ARDMORE, Pa. — The marquee match of the Round of 64 at the 126th U.S. Amateur was never supposed to happen this early. World No. 4 Miles Russell against World No. 8 Ryder Cowan belonged in a semifinal. Instead the draw threw them together on Wednesday morning at Merion Golf Club, and Cowan ended it with one of the shots of the championship.
Cowan holed a 20-foot pitch from the greenside rough for an improbable 3 at the 251-yard 17th to close out Russell, 2 and 1 — and he did it moments after flubbing his first attempt from that same rough. When Russell missed his par putt from 12 feet, the hats came off and the handshake followed.
Cowan's case for Lahinch
The Oklahoma rising senior, 21, of Edmond, Okla., had needed the morning's 16-for-11 playoff simply to reach the bracket as the No. 59 seed. He birdied the par-3 13th on the first playoff hole, learned he had drawn Russell, and went out and beat him.
"I love it because I love competition," said Cowan, who also holed a clutch 12-foot par putt at the 15th to keep the match level. "I knew there was going to be a lot of people out here. I knew there were going to be cameras. It was going to be tough, and I love that."
The result carries weight beyond the bracket. Cowan, the co-low amateur at this year's U.S. Open and runner-up at the Trans-Mississippi Amateur, is among the players in contention for the final selections to Captain Nathan Smith's USA Walker Cup Team. He has already been to Ireland once this year with the USA Arnold Palmer Cup Team.
Russell, the 17-year-old from Jacksonville Beach, Fla., and a Florida State verbal commit for 2027, had rallied from 2 down by winning the 10th and 12th with birdies before the 16th turned it. "Those days happen," he said. "Didn't have my best stuff, and I kind of needed it. That's the way it goes in match play."
Cowan was generous afterward. "Miles' wedges are so good, it's unreal," he said. "But the thing I like about Miles is he's such a good kid, too. I feel like emotions never really get to him."
The medalist goes out in 19 holes
Josh Ryan's hometown week ended one day after it peaked. The Liberty senior from Norristown, Pa., who earned medalist honors at 8-under 132 with a Tuesday 65 at Merion, ran into Arizona rising junior Taishi Moto — the last man into the field, who had claimed the final playoff place with a bogey 5 at the 15th.
Moto was 1 up standing on the 18th tee before snap-hooking his drive out of bounds to lose the hole. At the 19th, Merion's par-4 first, his 4 was enough.
The last medalist to lose in the opening round was mid-amateur Jimmy Ellis in 2024 at Hazeltine National.
Hagestad's clinic
Stewart Hagestad produced the round of the day. The 34-year-old from Newport Beach, Calif., an associate at BDT & MSD Partners and a three-time U.S. Mid-Amateur champion, birdied three of his first four holes, led by four after five, and never let Vanderbilt's Ryan Downes back in, closing him out 5 and 3. Over the 15 holes played, Hagestad was the equivalent of 4 under par.
It is his 17th U.S. Amateur, and he is chasing a sixth consecutive Walker Cup appearance after reaching the quarterfinals here in 2020 and 2022.
"I love amateur golf, simply by nature of you have other things that give you satisfaction, that fill your cup, so to speak," Hagestad said. "And in an ironic way, if March or April rolls around, you're itching to go practice, and that's an exciting thing. If you played for a living, you may not have a lot of those same feelings."
Christian Cavaliere, 28, of Katonah, N.Y., was the other mid-amateur to advance, beating Arizona State's Boston Bracken 3 and 2. Cavaliere passed on turning professional after Boston College to build Tremont Sporting Company, and reached the semifinals of last year's U.S. Mid-Amateur — but had never made match play in five previous U.S. Amateur starts.
Seeds fall across the draw
Four other playoff survivors advanced alongside Cowan and Moto. Alabama All-American William Jennings, the World No. 5 and NCAA Championship runner-up, beat No. 9 seed Malan Potgieter 3 and 1. England's Jack Whaley, a Great Britain and Ireland Walker Cup candidate, needed 22 holes — the longest match of the day — to eliminate No. 5 seed Jackson Ormond. And New Zealand's Joshua Bai, the 2023 U.S. Junior Amateur runner-up, put out No. 10 seed Eliot Baker 3 and 1. Bai advanced through the playoff for a second straight year, the first to do that since Matthew Swan in 2005-06.
Ten of the 32 matches went the distance and four went extra holes. Beyond Whaley and Moto, Logan Reilly edged Emile Lebrun in 19, and 17-year-old Evan Liu beat Aiden Krafft in 20.
"Match play is always a grind," Reilly said. "I knew my opponent would never go away… I knew if there were holes left, then there was a chance to win, and that's basically the mentality that I had."
Watts leads the survivors
Tyler Watts, now the highest seed remaining at No. 2, never trailed in a 3-and-2 win over Parker Sands. Asked whether being the No. 2 seed painted a target on him, the Tennessee-bound 18-year-old was blunt: "I don't care if there is or if there isn't. I'm here to execute and hit golf shots to the best of my ability."
Jay Leng Jr., the Stanford rising junior who won the Western Amateur two weeks ago, beat 2024 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Evan Beck 5 and 4. "It's been pretty good for a while now," Leng said of his confidence. "Now that my putting feels a lot better — I switched to a claw grip like a year ago — it's been much better ever since."
Carter Loflin edged fellow Georgia Bulldog Grayson Wood 1 up in a matchup of players who had practiced against each other for three seasons but never met in a USGA event. Noah Kent, the 2024 runner-up, survived a bizarre finish: his tee shot at the 500-yard 18th struck a spectator in the head and caromed across the 14th fairway.
"My uncle came running towards me. He's like, 'you hit somebody.' I'm like, 'oh, gosh,'" Kent said. He swung "as hard as he could" with a 9-iron to reach the front-left of the green, nearly holed a 50-footer and tapped in for par to beat Kailer Stone 1 up.
Pennsylvania's Michael Lugiano kept the home-state run alive with a 1-up win over Chase Hughes. "I'm just out there trying to play my own game and pretend like it's just me and my brother out there trying to play some good golf," he said of the local pressure.
Rudy Sautron had the day's oddest turnaround: the Tennessee rising senior beat Matthew Lowe 1 up, then rushed to the hotel shuttle to sit a finite mathematics final exam over Zoom.
Notable numbers
The match-play cut came at 2-over 142, matching the lowest in U.S. Amateur history alongside 2011 at Erin Hills and 2016 at Oakland Hills. Seventeen countries were represented in the draw. With 16-year-old Chase Hughes out, fellow 16-year-old Anson Munzlinger — who routed Tianyi Xiong 7 and 6 for the day's widest margin — is the youngest player left. Among those who failed to advance was Luke Poulter, son of Ryder Cup stalwart Ian Poulter, who fell in the playoff.
What's next
The Round of 32 begins at 7:15 a.m. Thursday, with the Round of 16 in the afternoon — 36 holes of match play in a single day. Quarterfinals follow Friday, semifinals Saturday, and the 36-hole championship match starts at 9 a.m. Sunday.
Peacock and NBC Sports stream from 3–6 p.m. ET Thursday and Friday, with NBC taking the weekend telecast from 4–6 p.m. ET.
Follow every match on our live scoring, and see the full bracket and daily recaps on our 126th U.S. Amateur coverage hub.
