of the 2019 Augusta National Women’s Amateur, Jennifer Kupcho and Maria Fassi delivered exactly the kind of performance the world needed to see to back up a bold decision by Augusta National.
Kupcho, 21, went 5 under over her final six holes, surging abruptly ahead of runner-up Maria Fassi, also 21, in a back-nine horserace that was reminiscent of Sunday at the Masters. It was a scene unlike anything that women’s amateur golf had ever seen. People on the ground pinched themselves. Kupcho and Fassi became heroes, even appearing on talk shows.
“I think that's what women's golf should look like every Sunday in the last group,” Fassi said afterward.
The image of Fassi and Kupcho walking together off No. 12 tee, Amen Corner in the background, certainly did more to advance amateur golf – not to mention women’s golf – than any other moment of the decade. It could even be the most impactful moment for decades to come.