There is a particular kind of pressure that comes from playing a national championship in your own back garden, and Josh Ryan spent Tuesday proving he does not feel it the way most players would. The Liberty University senior, who grew up in Norristown, roughly ten miles from Merion Golf Club, closed the 36-hole stroke-play qualifier for the 126th U.S. Amateur with a 5-under 65 on the East Course, the low round of the day, to finish at 8-under 132 and claim medalist honours. It put him two shots clear of the field and handed him the No. 1 seed heading into match play on a course he has known since he was old enough to hold a club.
A total one shot off history
Ryan opened with a 3-under 67 at Philadelphia Country Club on Monday, the tournament’s co-host venue, then went to Merion on Tuesday and simply took the course apart. His 132 sits a single stroke off the all-time U.S. Amateur stroke-play record of 131, set by Hayden Wood in 2017, and one shot off the lowest score ever posted in a USGA event at Merion, a mark Ben Crenshaw set at the 1981 U.S. Open and that Drake Harvey matched during Monday’s opening round this week. Tyler Watts, the World No. 3, also closed with a 65 to finish at 6-under and take the second seed, but the week belonged to the home player.
It was not a cold streak, either. Two weeks before Merion, Ryan won the 113th Pennsylvania Golf Association Amateur Championship at Oakmont, closing with a 69 to become the only player in the field to finish under par on a course built to humble everyone in it. It was his third PAGA title. He arrived at Merion, in other words, playing about as well as an amateur can play, on a course he did not need a yardage book to understand.
The World No. 1 goes home early
The bigger story of the two days, in a strange way, belongs to a player who will not tee it up in match play at all. Preston Stout arrived at Merion as the top-ranked amateur on the planet, the reigning NCAA individual champion out of Oklahoma State, a four-time college winner this past season, and one of the clearest favourites to leave with the Havemeyer Trophy. He opened with a 5-over 75 on Monday, answered with a steadier 71 on Tuesday, and still finished at 146, comfortably outside a cut that settled around 2-over for the low 64 of 312 players across two courses. Stout’s caddie this week was Oklahoma State head coach Alan Bratton, who has carried the bag for two U.S. Amateur champions before, Peter Uihlein in 2010 and Viktor Hovland in 2018. Neither piece of pedigree was enough to survive 36 holes at Merion.
Stout was not alone. Ethan Fang, who won last year’s Amateur Championship, finished at 5-over. Stuart Grehan, this year’s Amateur Championship winner at Royal Liverpool and a likely Great Britain and Ireland Walker Cup pick, opened with a 77 and never recovered. Noah Maclauchlan, fresh off winning the U.S. Junior Amateur at Saucon Valley last month, went out at 6-over. A 36-hole cut across two demanding courses leaves almost no margin, and this week it took three of the sport’s biggest amateur names down with it before a single match had been played.
What happens next
Match play began Wednesday with the Round of 64, all 64 qualifiers reset to level par in single elimination. The Round of 32 and Round of 16 follow on Thursday, 36 holes in a single day, before the quarterfinals on Friday, semifinals on Saturday, and a 36-hole final on Sunday for the Havemeyer Trophy. History is not obviously on Ryan’s side simply because he holds the top seed. Defending champion Mason Howell won last year’s title at The Olympic Club as the No. 63 seed, only the third player to win from that low a spot since the USGA began seeding by stroke-play score in 1985. The medal gets a player a favourable draw and a week of being asked about it. It guarantees nothing else.
What it does guarantee is a properly good story at a properly great golf course. Merion has now hosted 20 USGA championships, more than any venue in the country, a list that runs through Bobby Jones completing the Grand Slam here in 1930 and Ben Hogan’s 1-iron into the 18th in 1950. This is only the club’s second U.S. Amateur since 1989 and its first since 2005, and for one week at least, the player everyone in the gallery already knows by name is the local kid who grew up close enough to walk here.