BY DAVID GELSTON
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARDMORE, Pa. (AP) — Jack Whaley blinked back tears as he clutched the U.S. Amateur championship trophy and could only think of the countless times his father kept encouraging him, kept playing golf with him, all to urge a promising teenager on the cusp of quitting the game to stick with it for better days ahead.
With his dad on the bag, Whaley fulfilled Andy Whaley’s unwavering belief and capped the tournament victory of his life at Merion with a father-son embrace that put an exclamation point on a career that at one point seemed destined to dry up on English soil.
“He can actually see me happy, and I can see him happy coming off the golf course,” said Whaley, a senior at Florida State.
Whaley played with double gloves, needed an umbrella, was stung by a wasp at rainy Merion Golf Club and still pushed through the inconveniences to cap a tremendous tournament and hold off Stanford junior Jay Leng Jr. to win the 126th U.S. Amateur on Sunday.
The 22-year-old Englishman gets to soak up the spoils that come with winning amateur golf’s greatest prize.
With the sky finally clear on the rain-slogged course, Whaley sank his final putt for birdie to win the 36-hole final 4 and 3 and hugged it out with his caddie — his father. Whaley’s mother ran out to join them for a family embrace while Andy gripped the famed wicker basket flagstick.
“This week it just clicked,” Andy Whaley said. “I can’t explain it. I don’t know why.”
Whaley twice lost 3-up leads Saturday in the U.S. Amateur and advanced to the championship match at Merion when he holed a nervy 5-foot bogey putt on the 18th hole to defeat Georgia senior Carter Loflin.
As for Leng, he had not trailed in his last 42 holes going into the championship match, starting with the sixth hole of his match against third-ranked Tyler Watts in the round of 16.
It felt like a victory already for both finalists heading into Sunday. They earned spots in the Masters and the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach next year, provided they are still amateurs.
Turlock native Clark Van Gaalen, representing Oklahoma University, made his second appearance in the U.S. Amateur in as many years, but couldn’t advance out of stroke play. He finished 5-over, three strokes off from competing in a 16-man playoff to determine the final qualifiers to the round of 64.
Van Gaalen, a junior at OU, shot 3-over par 70 to open the tournament last Tuesday at Philadelphia Country Club. The 2024 Turlock High graduate recorded two birdies, at the par-5 fourth hole and at the par-4 10th. Bogeys on the first, sixth, 11th, 17th and 18th hole posed a tall mountain to climb on Wednesday.
Nevertheless, the second round proved much more successful for the former Bulldog, who added another two birdies to his scorecard on par-5 third and the par-4 eighth. He had bogeys on the seventh, 10th, 13th and 15th.
Van Gaalen joined 311 golfers on the course competing at this year’s tournament, and was one of 34 from California — the most of any state in the country.
The Turlocker placed 23rd (+1) in stroke play in last year’s U.S. Amateur at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, and was eliminated from contention in the round of 64, falling 4 and 3 to Josh Duangmanee of Fairfax, Va.
Journal sports editor Chris Correa contributed to this report.
