JOHNS ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA | Of all the players competing in USGA championships this year, Drew Kittleson must be among the only ones with a golf shirt completely untucked. His hips are too low for a body so tall, he explained, so golf shirts just don’t stay tucked in properly.
“My college coach, Trey Jones, would have to go to tournament officials and be like, ‘stop telling him to tuck his shirt in,’” Kittleson said of his time at Florida State. “I’m not trying to be disrespectful. Like, this is where my shirt will be two swings (after I tuck it in). I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t intentional, but the relaxed aesthetic oddly matched the moment this past week in the swampy South Carolina Lowcountry at Kiawah Island’s Cassique Course.
For the second consecutive year, Kittleson was playing alongside close friend Drew Stoltz in the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball – and for the second consecutive year, they came one match short of winning the thing.
It’s a tournament that looks and smells like a USGA championship in the first-class nature of how it is operated, but it also feels more attainable and less cut-throat than individual national championships such as the U.S. Amateur or Mid-Am. The competition includes high schoolers, college teammates, mid-ams and senior ams. A few of the top ams show up, but the 128 teams (256 players) are mostly unfamiliar names.
There are teams here that don’t play legitimate tournament golf, save for a member-guest or similar outings, all year long. In many of cases, these partnerships are rekindling old competitive nerves but with the safety net of a best friend to bail them out of a jam – a luxury not afforded to players in the vast majority of national amateur tournaments.
Kittleson and Stoltz fit into this category. The two reinstated amateurs, now 34 and 38 years old respectively, mostly play money games out of their home club of Whisper Rock in Scottsdale, Arizona, so this opportunity is something meaningful.
For them, the lights are never brighter than this moment. Even if they openly admit that the contents of their tumblers include a healthy portion of Tito’s rather than water or Gatorade, this is the competitive golf they have circled on their calendars.
“This is as big as it gets for us,” Stoltz said. “We aren’t playing all the amateur stuff, and we’re not playing professionally anymore, so this is the time to show up. When you are gambling with your buddies, you want to win, but it’s not the same as this. There’s not many people that call themselves USGA champions.”
“This is as big as it gets for us. We aren’t playing all the amateur stuff, and we’re not playing professionally anymore, so this is the time to show up."
Drew Stoltz
Kittleson, the runner-up to Danny Lee in the 2008 U.S. Amateur, once led the Seminoles to the program’s first Atlantic Coast Conference championship. A two-time all-ACC performer whose collegiate career largely mirrored that of teammate and future five-time major winner Brooks Koepka, Kittleson played in the Masters and U.S. Open but quickly sensed that professional golf might not be right for him.
He turned pro in 2011 but could never establish his footing at the game’s highest level. Kittleson played a smattering of pro events on what is now the Korn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour Latinoamérica, but he essentially walked away after another failed attempt to get through PGA Tour Q-School in 2013. In 2016, he regained his amateur status and has occasionally taken a stab at mid-am events. He played in the George C. Thomas and the Crump last year; the year before, he reached the final 16 of the U.S. Mid-Am at Sankaty Head.
Kittleson, the owner and operator of Re-Bath & Kitchens, a bathroom and kitchen remodeling company, has a handicap of plus-4.6. One trek around the course with him makes his skills clear. He is a powerful player, regularly hitting driver off the deck from a built-up grass ledge on the tee box.
The format allows him to attack the course with his length and not be too worried about hitting a foul ball.
“It’s probably the most fun aspect of this is that it’s not like we're teeing off tomorrow and if I don't have it, it's over,” Kittleson said. “So we can just lean on each other. We're very close friends. Our families are friends. We know each other's parents. And so we get all these text messages, which is super fun. It’s just different, but different in a fun way where we can enjoy ourselves a little bit more.”
Their run at the past two Four-Balls has gained attention for one very important reason. Stoltz, a former college golfer at TCU who similarly tried professional golf before leaving it, is the co-host of Golf’s Subpar podcast alongside close friend and CBS on-course reporter Colt Knost. Stoltz goes by the nickname “Sleaze,” and Knost goes by “Gravy” – “Gravy and the Sleaze” also has a show on Sirius XM’s PGA Tour channel.
It was the fall of 2021 when Kittleson and Stoltz attempted to qualify for the 2022 Four-Ball but got only into the second alternate position. They figured there was little chance of actually making it into the event after that. Both of them forgot about it.
However, a couple of teams ahead of them pulled out at the last minute, and the two friends scrambled to get to the Country Club of Birmingham in Alabama.
With no practice rounds and little sleep, the two embarked on a run all the way to the final before losing on the first playoff hole. Players at the PGA Championship – which was taking place at the same time as the Four-Ball – were coming up to Knost on the range and asking about Kittleson and Stoltz, who have a close relationship with some tour players in the Scottsdale area.
“I was getting text messages and Instagram messages from guys playing in the PGA Championship,” Stoltz told Global Golf Post. “Guys who are top 15 in the world saying, ‘keep it going’ or other things like that. And I’m like, ‘Dude, you are in a major.’ Honestly, it’s really flattering to get that kind of support. Even after we lost, I remember I got back to my phone and it was like 800-some text messages, and I was like, ‘Holy cow.’ The fact that many people care or keep tabs on it was really flattering. It’s a really cool deal and just makes you realize how many people are actually following along.”
After it was over, the two went on the Subpar podcast with Knost and went into great detail about their journey. The jokes were flying, as they always do. They needed everything out of the first-aid kit – Gold Bond powder included – to get through seven rounds in five days. Among their biggest issues was how they couldn’t find alcohol in Birmingham on Sunday, so they promised $100 to their Postmates driver if she could procure a bottle of Tito’s with their food delivery.
“Any multi-day (golf) event we play in involves riding in carts, drinking and listening to music,” Stoltz said.
Not this one. This one was all walking, with caddies. A real USGA championship.
However they got there, match by match, Kittleson and Stoltz marched to the final and brought a lot of social-media attention to the event.
This year, there was no scramble to the course. There was no qualifying, either, because their runner-up finish from last year already secured them a spot. A few weeks earlier, Kittleson and Stoltz went to France to play in the Bridges Cup, a friendly Ryder Cup-style event between American and European mid-ams. They returned to the U.S., got one practice round in at the Cassique Course and then were off once again, advancing to the match-play bracket with two strokes to spare and then cruising through their round-of-32 match. After needing 22 holes to get through the round of 16, Kittleson and Stoltz were 3 down early in their quarterfinals match and then rallied to a 1-up victory. In the semifinals, they broke a late tie with an eagle-birdie finish, putting them in the championship match.
Another run. More magic.
"We have a family; we have jobs; we never practice or anything. ... We're true mid-ams.”
Drew Kittleson
Part of what made it special was the closeness in their interactions. At one point during the first match, Kittleson hit a birdie chip heavily, leaving it well short of the hole. He turned to Stoltz and apologized.
“Never sorry,” Stoltz said without hesitation.
They were always talking, always encouraging – even to their opponents.
The final match against California-Berkeley college teammates Aaron Du and Sampson Zheng was tied through 10 holes before the youngsters started to pull away for a 2-and-1 triumph. The mid-ams conceded that they probably ran out of gas, and it is tough to beat college kids under any circumstance.
“We were just joking like these (Cal) guys play golf every day,” Kittleson said. “They’re like college kids. Their only job is to play golf. We have a family; we have jobs; we never practice or anything. So it’s like, there’s a little bit of that, too. We're true mid-ams.”
Maybe it stung just a little bit more because of that. How special would it have been if they had pulled it off? Still, the whole journey getting to that point was worth it.
“This is one of my best friends on the planet,” Stoltz, a father to two young kids, said of Kittleson, the father of a 5-year-old. “There’s no other dude I’d want to go to war with.”
And that is what it’s all about.
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Top: Drew Kittleson (left) and Drew Stoltz finish runner-up two years running in U.S. Amateur Four-Ball.
chris keane, usga