- Western Amateur photo
“GOLF! Everyone off the train for golf”.
The year was 1899 and suburban Chicago was just being discovered. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 had
come and gone, and the city’s population was exploding. Optimistic sportsmen began looking for
outlets to play golf, tennis, and polo.
One such sportsman was the President of the Chicago Railway, Albert J. Earling. Mr. Earling would take
his personal railcar from downtown Chicago to the newly formed
Glen View Club, casually telling the
conductor he was “going to golf”. Not soon after, others from Chicago would join Mr. Earling in his trips
to “golf” at the Glen View Club and the acreage around the club was forever referred to as Golf, Illinois.
Championship golf followed Mr. Earling to Glen View Club. The club hosted the inaugural Western
Amateur in 1899, followed by the U.S. Amateur in 1902 and the U.S. Open in 1904. The Western Golf
Association was headquartered in Golf, Ill., from its founding in 1899 until a new headquarters was built
in neighboring Glenview in 2020.
From July 27-31, championship golf will return to Glen View Club, the venue for the
Western Amateur 122 years after hosting the inaugural event. In 1899 David Forgan defeated Walter
Egan 6&5 in the championship match. Since then the Western Amateur has come to be known as (1) the top amateur tournament in the country other than the U.S. Amateur, and (2) perhaps the most grueling tournament in amateur golf.
A Grueling Format
156 players will begin the tournament on Tuesday with the first stroke play round. After the second round on Wednesday, the field will be cut to the low 44 players and ties. Those players will then play two stroke play rounds on Thursday to determine the low 16 players (with a playoff if necessary). Those making the "Sweet Sixteen" will play match play on Friday and Saturday. The champion will have played eight competitive rounds in five days.
A Loaded Field
A rarity in the age where amateurs turn pro as soon as they can after college, the Western Amateur field features its last three champions.
Pierceson Coody (Plano, Texas) returns to defend
a title he won at Crooked Stick Golf Club in Indiana.
Garrett Rank (Canada), a mid-amateur who works as a National Hockey League referee, was the
2019 winner and Coody's fellow Texas Longhorn and Walker Cup star
Cole Hammer won the
2018 event before ever stepping on campus in Austin.
Three other members of the victorious 2021 U.S. Walker Cup team --
Ricky Castillo,
Stewart Hagestad and
William Mouw -- are also in the field.
Winners of summer amateur majors will hope to continue their momentum into the Western Amateur and next month's U.S. Amateur. Among them include winners of the Dogwood (
Louis Dobbelaar of Australia), Sunnehanna (
Trent Phillips), Northeast (
Dylan Menante), North & South (Dobbelaar), Trans-Mississippi (
Derek Hitchner), Monroe Invitational (
C.J. Easley), and Southern Amateur (
Maxwell Moldovan).
More History
The Western Amateur is one of the oldest amateur championships in the United States, having been first contested in 1899. It was originally held at various courses in the Midwest but eventually was held at venues across the western United States including the Pacific Coast. In 1971 the championship was moved to Point O'Woods Golf & Country Club in Benton Harbor, MI, where it would be held annually until 2008. It has since returned to its roots as a rotating venue and is now held at various clubs throughout the Midwest.
Past champions include Chick Evans, Francis Ouimet, Frank Stranahan, Charlie Coe, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Weiskopf, Lanny Wadkins, Ben Crenshaw, Curtis Strange, Hal Sutton, Phil Mickelson, Justin Leonard and Tiger Woods, Ryan Moore and Danny Lee.
- Thanks to participant Charles Waddell for his contributions to this article.
ABOUT THE
Western Amateur
Invitational event, and the most important
tournament in American amateur golf outside of the
U.S. Amateur. With a grueling schedule, it's quite
possibly the
hardest amateur tournament to win.
156 invited players come from across the
globe to play one of the toughest formats in
amateur golf. The tournament starts with 18
holes of stroke play on Tuesday and
Wednesday after which the field is cut to the
low 44 scores and ties. Thursday it's a long
day of 36 holes of stroke play to determine
the “Sweet Sixteen” who compete at Match
Play on Friday and Saturday (two matches
each day if you're going to the finals) to
decide the champion.
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