Jack Whaley rallies past Jay Leng Jr. to win the U.S. Amateur

Jack Whaley is the 126th U.S. Amateur champion. The 22-year-old Florida State rising senior from England came back from 2 down after the morning 18 and beat Stanford's Jay Leng Jr. 4 and 3 in Sunday's 36-hole final at Merion Golf Club — becoming the first Florida State player to win the Havemeyer Trophy and just the third Englishman to do it, joining Harold Hilton (1910) and Matt Fitzpatrick (2013).

He's also the first champion since Tyler Strafaci in 2020 to trail after the morning round and still win the title.

How the final turned

Whaley drew first blood, holing a chip from left of the green for birdie at the 1st and adding a winning par at the 3rd. Twice he built 2-up leads on the front nine, and twice Leng clawed back — squaring the match with pars at Nos. 9 and 10, then seizing it outright with a 30-foot, left-to-right slider for birdie at the 12th and a 15-footer at the 119-yard 13th. When Whaley three-putted the 16th from 45 feet, missing a 6-foot comebacker from above the hole, Leng carried a 2-up lead into the 90-minute lunch break.

Then the weather changed everything. For the first time all week, a hint of fall settled over Merion — temperatures in the 70s, the stiffest wind of the championship and rain shortly after the afternoon restart. The Southern Californian Leng found himself swapping gloves every other hole and pulling on rain gear for the first time. Whaley, raised on English weather, adapted differently: after driving out of bounds at the 22nd hole, he pulled out black rain gloves much like the ones his countryman Aaron Rai wore to win this year's PGA Championship down the road at Aronimink — and started swinging smoother.

From there the match tilted for good. Whaley won four consecutive holes beginning at the par-5 20th to go 2 up. Leng got one back at the 24th after a wayward Whaley tee shot, but a 25-foot birdie at the 26th and a 15-footer at the 28th ballooned the lead to 3 up. A visit to the penalty area at the 29th — the hole where Bob Jones closed out the 1930 Grand Slam — briefly cost Whaley a hole, but he answered immediately with a winning two-putt par at the 30th. Three holes later, a 10-foot birdie on the 15th green ended it, setting off a celebration that included an emotional embrace with his father and caddie, Andy Whaley.

"I don't think it's sunk in yet," said Whaley, who somehow also played the closing stretch after being stung by a wasp on the ankle at the 22nd hole.

Leng, who won the Western Amateur two weeks ago and hadn't lost a head-to-head match since the NCAA Championship quarterfinals against Auburn's Josiah Gilbert, couldn't recapture his morning putting form after the break. "Right now, it doesn't feel too great losing in the finals," he admitted, adding he expected to be fine in a few days.

The long road to the Havemeyer

The title completes an extraordinary week — and an even more extraordinary 15 months — for the No. 60 seed. Whaley had to survive Wednesday morning's 16-for-11 playoff just to reach match play, nearly acing the par-3 13th to secure his spot. He then needed 22 holes to get past 2026 U.S. Open qualifier Jackson Ormond in the opening round before winning five more matches for the championship.

If the script sounds familiar at Merion, it should. Edoardo Molinari, the last man to win the U.S. Amateur here in 2005, also came through a stroke-play playoff — a 19-for-17 — before winning six matches, including a final by the identical 4-and-3 margin. Three of the last four U.S. Amateurs at Merion have now gone to international players: Gary Cowan of Canada in 1966, Molinari of Italy in 2005 and Whaley in 2026. Englishmen have also won the last two USGA championships contested here, following Justin Rose's 2013 U.S. Open.

Whaley spent his first two college seasons at NAIA Dalton (Ga.) State, where he won the 2025 NAIA individual championship and that level's Jack Nicklaus Award before transferring to Florida State last spring. Drew Kittleson (2008) and A. Downing Gray (1962) had reached the final for the Seminoles; neither finished the job. "Jack has just achieved the impossible, frankly," said his father, Andy.

What it means for both finalists

Whaley, No. 90 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, receives the inaugural Tiger Woods Medal and custody of the Havemeyer Trophy, plus exemptions into the 2027 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and next July's Open Championship on the Old Course at St. Andrews, along with a likely invitation to the 2027 Masters. He also automatically claims one of the 10 places on the Great Britain & Ireland Walker Cup Team that faces the USA Sept. 5–6 at Lahinch in Ireland — a team The R&A announces Monday.

World No. 23 Leng leaves with plenty of his own. The first Stanford finalist since David Chung in 2010 was named to the USA Walker Cup Team on Sunday afternoon, and his runner-up finish carries a 2027 U.S. Open exemption, exemptions into the next three U.S. Amateurs and a likely Masters invitation. Fittingly, he's headed to Ireland next week anyway — a Stanford team trip that includes Royal County Down — before returning for Lahinch.

The 126th U.S. Amateur is in the books at Merion Golf Club, and it would have been hard to script a better week. From Aug. 10–16, a field of 312 of the world's best amateurs — distilled from 5,111 entries — took on the East Course in Ardmore, Pa., where Bob Jones closed out the Grand Slam in 1930 and where the wicker baskets have watched nearly a century of championship golf.

This page was our home base for the week: schedule, TV and streaming windows, the full field picture, a hole-by-hole look at both courses, and every round recap as it happened. The complete record lives below.

At a glance

Day-by-day schedule

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

How to watch: TV and streaming

The championship drew 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 covered the closing 18 of a 36-hole match, so the morning halves played out untelevised — our live scoring carried them from the opening tee.

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: 312 players, 36 countries, one trophy

Merion's field was deep, international and unusually accomplished. The 312 competitors averaged 22.85 years old and ranged from 15-year-olds Landon Tudor and Bento Assis to 63-year-old Michael McCoy. Forty-five U.S. states and 36 countries were represented, while 47 of the top 50 players in the World Amateur Golf Ranking entered as of Aug. 5.

The defending champion

Mason Howell returned one year after entering match play as the No. 63 seed and leaving The Olympic Club with the Havemeyer Trophy. Howell defeated Jackson Herrington, 7 and 6, in the 36-hole final, then represented the United States in the Walker Cup. Now 19 and preparing to enroll at Georgia, Howell was trying to become the first repeat champion since Tiger Woods won three consecutive titles from 1994–96.

Herrington was back as well. The Tennessee junior earned a place in the 2026 U.S. Open through last year's runner-up finish and arrived with another opportunity to finish the job.

The top-ranked contenders

World No. 1 Preston Stout led a field containing nearly every highly ranked amateur in the men's game. The reigning NCAA individual champion won four times during the 2025–26 college season and returned after earning stroke-play medalist honors at the 2025 U.S. Amateur.

Also returning from deep runs at The Olympic Club were semifinalist Niall Sheils Donegan and quarterfinalists Eric Lee, Jacob Modleski, Jimmy Abdo and Russell. Noah Kent, the 2024 runner-up, gave the field another player who had already reached a U.S. Amateur final.

Thirteen USGA champions

The field contained 13 USGA champions: Lawrence Allan, Evan Beck, Grady Brame Jr., Louis Brown, Hamilton Coleman, Stewart Hagestad, Brandon Holtz, Mason Howell, Bryan Kim, Noah Maclauchlan, Tyler Mawhinney, Matthew McClean and Michael McCoy.

Hagestad owns three U.S. Mid-Amateur titles and made his 17th U.S. Amateur appearance. McCoy, the 2013 U.S. Mid-Amateur and reigning U.S. Senior Amateur champion, led the field with 21 appearances. He was also the only player entered this year who competed in the 2005 U.S. Amateur at Merion.

Maclauchlan arrived only weeks after winning the U.S. Junior Amateur at Saucon Valley. He entered that championship as an alternate before defeating Russell, 6 and 5, in the final.

Pennsylvania's home contingent

Ten Pennsylvania players competed in their home state: Charlie Barrickman, Nicholas Gross, Patrick Isztwan, Hank Kancher, Michael Lugiano, Matthew Mattioli, Logan Paczewski, Joshua Ryan, Hunter Stetson and Chuck Tragesser III.

Barrickman grew up less than 30 minutes from Merion and survived a seven-for-five playoff in final qualifying. Gross, Isztwan, Lugiano and Ryan qualified at nearby Llanerch Country Club, while Stetson earned his exemption by winning the Delaware Amateur in a seven-hole sudden-death playoff.

How the field was built

The USGA accepted 5,111 entries. A total of 173 players were fully exempt through championship results, international team selections, rankings and victories in recognized amateur events. The remainder advanced through local qualifying at 48 sites and final qualifying at 19 sites.

See every player who qualified for Merion in our complete site-by-site tracker →

Field information and rankings current through Aug. 5, according to the USGA.

The courses

Merion Golf Club, East Course

Merion began in 1896 as a nine-hole course built by members of the Merion Cricket Club in Haverford. When the Haskell rubber-core ball made that layout obsolete, the club handed the job of designing a new course to one of its own members, Hugh Wilson — an insurance man, not an architect. The East Course opened in Ardmore in 1912 and has been arguing with distance ever since. A restoration led by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner rebuilt every bunker and green complex to pull the course back toward Wilson's original lines.

At 6,939 yards it was the shortest venue on the championship calendar this summer, and one of the hardest: a Course Rating of 75.3 and a Slope Rating of 153, numbers that belong on a course 500 yards longer. The defense is angles, green complexes and the Quarry — not the tee shot.

Two holes stood out on that card all week — and both starred in the final. The 13th plays 119 yards, a wedge that can win or lose a match in one swing: Leng birdied it to take his first lead of the final, and Whaley nearly aced it to escape Wednesday's playoff. The 18th is a 501-yard par 4 climbing back to the clubhouse, the hole where Ben Hogan hit the 1-iron that forced a playoff in the 1950 U.S. Open.

Philadelphia Country Club

The stroke-play co-host opened in 1890 and is a William Flynn design, more recently restored by Jim Nagle of Forse Design. At 7,201 yards it plays 262 yards longer than Merion to the same par of 70, with a 75.4 rating and 144 slope — a different kind of test entirely, and a real factor in how the two stroke-play rounds compared. Its par 5s at the 3rd (601) and 12th (618) are among the longest holes either field saw.

Philadelphia C.C. became the seventh member club of the USGA in 1899 and is one of the four founding clubs of the Golf Association of Philadelphia. It has hosted four previous USGA championships, including Byron Nelson's 1939 U.S. Open win.

Merion's championship history

With this week's championship, Merion became 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: seven U.S. Amateurs (1916, 1924, 1930, 1966, 1989, 2005, 2026), 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 was 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, Nick Dunlap — and now Jack Whaley. 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 the champion receives

No prize money — that's the point. What Whaley takes home instead is arguably worth more.

The runner-up receives a silver medal — and, in most years, a long winter. This year, both finalists leave with U.S. Open exemptions, likely Masters invitations and Walker Cup places already secured.

U.S. Amateur FAQ

Who won the 2026 U.S. Amateur?

Jack Whaley, a 22-year-old Florida State rising senior from England and the No. 60 seed, defeated No. 15 seed Jay Leng Jr. of Stanford, 4 and 3, in the 36-hole championship match at Merion on Aug. 16, 2026. He is the first Florida State player and the third Englishman to win the title.

Where was the 2026 U.S. Amateur played?

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

What channel was the U.S. Amateur on?

Peacock streamed Wednesday through Friday from 3–6 p.m. ET. Saturday and Sunday, Peacock carried 3–4 p.m. and NBC took over from 4–6 p.m. ET.

What does the U.S. Amateur champion win?

The champion receives the inaugural Tiger Woods Medal, custody of the Havemeyer Trophy, exemptions into the 2027 U.S. Open and Open Championship, a likely Masters invitation and — for Whaley — an automatic place on the Great Britain & Ireland Walker Cup Team.

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 spanned 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).