Tyler Watts keeps proving he belongs on golf's biggest stages. The Tennessee freshman and world No. 2-ranked amateur fired a 4-under-par 67 in Friday's second round of the inaugural Biltmore Championship Asheville, making the cut with two shots to spare in the PGA Tour's FedExCup Fall opener.
Playing on a sponsor exemption at The Cliffs at Walnut Cove — a Jack Nicklaus design set at 2,000 feet in the Blue Ridge Mountains — Watts opened with an even-par 71 on Thursday before catching fire in round two. His 36-hole total of 4-under 138 put him in a tie for 46th heading into the weekend, six shots behind co-leaders Jacob Bridgeman and Neal Shipley at 10 under.
"I definitely wish I did play better, but I'm happy with the two days of results," Watts said after the round.
A weekend tee time against the pros
The Huntsville, Alabama, native is no stranger to PGA Tour competition — he teed it up at the 2025 Procore Championship in Napa and the Butterfield Bermuda Championship — but this marks his first made cut on Tour, and he'll be the lone amateur playing the weekend in Asheville.
It caps a remarkable run for the 18-year-old, who won the Northeast Amateur by five shots at Wannamoisett in June, earned Walker Cup honors, and entered the college season as a preseason first-team All-American and one of just two freshmen on the Fred Haskins Award watchlist. Earlier this summer, we went inside his bag as the 2025 Elite Amateur Cup champion made his run at the U.S. Amateur.
History in the mountains
The Biltmore Championship Asheville is the PGA Tour's first stop in Asheville since 1942, kicking off the FedExCup Fall stretch in which pros inside the top 100 after eight events secure full status for 2027. For Watts, the week is another data point in a freshman campaign that increasingly looks like a preview of golf's next wave — and every weekend round against this field is money in the bank of experience, even if, as an amateur, it can't be the $900,000 kind.
