NORTON, Massachusetts — The 6th annual U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship will be contested for the first time since 2019, and Massachusetts will be the third-most represented state at the event. A total of 13 players who call the Bay State home will play in the national event, which takes place Saturday, May 22-Wednesday, May 26 at Chambers Bay and The Home Course, both located just outside Tacoma, Washington, and about an hour south of Seattle.
Massachusetts players advanced to the Championship Proper through qualifiers that took place between September 2020 and April 2021. All 128 sides (teams) are guaranteed two rounds of stroke play, before match play, exclusively at Chambers Bay, begins for the top 32 sides on Monday, May 24.
Scroll down to see the starting times for each player from Massachusetts.
In addition to several first-timers at the event, past Mass Golf amateur champions, Brockton’s Matt Parziale (Thorny Lea GC) and Kingston’s Herbie Aikens (Old Sandwich GC) will be making their fourth appearance in the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball, including the 2019 competition at Bandon Dunes in Oregon. That year, they made the quarterfinals, the furthest any Massachusetts golfers have made it in the competition.
“[Chambers Bay] is the only place farther than Bandon,” Aikens said. “But we love it. If it was on the moon, we’d go.”
“In four-ball you can both play great and not win the tournament,” Aikens added. “We try and hit good tee shots, get both the balls in the green and try and give ourselves lots of variety and make it as stress-free as possible.”
There will be plenty of college players in the field, including Halifax’s Dillon Brown, of the University of Maryland, and Weston’s Nicholas Cummings, of Boston College. Brown (CC of Halifax) played in five events this spring for Maryland, including the Big Ten Championships, while Cummings (Weston Country Club) was BC’s top scorer and placed top 20 individually at the ACC Championships. Brown also played in the 2018 Four-Ball, while Cummings noted that in his first USGA event, he was paired with 2020 U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau in the 2015 U.S. Amateur.
“It’s obviously going to be a beautiful golf course,” Brown told the Kingston Reporter. “We’re going with our families, and we’re making a little vacation of it. Nick and I have both played well all spring during our college seasons, and hopefully, we can keep it going and make a run at winning the tournament.”
Despite finishing as alternates last year at Indian Pond, Duxbury’s James Magner and Hanover’s Jonathan Stoddard got a call at the beginning of the year saying they were accepted into the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball and will make their first appearances in a USGA event.
“We were pretty surprised, to say the least,” Magner said. “We’ve never done anything like this.”
The longtime friends are members of Plymouth Country Club and together led Duxbury High School to an MIAA Division II state championship in 2009. Magner and Stoddard won the Dennis Highlands Four-Ball two years ago and a month ago met in Pinehurst, North Carolina, for a few rounds together. Other than a trip to Ireland, the pair have never traveled as far as the Pacific Coast.
“We’ve done so many four-balls, so to get to this stage feels pretty amazing,” Magner said. “We’ll definitely leave it all out there.”
“I don’t think the expectations are too high, but I think we kind of want it that way,” Stoddard added. “It’s nice kind of being under the radar.”
The remaining qualifiers include West Bridgewater’s Mike Calef (Pine Oaks GC) and Haverhill’s Nick Maccario (Bradford CC), the 2020 Mass Golf Player of the Year.
Attleboro’s Davis Chatfield, who made it to the Round of 16 at the 2020 U.S. Amateur is playing with an out-of-state partner, as are Watertown’s Alex Jeffers (Woodland GC) and Boston’s Rob Owen (The Country Club). Chatfield gained exemption into the championship by being in the top 400 of the World Amateur Golf Ranking™ (WAGR) as of the close of entries on Sept. 9, 2020. Along with Jeffers, Pembroke’s Kevin Gately (Harmon GC) and Hingham’s Sam Jenkins (Plymouth CC) qualified last month at Connecticut National Golf Club.
Davis Chatfield (Attleboro, Mass.) & Palmer Jackson (Pennsylvania)
Round 1: Tee 1 | 10:12 a.m. ET (The Home Course) || Round 2: Tee 1 | 1:36 p.m. ET (Chambers Bay)
Dillon Brown (Halifax, Mass.) & Nicholas Cummings (Weston, Mass.)
Round 1: Tee 1 | 12:24 p.m. ET (Chambers Bay) || Round 2: Tee 1 | 3:48 p.m. ET (The Home Course)
Rob Owen (Boston, Mass.) & Chris Owen (New York)
Round 1: Tee 1 | 12:48 p.m. ET (The Home Course) || Round 2: Tee 1 | 4:12 p.m. ET (Chambers Bay)
Kevin Gately (Pembroke, Mass.) & Sam Jenkins (Hingham, Mass.)
Round 1: Tee 1 | 1 p.m. ET (Chambers Bay) || Round 2: Tee 1 | 4:24 p.m. ET (The Home Course)
Herbie Aikens (Kingston, Mass.) & Matt Parziale (Brockton, Mass.)
Round 1: Tee 1 | 1:36 p.m. ET (Chambers Bay) || Round 2: Tee 1 | 10:12 a.m. ET (The Home Course)
James Magner (Duxbury, Mass.) & Jonathan Stoddard (Hanover, Mass.)
Round 1: Tee 1 | 2 p.m. ET (Chambers Bay) || Round 2: Tee 1 | 10:36 a.m. ET (The Home Course)
Alex Jeffers (Needham, Mass.) & Gavin Pourier (Vermont)
Round 1: Tee 1 | 2:12 p.m. ET (The Home Course) || Round 2: Tee 1 | 10:48 a.m. ET (Chambers Bay)
Nick Maccario (Haverhill, Mass.) & Mike Calef (West Bridgewater, Mass.)
Round 1: Tee 1 | 3:36 p.m. ET (Chambers Bay) || Round 2: Tee 1 | 12:12 p.m. ET (The Home Course)
In four-ball, matches are played in pairs (a player and a partner, called a side, against another player and partner), with each golfer playing his or her own ball on each hole. At the end of each hole, the player with the lowest score wins that hole for the side. In stroke play, the low score is the side’s score for that hole.
The U.S. Amateur Four-Ball consists of 18 holes of stroke play on May 22 and 18 holes of stroke play on May 23, after which the 128 sides (256 players) will be reduced to the low 32 sides (64 players) for match play.
There will be five rounds of match play, starting May 24 with the first round. The second and quarterfinal rounds are slated for May 25. The semifinals begin on the morning of May 26, with the 18-hole championship match scheduled to follow.
Chambers Bay is a links-style municipal course that opened in 2007 with breathtaking views of Puget Sound in Washington state. The course is owned by Pierce County, Washington, and has since hosted the 2010 U.S. Amateur and the 2015 U.S. Open. Robert Trent Jones II, Bruce Charlton and Jay Blasi designed the course, and it is unique in that the greens do not have fringes, instead offering a transparent transition from fairway to green. From all the way back, the course can play more than 7,900 yards and is known for its steep undulations and slopes.
The Home Course, which offers panoramic views of Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountains, and Mount Rainier, is also a public golf course owned and operated by the Washington State Golf Association. The course is characterized by a combination of sod-faced bunkers and saucer-shaped bunkers. Its tee markets are shaped like dynamite, paying homage to the site’s former use as a dynamite manufacturing site. Like Chambers bay, its a wide-open course, but it is a much easier walk.
PAR AND YARDAGE
Chambers Bay will be set up at 7,475 yards and will play to a par of 37-35–72. The Home Course, which will serve as the stroke-play co-host course for the two days of stroke play, will be set up at 7,279 yards and play to a par of 36-35–71.
CHAMBERS BAY HOLE BY HOLE
Hole 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Total
Par 5 4 3 5 4 4 4 5 3 37
Yards 569 404 170 545 465 463 470 601 202 3,889
Hole 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Total
Par 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 3 5 35
Yards 436 500 304 486 496 172 396 206 590 3,586
THE HOME COURSE HOLE BY HOLE
Hole 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Total
Par 4 4 4 3 5 3 4 5 4 36
Yards 446 410 408 217 582 184 440 563 431 3,681
Hole 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Total
Par 5 4 3 4 3 4 4 4 4 35
Yards 569 335 213 468 196 439 500 405 473 3,598
(NOTE: Yardages subject to change.)
Mass Golf will have updates on the 2021 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship on MassGolf.org and across its social media platforms. Follow @PlayMassGolf on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest information. To join the conversation, be sure to use the hashtag #USFourBall.
