The 126th U.S. Amateur ends Sunday at Merion Golf Club with a 36-hole final between two players almost nobody had circled a week ago: Jay Leng Jr., a Stanford junior who couldn't win a college match 18 months ago, and Jack Whaley, an Englishman who was playing NAIA golf 15 months ago and needed a Wednesday-morning playoff just to get into the bracket.
If you haven't been following amateur golf this summer, this is the final that explains why you should have been. And if you have, this is your refresher on how two players ranked No. 23 and No. 90 in the world outlasted a field containing 47 of the top 50. Play begins at 9 a.m. ET; NBC has the finish from 4–6 p.m.
The 60-second catch-up
The U.S. Amateur is the oldest and most prestigious tournament in amateur golf — the championship Bobby Jones won five times, Tiger Woods three, and one whose winner earns invitations to next year's Masters, U.S. Open and Open Championship. This year 312 players, distilled from 5,111 entries, came to Merion, the Philadelphia-area course where Jones completed the Grand Slam in 1930 and Ben Hogan hit his famous 1-iron in 1950. Two rounds of stroke play cut the field to 64; six rounds of head-to-head match play decide the champion.
Then the bracket ate everyone. World No. 1 Preston Stout missed the cut. So did defending British Amateur champion Ethan Fang and reigning U.S. Junior Amateur champion Noah Maclauchlan. Defending champion Mason Howell couldn't survive the cut line either, and World No. 5 Luke Poulter fell in the playoff for the last match-play spots. Hometown medalist Josh Ryan — who closed a 65 to win stroke play in his home state — lost his opening match in 19 holes. By Saturday night, not one of the top six seeds was left. What's left is better: two of the most improbable, and most earned, runs in recent championship history.
Who is Jay Leng Jr.?
Start with the number that makes his summer absurd: 2-6-2. That was Leng's college match-play record at Stanford entering this season's stretch run. Then, two weeks before Merion, he went to Beverly Country Club in Chicago and won the 124th Western Amateur — amateur golf's most brutal test, seven competitive rounds where the winners' list runs from Chick Evans through Nicklaus, Woods and Mickelson. He qualified 67-67-68-66 without a round over par, beat his own Stanford teammate Dean Greyserman 1 up, dismantled Jaden Dumdumaya 5 and 3, took out 17-year-old medalist Miles Russell 3 and 1, and ended the final against fellow San Diegan Michael Riebe on the 14th green.
A year earlier, Leng had finished 103rd at the same event. In January 2025 he was ranked No. 199 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. He arrived at Beverly ranked 33rd, arrived at Merion at No. 23, and has now won nine of his last ten matches — five at the Western, five this week, the lone loss coming to Auburn's Josiah Gilbert at the NCAA Championship. The climb has been built on a game that never beats itself: as a sophomore he led Stanford with a 70.92 scoring average, top 20 for a single season in program history.
At Merion he has been the most emphatic player in the field. He beat 2024 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Evan Beck 5 and 4, routed Zackary Swanwick 6 and 5, eliminated World No. 3 Tyler Watts, took apart Florida's Jack Turner 6 and 5, and beat Logan Reilly 2 and 1 in the semifinal — reaching the final in just 76 holes, fewer than anyone else by a wide margin. And there's a full-circle detail waiting at the end of it: Leng won the Boys' 7–9 Drive, Chip & Putt at Augusta National in 2015. Win or lose Sunday, he's set to become just the third DCP finalist to play in the Masters. A win would also make him the 10th player to take the Western Amateur and U.S. Amateur in the same year — and the first since Danny Lee in 2008, on a list with Nicklaus, Woods, Wadkins, Leonard and Sutton. Only Woods and Lawson Little have won this championship for Stanford.
READ MORE: Jay Leng's long climb, from No. 199 to Western Amateur champion →
Who is Jack Whaley?
Fifteen months ago, Whaley was playing NAIA golf at Dalton State College in Georgia, where he won a national title and the Jack Nicklaus Award as the division's player of the year before transferring to Florida State. He came to Merion ranked No. 90 in the world, shot his way onto the cut line, and survived a 16-for-11 playoff on Wednesday morning that eliminated Luke Poulter — the last available doors into the bracket.
He has not lost since. Five straight wins, over the No. 5, No. 37, No. 53, No. 29 and No. 8 seeds, including a 22-hole marathon against Jackson Ormond and a quarterfinal in which he never trailed Morocco's Adam Bresnu. In Saturday's semifinal he led Carter Loflin by three, watched the lead evaporate over Merion's closing stretch, and then won the hardest hole on the property — the 501-yard 18th, which had yielded one birdie against fifteen bogeys-or-worse all week in match play — with a 4-foot bogey putt he called the longest of his life. His father, Andy, is on the bag for the first time in a major competition.
There is a precedent for this exact story, at this exact place. The last time the U.S. Amateur came to Merion, in 2005, Edoardo Molinari survived a 19-man playoff for the final match-play spots and went on to win the Havemeyer Trophy. And there's a fresher one: Mason Howell won last year as the No. 63 seed. Whaley at No. 60 would make it back-to-back champions from the bottom of the draw — and the first Florida State player ever to win the U.S. Amateur; Drew Kittleson in 2008 was the Seminoles' last finalist.
What's on the line Sunday
Both finalists have already banked exemptions into the 2027 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and likely invitations to the 2027 Masters. The winner adds the Havemeyer Trophy, a spot in the 2027 Open Championship at St. Andrews, a 10-year U.S. Amateur exemption — and a place in next month's Walker Cup Match, for the USA if Leng wins, for Great Britain and Ireland if Whaley does. It is the last 36-hole final in American championship golf: 18 holes in the morning played out in front of the galleries only, then the closing 18 with cameras on. More than 3,500 spectators came through Merion's gates for Saturday's semifinals; expect Sunday to be louder.
How to watch the final
The championship match begins at 9 a.m. ET Sunday, Aug. 16, resuming after a lunch break. Peacock streams from 3–4 p.m. ET and NBC carries the finish from 4–6 p.m. The entire morning 18 is untelevised — follow it on our live scoring and updates.
Our complete U.S. Amateur hub: live updates, results, schedule and history →
RELATED: 124th Western Amateur: Jay Leng wins the Thorne Trophy at Beverly · Conrad Ray on Leng's Western Amateur win and the future of Stanford golf