Top Moments from 2025 USGA Championship Season

Magic No. 63

Mason Howell, the high school senior who has committed to play for the University of Georgia next fall, wasn’t the only No. 63 seed to enjoy success in a USGA amateur championship.

This summer, three other 63 seeds managed to win at least one match. Ella Scaysbrook, of Australia, started her U.S. Women’s Amateur run at Bandon Dunes with a stunning 6-and-4 victory over co-medalist and 2024 runner-up Asterisk Talley, and advanced all the way to the semifinals where she was eliminated by eventual champion Megha Ganne in 19 holes.

Zilin (Grace) Xu, Ian Davis and Kirsty Hodkins-Redner each won a match in the U.S. Girls’ Junior, U.S. Mid-Amateur and U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur, respectively, before each player was eliminated in the Round of 32.

And Howell’s U.S. Amateur title certainly was historic, as he became the fourth No. 63 seed to win a USGA title, joining Steven Fox (2012 U.S. Amateur), Clay Ogden (2005 U.S. Amateur Public Links) and Jensen Castle (2021 U.S. Women’s Amateur).

No Dull Moment

Before the 10th U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship started at Plainfield Country Club, Marc Dull knew his longtime partner and fellow Floridian Chip Brooke would be departing after the first round of match play to attend his daughter’s high school graduation. That left Dull, the 2015 U.S. Mid-Amateur runner-up and 2018 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball runner-up (with Brooke), in a predicament should the side advance to the Round of 16.

When that situation became a reality, Dull, not wanting to withdraw, decided to take on Chicago-area mid-amateurs John Ramsey and Chadd Slutzky by himself. Never in the history of this championship had a solo side managed to produce a win against two players.

Dull registered four birdies to pull off an historic 2-and-1 win. Then in the afternoon quarterfinals, the 39-year-old nearly did it again, taking Carson Looney and Hunter Powell to the 18th hole before suffering a 1-down defeat. Had Dull won that match, Brooke was prepared to fly back to New Jersey for the semifinals on Wednesday morning.

“My game was getting better as the week went on so I felt confident that I could shoot under par out here on my own ball,” said Dull, one of the country’s top mid-amateurs. “I knew it was going to be a strong task. I wasn't super patient, just trying to make sure they made birdies to beat me. And I made a few putts.”

Dew(ey) Sweeper

The 44th U.S. Mid-Amateur at Troon Country Club and stroke-play co-host Troon North Golf Club, in Scottsdale, Ariz., was only a few hours old when championship rookie Patrick Dewey, 33, of Jupiter, Fla., had one of the greatest four-hole stretches of his competitive career. How about a par-eagle-birdie-eagle start that concluded with the 28th known hole-in-one in U.S. Mid-Amateur history.

Dewey would shoot a 5-under 66 en route to sharing medalist honors with Arizonan Cody Massa before Ian Davis defeated him in the Round of 64.

Despite the early exit, it was a memorable week in the Arizona desert. The USGA presented him with a flag from Troon North’s 13th hole as well as a bottle of wine with a label noting his feat.

Bay Area Hysteria

As one of a handful of players with “local” ties to the San Francisco Bay Area, Niall Shiels Donegan was sure to get his share of support at The Olympic Club for the 125th U.S. Amateur. Although born in Scotland, Shiels Donegan had been raised since the age of 3 in Mill Valley, a community in Marin County just north of San Francisco.

And as the 20-year-old continued to progress in the match-play draw, his galleries continued to swell. The noise this group generated could be heard across the Golden Gate Bridge. Arnold Palmer had his Army, and during his run at Olympic, the University of North Carolina rising junior had Donegan’s Denizens.

Each victory was a chance for this group to live vicariously through their man, and it became quite a scene on the famous Lake Course. Unfortunately, his run came to an end with a 1-down semifinal defeat to Jackson Herrington. But it didn’t dampen the spirits of Shiels Donegan’s fans.

A few weeks later, many of those same individuals trekked to Cypress Point Club to see Shiels Donegan represent Great Britain & Ireland in the 50th Walker Cup.

Attaboy Abdo

It’s hardly uncommon to see collegians dominate the U.S. Amateur. The last mid-amateur to hoist the trophy was the late John Harris in 1993, and Tom McKnight (1998) remains the last mid-am to reach the finals.

But while college and junior golfers own the championship, they don’t often come from the NCAA Division III ranks.

Enter Jimmy Abdo.

The Gustavos Adolphus College sophomore from Edina, Minn., made more than a mark on the 125th U.S. Amateur. With each stunning victory, he enjoyed folk-hero status.

Few expected Abdo, who entered the NCAA Transfer Portal in the spring but had zero Division I takers, to make the cut, let alone march all the way to the quarterfinals. But he knocked off Logan Reilly, Wolfgang Glawe and Daniel Svard, from Auburn University, the University of Houston and Northwestern University, respectively, before Jackson Herrington ended the Cinderella run.

Abdo’s exuberance and unadulterated joy made him the lovable underdog of the championship, and by reaching the final eight, he earned a spot into the 2026 U.S. Amateur at Merion Golf Club.

Age is Just a Number

At the tender age of 72, Barbara Moxness arrived at San Diego Country Club, in Chula Vista, Calif., as the U.S. Senior Women’s Open’s oldest competitor. The Stuart, Fla., resident who was an LPGA Tour rookie in 1978 realized her chances of winning the title were long. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t make some history.

Moxness, who played collegiately at both Arizona State and San Diego State, bested her age not once but twice during the championship to finish tied for 11th and earn an exemption into next year’s U.S. Senior Women’s Open at Barton Hills Country Club, in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Moxness, now the oldest to make a cut in this event, carded a 2-under 71 in Round 1 and followed with the same score in Round 3. She finished the championship at 6-over 298.

Exclamation (Cypress) Point!

Since the Walker Cup Match was expanded to allow for all 10 players on each side to participate in Sunday singles, the USA has enjoyed a sizable advantage in the event’s final session. In both the 2017 and 2019 Matches at The Los Angeles Country Club and Royal Liverpool (Hoylake), respectively, the Americans posted an 8-2 mark in Sunday singles. The USA produced an even larger margin of victory at Cypress Point, going 8-1-1 in a 17-9 victory.

Stewart Hagestad, the USA’s lone mid-amateur representative and competing in his fifth consecutive Walker Cup, extended his remarkable record in singles to 7-1 by securing the 13th point with a 4-and-3 victory over England’s Eliot Baker, leading the host side to retain the Cup for a fifth consecutive time.

Earlier on Sunday, Mason Howell produced the shot of the championship by holing out for an eagle-2 on the 17th hole to close out his foursomes match, 2 and 1, with partner Jacob Modleski.

Steel-ing the Show

J.J. Spaun appeared to have shot himself out of a chance to win the 125th U.S. Open at Oakmont when he carded a front-nine 40 in Sunday’s final round. Then a weather delay allowed all of the contenders a chance to reset, and Spaun, an affable Southern Californian who nearly won The Players Championship three months earlier, came out fully recharged.

The 34-year-old birdied four of his last seven holes, including an improbable 64-footer on the 72nd hole as a stunned Robert MacIntyre watched from the clubhouse and another contender, Tyrrell Hatton, was concluding an interview with media. Caught on camera after seeing the feat on a monitor and hearing the roar from 18, Hatton just shook his head in disbelief, muttering, “… unbelievable.”

All the left-hander MacIntyre could say from his seated position was “Wow!” The 28-year-old from Scotland had shot a 2-under 68 to put himself in position to win his first major.

Instead, he was two strokes shy of Spaun’s 1-under total of 279. Spaun joined Spain’s Jon Rahm (2021) as players to have won the U.S. Open by making birdie on the last two holes.

Champion at Last

Dawn Woodard has been chasing USGA titles since she first played in the 1991 U.S. Girls’ Junior at Crestview Country Club, in Wichita, Kan. Thirty-four years and 36 USGA championship starts later, the Greenville, S.C., resident could finally say she was a national champion. It took 19 holes to defeat Sue Wooster in the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur final at the Omni Homestead Resort’s Cascades Course, in Hot Springs, Va., but it was certainly worth the wait.

Woodard had twice reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur, where she has never missed match play in 22 starts, and she advanced to the quarterfinalist a year ago in the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur.

The stars finally aligned in 2025.

Cashing In

When it comes to big paydays, the winners of USGA open championships definitely add a nice chunk of cash to their bank accounts. But it’s not always the winners who can boast of a successful week.

Take Hailee Cooper, for example. A full-time member of the Epson Tour, where paydays aren’t always lucrative, Cooper was grateful for the opportunity to tee it up at Erin Hills in June after qualifying for the U.S. Women’s Open Presented by Ally.

Cooper managed to not only make the 36-hole cut but tied for seventh to earn the largest check of her professional career: $358,004. To put that in perspective, Cooper, who finished 10th in the Race to the Card, made 17 of 19 cuts on the Epson Tour in 2025, earning $122,000. With it, she also earned a spot into the 2026 U.S. Women’s Open at iconic Riviera Country Club, in Pacific Palisades, Calif.
 

Doubling Up

Few amateurs have produced the kind of success that Iowan Mike McCoy has enjoyed. He’s an 11-time Iowa Player of the Year. He’s won on the regional and national level. And in August at Oak Hills Country Club, in San Antonio, Texas, McCoy became the first player in USGA history to have won U.S. Senior Amateur and U.S. Mid-Amateur titles.

The 62-year-old, who captained the 2023 USA Walker Cup Team to victory at St. Andrews (he was a member of the 2015 side), defeated Greg Sanders in the 18-hole final, a day after he ousted past Walker Cupper Mike Sposa in the semis. McCoy won the 2013 U.S. Mid-Amateur at the age of 50, the second oldest to achieve the feat (Randal Lewis was 54 in 2011).

Marathon Woman

When Ina Kim-Schaad captured her first U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur title in 2019 at Forest Highlands, in Flagstaff, Ariz., the Southern California native needed just 89 holes to win six matches.

It was a much different story in 2025 at Monterey Peninsula Country Club’s Dunes Course, in scenic Pebble Beach, Calif. Kim-Schaad survived the longest championship match in U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur history, holing a 15-foot birdie putt on the 23rd hole (fifth extra hole) to outlast Hanley Long. Kim-Schaad, 42, a former collegiate golfer at Northwestern University who now works with golfers on their mental approach to the game, needed 108 holes to win six matches, matching the most in championship history.

Honorable Mentions

Floridian Bella Simoes competing in the 2025 U.S. Girls’ Junior at 11 years, 11 months old.

Hamilton Coleman, of Augusta, Ga., outlasting Isaiah Igo in 25 holes in the Round of 64 of the U.S. Junior Amateur, and then winning his next five matches at Trinity Forest to take the title. He will be rooming with Howell at the University of Georgia next fall.

Rianne Malixi and Asterisk Talley sharing medalist honors in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Bandon Dunes a year after the two squared off in two USGA finals – U.S. Girls’ Junior and U.S. Women’s Amateur. Malixi, now a Duke University freshman, won both of those encounters.

Kipp Popert wins a third consecutive U.S. Adaptive Open title.

U.S. National Junior Team members Will Hartman and Tyler Mawhinney become the first male members of the squad to win a USGA title, capturing the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Plainfield Country Club, in Edison, N.J.

Heisman Trophy winner and former NFL No. 1 overall draft pick Sam Bradford competes in the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball with partner and ex-high school teammate Ben Bench.

David Shefter is a senior staff writer at the USGA. Email him at dshefter@usga.org.