2026 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball — Desert Mountain Club

see also: U.S. Mid-Amateur · U.S. Amateur · U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball · Desert Mountain Club

Half of last year’s championship side is back. The other half is gone. And the runners-up — one of whom is the reigning U.S. Mid-Amateur champion — are returning to finish the job.

The 11th U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship arrives at Desert Mountain Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, May 16-20, with 128 sides converging on Jack Nicklaus’ Sonoran Desert masterpiece for two rounds of stroke-play qualifying followed by match play to determine a champion. It is the first USGA championship contested at Desert Mountain in 27 years — since Carol Semple Thompson won the 1999 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur on the property — and the first time the men’s four-ball has been staged on a desert course since the championship’s founding in 2015.

Defending co-champion Tyler Mawhinney, 18, of Fleming Island, Florida, is back in the field with a new partner: Luke Colton, 18, of Frisco, Texas, his future Vanderbilt teammate. Mawhinney’s 2025 partner Will Hartman, who was 18 at Plainfield Country Club last May, is conspicuously absent. With one half of the defending tandem missing, the door swings open. And the most credentialed pair walking through it is the duo Mawhinney and Hartman beat 3-and-1 in last year’s final: Evan Beck of Virginia Beach — the 2024 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion — and Dan Walters of Winston-Salem.

Desert Mountain: Two Nicklaus Tracks, One Championship

Cochise (host) and Outlaw (co-host) by the numbers

Desert Mountain is home to six 18-hole layouts designed by Jack Nicklaus — plus a seventh par-3 course — making it one of the most concentrated Nicklaus portfolios anywhere in the world. Cochise, the 1988 original, will host the final two rounds of stroke play and all match play. Outlaw, opened in 2003, is the co-host for the first round of stroke play. Both will be set up at championship length, with desert washes, elevated greens, and Sonoran flora framing every shot.

Schedule of Play

The match-play cut comes after Sunday’s second stroke-play round, with 32 sides advancing to bracket play. The championship match Wednesday is contested over 18 holes — a wrinkle that distinguishes the four-ball from the U.S. Amateur’s 36-hole final.

The Field: 16 Exempt Sides

Past champions, recent finalists, and WAGR top-400 sides claim direct entry

The 128-side field at Desert Mountain was built from 16 exempt entries plus 112 sides who advanced through 18-hole qualifiers at 52 sites between August and December 2025. The exempt list is a who’s-who of recent four-ball history — six past-champion pairs, three sides of 2025 quarterfinalists, both 2024 semifinalist tandems, and the 2025 runners-up.

Contenders to Watch

★ Wildcard Storylines

Desert Mountain’s USGA Return, 27 Years On

The last time the USGA held a championship at Desert Mountain, Bill Clinton was midway through his second term. Carol Semple Thompson won the 1999 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur on the Renegade course — one of seven Nicklaus layouts on the property — and the trophy presentation that May was the last meaningful USGA moment in these foothills until this week.

Desert Mountain hasn’t been hibernating. The property hosted the Senior PGA Tour’s Tradition from 1989 through 2001 — a tournament Jack Nicklaus himself won four times — and the Charles Schwab Cup Championship in 2012, 2014, 2015, and 2016. The Southwestern Amateur has called Desert Mountain home since 2013, and the Desert Mountain Collegiate is now a fixture on the spring college schedule. The institutional muscle memory for high-level tournament golf is deep here.

What is new: the Cochise course, which will host the bulk of championship play, has never staged a USGA event before. Outlaw, opened in 2003, is similarly unbloodied at this level. Both will be presented at full championship length, with green speeds and pin placements set by USGA officials who have spent the spring fine-tuning conditions for what is, in effect, the largest desert match-play event the USGA has run in over a decade.

A Decade of U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Champions

The 2025 entry total of 2,482 sides was the second-highest in championship history; the record was set in 2024 with 2,638 sides. The lowest-recorded final-round qualifying score was 126, shared between the 2016 medalists (Brandon Matthews / Patrick Ross), 2023 medalists (Aaron Du / Sampson Zheng), and 2024 medalists (Zach Foushee / Robbie Ziegler).

How Four-Ball Match Play Works (and Why It Rewards Risk)

Each side plays its own ball. The lower of the two scores on each hole counts. That structural detail changes everything: a player can swing freely on a risk-reward par-4 because his partner is in play with a safer line. A bogey by one player is irrelevant if the other makes par. The format incentivizes aggression in a way that traditional stroke play does not.

At Desert Mountain, that asymmetry has specific consequences. Cochise’s short par-4 sixth (341 yards) and the reachable par-5 12th (523) and 15th (562) become birdie opportunities sides simply cannot afford to halve. Outlaw’s short par-4 14th (338) and the gettable par-5 16th (532) play the same role. Conversely, the long par-3s — Cochise’s 17th at 225 yards, Outlaw’s 4th at 219 — are bogey traps where one side simply needs a four to halve.

Look for sides whose two players have complementary tendencies: one bomber, one positional player; one streaky putter, one steady. The teams who win this championship aren’t always the two best individual players in the bracket. They’re the two best partners.

What’s on the Line

The 2026 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball champions receive a gold medal, custody of the trophy for one year, and a 10-year exemption back into the championship. More significantly: each member of the winning side earns automatic entry into the 2026 U.S. Amateur at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pennsylvania — one of the hardest tickets in the amateur game — plus exemptions into the U.S. Junior Amateur, U.S. Mid-Amateur, and U.S. Senior Amateur, if age-eligible. Names get etched onto the 2026 USGA Champions’ plaque in the Hall of Champions at USGA headquarters in Liberty Corner, New Jersey.

Live Coverage Hub

Daily Reporting from Desert Mountain

Round wraps, key matchups, photo galleries, and bracket developments — bookmark this page through Wednesday’s final.

Saturday, May 16, 2026

Round 1: Stroke-Play Opener

Complete

The opening salvo at Desert Mountain produced ten sides at 5-under or better, a three-way tie at the top, and a sweeping hometown headline. The Outlaw course gave up scoring; the Sonoran Desert obliged.

Three sides shot 63 on Outlaw to share the first-round lead at 9-under: the Scottsdale duo of Drew Kittleson and Drew Stoltz — back at the four-ball after their runner-up finish at Kiawah Island Club in 2023 — Florida’s Will Davenport and Mike Smith, the 2024 semifinalists, and the qualifier surprise of the day, Californians Jared Abercrombie and Max Emberson. One step back at 8-under, alone in fourth, are Jeremy Defalco and Bryan Hoops of Tucson and Scottsdale, the only side to break 64 at Cochise.

Round 1 at Desert Mountain Club, where three sides shot 63 to share the opening lead at the 2026 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball. PHOTO · EAKIN HOWARD / USGA

Round 1 Top of the Leaderboard

O = Outlaw (Par 72) · C = Cochise (Par 71)

Pos	Side	Score	Crse
T1	Drew Kittleson / Drew Stoltz ★ Scottsdale, Ariz. · 2023 runners-up	63 -9	O
T1	Will Davenport / Mike Smith Boynton Beach / Ponte Vedra, Fla. · 2024 semifinalists	63 -9	O
T1	Jared Abercrombie / Max Emberson Simi Valley / Thousand Oaks, Calif. · ages 20, 18	63 -9	O
4	Jeremy Defalco / Bryan Hoops ★ Tucson / Scottsdale, Ariz.	63 -8	C
T5	Craig Long II / William Long Alpharetta, Ga. · father-son tandem	65 -7	O
T5	Drew Miller / Lorenzo Pinili East Lansing / Rochester Hills, Mich.	65 -7	O
T5	Kyle Dougherty / Justin Gill Irvine / San Marcos, Calif.	64 -7	C
T5	Liam Eyer / Kailer Stone San Jose / Alameda, Calif.	64 -7	C
T9	Brian Blanchard / Sam Engel ★ Scottsdale, Ariz. · 2024 champions	65 -6	C
T9	William Lisle / Darren Zhou ★ Hong Kong · both 16, youngest side in field	65 -6	C
T9	Parker Edens / Trey Kidd Brookings, S.D. / Scottsdale, Ariz.	65 -6	C
T9	Josh Fickes / Brandon Grzywacz Charleston, S.C. / Pinehurst, N.C.	65 -6	C
T9	Paul Fitzgerald / Scott Hamel Charlotte, N.C.	66 -6	O
T9	Zach Healy / Jack Larkin Jr. Atlanta, Ga.	66 -6	O

★ = Arizona-based side (5 of the top 14 sides) · Full leaderboard at USGA.org →

Three Things from Round 1

1 · The Hometown Story

Scottsdale is showing up at home.

Kittleson and Stoltz top the board. Defending champions Blanchard and Engel sit T9. Defalco and Hoops are alone in fourth. Edens and Kidd, with Trey Kidd of Scottsdale, are also in the top ten. Five of the top fourteen sides are Arizona-based — in an event with only fourteen Arizona sides in the field. The desert is doing exactly what the locals hoped it would.

2 · Two courses, two stories

Outlaw bared its teeth and lost.

All three co-leaders played Outlaw. So did six of the top fourteen. The longer, higher-slope course (149) was supposed to be the harder test; instead it gave up four scores of 63 or better. Cochise played slightly stickier — only Defalco and Hoops broke 64 there. The two-course rotation means everyone gets a Cochise day and an Outlaw day, so the apparent advantage washes out by Sunday evening. But a Saturday on Outlaw with the conditions soft? That was the lane.

3 · The defenders are six back

Mawhinney and Colton open at 68 on Cochise.

The new Vanderbilt-bound tandem of Luke Colton and Tyler Mawhinney — with Mawhinney defending the title he won at Plainfield last May — sits T34 at 3-under after an opening 68. Six strokes back of the lead is far from a disaster heading into Sunday, but with the match-play cut at 32 sides looming after R2, they need Outlaw to give them what it gave the leaders.

Notes from the rest of the leaderboard

• 2025 runners-up Evan Beck and Dan Walters opened with 67 on Cochise — in the T22 group at 4-under. The Mid-Amateur champion is exactly where he wanted to be: in the conversation, with a clean book heading into Sunday.
• The Hong Kong storyline. Sixteen-year-olds William Lisle and Darren Zhou, the youngest side in the field, posted 65 at Cochise to share T9. The Asia-Pacific qualifier is producing on a course neither has ever seen.
• Charles Beeson and Nicholas Canitano, the teen pair from Roswell and Milton, Georgia, came in at 5-under through 17 holes at Cochise when play was suspended. They finish their round Sunday morning before starting R2.
• The 2025 medalists collapsed. Zach Foushee and Robbie Ziegler — who set the championship’s qualifying scoring record at 126 last year and were exempt as 2025 quarterfinalists — opened with 79 at Cochise. They sit T124 at +8 and need something significant Sunday to play match-play golf.
• The inaugural champions are hanging in. Nathan Smith and Todd White, who won the very first U.S. Amateur Four-Ball in 2015, opened with 70 at Cochise (T69 at -1). Inside the projected cut line, room to move Sunday.
• Past champion check-in: Wilfong / Womble (-4, still on course at R1 close), Baxter / Buchanan (-3), and Blanchard/Engel (T9) round out the past-champion data. The most recent two champions — Hartman/Mawhinney (split) and Blanchard/Engel (T9) — remain the headliners.

Sunday Lookahead

R2 flips the courses. The match-play cut comes Sunday evening.

Every side that played Outlaw on Saturday plays Cochise on Sunday, and vice versa. With 128 sides chasing 32 match-play spots, the cut line projects somewhere around 5-under — meaning roughly half the field needs to gain ground. Watch the morning groups out of Cochise: that’s where the day’s lowest scores are most likely to materialize.

Round 1 reporting by AmateurGolf.com Staff · Scoring via USGA · Photography by Eakin Howard / USGA. R2 wrap follows Sunday evening.

Sunday, May 17

Update pending

Round 2 & The Match-Play Cut

[Stroke-play medalists, the cut line, who’s in and who’s out among the exempt sides, opening match-play bracket reveal.]

Monday, May 18

Update pending

Round of 32: Match Play Begins

[Featured matches, biggest upsets, advancing sides, bracket implications heading into Tuesday.]

Tuesday, May 19

Update pending

Round of 16 & Quarterfinals

[Two rounds in one day, attrition begins, semifinal field set by sundown.]

Wednesday, May 20

Update pending

Semifinals & The Championship Match

[Champions crowned. Full final-match recap, gold medal photo, player quotes, what’s next for the winning side.]

Future U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Sites

Desert Mountain has a way of producing scoring extremes. The thin air, the firm desert lies, the elevation change between Cochise’s tee complexes and green sites — all of it conspires to widen the gap between sides who attack correctly and sides who don’t. Saturday produced exactly that — a three-way tie at 63 on the side that read the conditions right, and a long Sunday awaiting the rest. AmateurGolf.com’s R2 reporting follows tomorrow evening.