The Western Amateur will be played this week at Exmoor Country Club in suburban Chicago, bringing a conclusion to the inaugural Elite Amateur Golf Series. Six championships have been played over the past two months by this coalition of American amateur tournaments. The Western will be the seventh and final event of the summer.
It is fitting that the series concludes with the Western Amateur. This championship is the third-most important amateur championship in the world, behind the U.S. Amateur and the R&A-organized Amateur Championship. The Western has a storied history. It always gets a stout field, and it is played on some tremendous golf courses, usually in the Chicagoland area.
However, for all those reasons, the Western didn’t really need to be a part of the EAGS. Its place in the global amateur game was secure. Yet, according to Steve Prioletti, director of amateur competitions at the Western Golf Association, the Western Amateur was “honored to have been included.” And in committing to the EAGS, the Western gave swift and significant credibility to all constituencies that the coalition serves.
“The idea would not have worked without the Western. They understood the big picture of what we were trying to accomplish.”
Andy Priest, executive director Southern Amateur
The Western’s involvement resulted in EAGS getting two Korn Ferry Tour exemptions for the top-ranked players, and this led to additional PGA Tour/Korn Ferry starts.
“The Western deserves a lot of credit for their efforts to launch the EAGS,” said Andy Priest, executive director of the Southern Amateur. “The idea would not have worked without the Western. They understood the big picture of what we were trying to accomplish.”
Prioletti believes that season one has been a great success, and one of the reasons is because EAGS took its time to come together. Though the idea was the brainchild of Sunnehanna Amateur executive director John Yerger in early 2020, organizers found it tempting to launch the series in 2021. COVID dashed any hope of that occurring, and the extra year of planning and collaboration proved beneficial, particularly as it related to getting tour starts and USGA exemptions. “We have heard from players, families, college coaches and agents, and they all agree that it has gone exceptionally well,” Prioletti told me last week. “But we will still get better in time.”
The players are competing for the Elite Amateur Cup, which goes to the winner of World Amateur Golf Ranking points during the seven-event series at the conclusion of the Western. (In addition to the Western, Sunnehanna and Southern, the EAGS is composed of the Northeast, North and South, Trans-Mississippi and Pacific Coast amateurs.) Headed into the final event, it is a close race for the cup, and the Western will have a strong say in selecting the premiere winner. After the first six events, Caleb Surratt, an incoming freshman at Tennessee who is from Indian Trail, North Carolina, has a healthy but not insurmountable 10-point lead over Jiri Zuska, a Louisville senior from the Czech Republic (STANDINGS).
The Western Amateur is the amateur game’s great grind; there is really nothing quite like it anywhere in golf. The field plays 36 holes of stroke play, and then is cut to 44. Thirty-six more holes follow on the third day, followed by the final cut to 16. The format then changes to match play for the final two days, with a champion being crowned after playing as many as 144 holes in five days if all matches go the distance. This unique endurance test goes a long way toward explaining the extraordinary list of past champions, including Jack Nicklaus, Ben Crenshaw, Curtis Strange, Phil Mickelson, and Tiger Woods.
The WGA is best known for conducting the BMW Championship on the PGA Tour and for supporting the Evans Scholars Foundation that has nearly 1,100 caddies on college campuses across the country. But it also has a strong place in the amateur game in America, and amateur golf is better for it.
Top: Exmoor Country Club is set to host the Western Amateur for the first time since 2012.
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