124th Western Amateur: Jay Leng Wins the Thorne Trophy at Beverly

Jay Leng Jr. arrived at Beverly Country Club with a college match-play record of 2-6-2. He left with the George R. Thorne Trophy.

That number is the strangest thing about the 124th Western Amateur. Over two seasons at Stanford, in a format the Cardinal have played more than most, Leng had won twice and lost six times. Then in three days in Chicago he beat a teammate, a No. 4 seed, the medalist and the runner-up, and never once looked like a player learning on the job.

The quietest week in the field

Nothing about his qualifying suggested what was coming. Leng shot 67-67-68-66 across four rounds — 16 under, tied for fourth, five shots behind Miles Russell's medal-winning 263. While Carson Bertagnole opened with a 64 and Logan Reilly aced the par-3 sixth to take the 36-hole lead, Leng simply went about it: no round over par, none lower than 66, no headlines.

It is a profile that shows up in his college numbers too. As a sophomore he led Stanford with a career-low 70.92 scoring average — top 20 all-time for a single season in program history — with 22 of 36 rounds at par or better. He was named All-ACC and PING All-West Region, with four top-10 finishes including three in consecutive starts and a T3 at The Goodwin.

A player who never beats himself is a difficult opponent across 18 holes. The bracket found that out four times.

Beating a teammate to get started

Leng's opening match was against Dean Greyserman — his own Stanford teammate, the man who finished second in the Cardinal's scoring average behind him, who shot a 62 at The Western that stands as the second-lowest round in program history, and who was named All-ACC alongside Leng in June.

Leng won 1 up.

From there the margins grew. He dismantled Jaden Dumdumaya 5 & 3 in the quarterfinals. In the semifinal against Russell, the 17-year-old medalist who had gone bogey-free through Thursday's 36 holes, the two turned dead level at 36 strokes apiece before Leng won the 13th, gave one back at the 14th, then took the 15th and 17th to close it out 3 & 1.

The championship match against Michael Riebe never got that far. Leng ended it on the 14th green, 5 & 4.

A San Diego final

The championship match had a Southern California accent from the first tee. Leng is from San Diego, Riebe from Encinitas — thirty miles up the coast, and a name that carries an extra echo in Leng's story. The coach who shaped his junior game, John Mason, was PGA Director of Instruction at Encinitas Ranch Golf Course.

Mason started working with Leng when he was six years old, and the anecdote he tells is about putting. He once watched the boy one-putt eight consecutive greens from outside ten feet. Another time, trying to teach him a flop shot to clear a steep bunker lip, Mason was informed by his eight-year-old pupil that the shot wasn't necessary — then watched him hit two in a row to within a foot.

He has been doing this a long time

By the time most juniors are learning to compete, Leng had already won at Augusta National. He took the 2015 Drive, Chip and Putt title in the 7-9 division at age nine, holing a putt in a playoff to clinch it. He was a two-time U.S. Kids Golf World Champion, in 2014 and 2015. At ten, he played in the PGA Junior League Championship at Disney with Team California — and told a reporter there that the team event meant more to him than any individual trophy he'd won.

His father, also Jay Leng, put it simply at the time: golf was his son's type of thing, a natural-born player. The boy's favorite golfer was Jordan Spieth.

The résumé filled in from there. He became the No. 1-ranked recruit in California according to Junior Golf Scoreboard, a two-time AJGA First-Team Rolex All-American and multiple-time AJGA Junior Tour champion. He played the 2023 Junior Ryder Cup for the United States. In 2024 he reached the semifinals of the U.S. Junior Amateur in his third appearance and made match play in his first U.S. Amateur.

The climb

The most telling number in Leng's file isn't the 70.92 or the 2-6-2. It's this: in January 2025, when he signed with Resolute Sports as a Stanford freshman, he was ranked No. 199 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.

He arrived at Beverly ranked 33rd.

The summer that produced that climb has been relentless. He finished runner-up at the Northeast Amateur in June — the tournament Tyler Watts won by five — and fifth at the Southern Amateur in July. Both are Elite Amateur Golf Series events, and both put him in fields like the one he just beat.

A year ago he played this same championship and finished 103rd.

What it means

The Western Amateur does not hand out participation prizes. Fourteen of its champions have gone on to win 52 major championships between them, and the list of winners runs from Chick Evans through Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. The last time the championship came to Beverly, in 2014, the final was Beau Hossler against Xander Schauffele.

The format is the reason it means so much: 72 holes of stroke play, cut twice, then four matches in what was meant to be two days before weather pushed the semifinals and final to Sunday. Seven competitive rounds before the last match even begins. Leng played all of them without a round over par in qualifying and without losing a match.

He returns to Stanford in the fall as a junior, and presumably as a player his coaches will feel differently about the next time a match-play bracket comes around.

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