At a glance

Day-by-day schedule

Seven days, two courses, and a bracket that shrinks by half every session once match play begins.

How to watch: TV and streaming

The championship draws at least 15 hours of broadcast coverage across Golf Channel, NBC and Peacock, with Rolex as presenting partner for uninterrupted windows. All times Eastern.

Both weekend windows cover the closing 18 of a 36-hole match, so the morning halves of Sunday's final will play out untelevised — follow those here on our live scoring.

How the format works

The U.S. Amateur is two tournaments stitched together. The first is a 36-hole stroke-play sprint that exists only to sort the field; the second is a week-long knockout where every score resets to zero.

All 312 players play one round at Merion East and one at Philadelphia Country Club across Monday and Tuesday. The low 64 totals advance, and because ties for the final spots are common, a playoff is run to trim the draw to exactly 64. Everyone else goes home Tuesday night. The player with the lowest 36-hole total earns medalist honors — a nice line on a résumé and, historically, no guarantee of anything after that.

Match play then runs single elimination over 18 holes per match, all at Merion East. The Round of 64 fills Wednesday. Thursday is the brutal day: Round of 32 in the morning, Round of 16 in the afternoon, 36 competitive holes with a lunch break in between. Quarterfinals Friday, semifinals Saturday, and Sunday's final stretches to 36 holes — the last 36-hole final in American championship golf.

The field: who to watch

The defending champion

Mason Howell won't lack for confidence. The 18-year-old from Thomasville, Ga. dismantled Jackson Herrington 7 and 6 in last year's final at The Olympic Club, becoming the third-youngest champion in the event's history. The win carried him onto the 2025 USA Walker Cup and World Amateur teams and into the 2026 U.S. Open, and he arrives at Merion as a Georgia commit trying to do something only a handful of players have managed: defend.

The rematch storyline

Herrington is back too, exempt as last year's runner-up and now a year deeper into his Tennessee career. Also returning from the 2025 semifinals and quarterfinals: Niall Shiels Donegan, Eric Lee, Jacob Modleski, Jimmy Abdo and Miles Russell. Noah Kent, runner-up in 2024, rounds out a group of players who have all been within two matches of the Havemeyer.

The résumé players

USGA champions in the field

Six current USGA titleholders tee it up: Howell (Amateur), Lawrence Allan and Grady Brame Jr. (Amateur Four-Ball), Hamilton Coleman (2025 Junior Amateur), Maclauchlan (2026 Junior Amateur), Brandon Holtz (Mid-Amateur), Michael McCoy (Senior Amateur) and Louis Brown (2024 Senior Amateur). The age range in that group alone spans four decades, which is the U.S. Amateur in miniature.

How the field was built

The USGA accepted 5,111 entries. Of those, 173 players were fully exempt — USGA champions and runners-up, Walker Cup and World Amateur Team members, World Amateur Golf Ranking leaders, Elite Amateur Series point leaders, and the winners of dozens of state and national amateur championships. Everyone else went through two stages: local qualifying over 18 holes at 48 sites from June 1–30, then final qualifying at 19 sites from July 13–22.

See our complete site-by-site tracker of every qualifier who punched a ticket to Merion →

Merion's championship history

With this week's championship, Merion becomes the first club to host 20 USGA championships — passing Oakmont (18) and The Country Club (17). Three moments define its place in the game.

The full ledger at Merion: six previous U.S. Amateurs (1916, 1924, 1930, 1966, 1989, 2005), five U.S. Opens (1934, 1950, 1971, 1981, 2013), four U.S. Women's Amateurs, the 1998 U.S. Girls' Junior, the 2009 Walker Cup and Curtis Cup Matches in 1954 and 2022. This will be the 97th USGA championship conducted in Pennsylvania.

Names on the Havemeyer

The champions list reads like a survey of American golf: Francis Ouimet, Chick Evans, Jones (five times), Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Deane Beman, Lanny Wadkins, Craig Stadler, Mark O'Meara, Hal Sutton, Jay Sigel, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods (1994, 1995, 1996), Matthew Fitzpatrick, Bryson DeChambeau and Nick Dunlap. The runners-up list is nearly as good — Tom Kite, Ben Crenshaw, Patrick Cantlay, Hunter Mahan, Corey Conners.

The Havemeyer Trophy: lost, burned, stolen

The trophy has one of the strangest provenances in sport. It was presented to the USGA in March 1895 in honor of the association's first president, Theodore A. Havemeyer, and handed to C.B. Macdonald after he won the first U.S. Amateur at Newport later that year.

That original silver cup, made by J.E. Caldwell and Company in Philadelphia, passed from champion to champion for three decades — until Nov. 22, 1925, when it was destroyed in a fire at East Lake Country Club, Bob Jones' home club in Atlanta. Rather than copy it, the USGA commissioned a new trophy: a tall steeple cup in solid gold, presented in January 1926.

That one was retired in 1992 and then stolen from the USGA Golf Museum in the spring of 2012. It has never been recovered. What today's champion receives is a 1992 copy. The USGA also recreated the original 1895 silver trophy in 1996, working from two surviving photographs.

What Sunday's winner gets

No prize money — that's the point. What the champion gets instead is arguably worth more.

The runner-up receives a silver medal — and, in most years, a long winter.

U.S. Amateur FAQ

Where is the 2026 U.S. Amateur being played?

Merion Golf Club's East Course in Ardmore, Pa. hosts the championship, with Philadelphia Country Club in Gladwyne serving as stroke-play co-host for the first two rounds.

What channel is the U.S. Amateur on?

Peacock streams Wednesday through Friday from 3–6 p.m. ET. Saturday and Sunday, Peacock carries 3–4 p.m. and NBC takes over from 4–6 p.m. ET.

How many players make the cut for match play?

The low 64 scorers after 36 holes of stroke play advance. If more than 64 players are tied at the cut line, a playoff is conducted to reduce the draw to exactly 64.

Who won the 2025 U.S. Amateur?

Mason Howell of Thomasville, Ga., then 18, beat Jackson Herrington 7 and 6 in the 36-hole final at The Olympic Club. He was the No. 63 seed and the third-youngest champion in championship history.

Who is eligible to play in the U.S. Amateur?

Any amateur golfer with a Handicap Index of 0.4 or lower. There is no age limit — this year's field spans teenagers to senior amateurs.

Does the U.S. Amateur champion get into the Masters?

Historically, yes. The champion receives a likely invitation to the following year's Masters Tournament provided he remains an amateur, along with exemptions into the U.S. Open and The Open Championship.

Why does Merion use wicker baskets instead of flags?

Merion's flagsticks are topped with woven wicker baskets rather than cloth flags — a tradition dating to the club's early years. Practically, it means players get no read on wind direction from the pin, which adds a genuine layer of difficulty on an already demanding course.

Future U.S. Amateur sites

Later commitments run through 2051, including Pinehurst No. 2 (2038), Baltusrol (2039), Bandon Dunes again (2041), Ridgewood (2042), Southern Hills (2044), Oakland Hills (2047) and Saucon Valley (2051).