A day after all four quarterfinal matches sent the masses home early in time for Friday Happy Hour, the two semifinal encounters in the 126th U.S. Amateur Championship Saturday afternoon at historic Merion Golf Club provided the drama everyone wanted.
More than 3,500 spectators flocked to the Main Line club hosting its 20th USGA championship – and record seventh U.S. Amateur – hoping to see great theater and they got their wish.
Florida State University rising senior Jack Whaley, 22, of England, who survived a 16-for-11 playoff on Wednesday morning just to get into the match-play draw, earned a spot in Sunday’s 36-hole final alongside the hottest player in the country, rising Stanford University junior Jay Leng Jr., 20, of San Diego, Calif.
Whaley held off gritty Carter Loflin, 22, of Duluth, Ga., 1 up, while Leng Jr. defeated Auburn University rising sophomore Logan Reilley, 19, of Lovettsville, Va., 2 and 1. It was only the second time in five matches this week that Leng Jr., winner of the recent Western Amateur, had been extended to the 17th hole.
Both finalists are guaranteed exemptions into the 127th U.S. Open next June at Pebble Beach (Calif.) Golf Links as well as likely invitations into the 2027 Masters Tournament in April.
The champion also gets a spot in the 2027 Open Championship to be held in July on the Old Course at St. Andrews. The winner will also earn a spot in next month’s Walker Cup Match – Whaley for Great Britain and Ireland and Leng Jr. for the USA.
“I'm tired,” said Leng Jr., the first Stanford golfer to make a U.S. Amateur final since David Chung in 2010. Tiger Woods and Lawson Little are the only Stanford players to have hoisted the Havemeyer Trophy. “I'm at a loss for words still. It hasn't sunk in yet.”
Added Whaley, the first Florida State golfer to make a U.S. Amateur final since Drew Kittleson in 2008: “I think definitely going into this, I was a little bit more on the nervous side than I was the last couple of days.
But after the second hole, I kind of settled down a little bit and really started playing golf again and thinking more about what I'm going to do with the golf ball instead of just standing there hoping I can hit the ball.
“Then coming down the stretch when I was 3 up and then 2 up and then 1 up and then all square, I was like, ‘All right, now we need to do something special. Again, it goes back to what you work hard for when you're practicing. You kind of rely on that.”
Some say the toughest match to win at a U.S. Amateur is the semifinal. It’s like a college basketball team trying to win a regional final, knowing a victory puts you in the Final Four. All of the perks that go to the finalists adds to the pressure of also trying to eliminate a challenging and talented foe.
“I was very confident going into today,” said Leng Jr. “Then had a good range session. Better than yesterday.
After the first few holes, [I discovered] the greens were really firm [and] way faster, and there were so many people, and it kind of just took me by surprise. I was a little bit more nervous than I thought, and my game wasn't very sharp today. But it was a good learning experience for tomorrow.”
With his five match-play victories this week and the four he produced two weeks ago at the Western Amateur, Leng Jr. now owns a 9-1 mark; the lone defeat coming to Auburn’s Josiah Gilbert in Stanford’s quarterfinal defeat during the NCAA Division I Championship at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa, in Carlsbad, not far from where he resides.
A victory on Sunday would make him the 10th player to win the Western Amateur and the U.S. Amateur in the same year, and the first since Danny Lee in 2008. Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Justin Leonard, Hal Sutton and Lanny Wadkins are other notables to achieve the feat.
But he first has to beat Whaley, a former NAIA star at Dalton (Ga.) State College who transferred to Florida State last spring after winning a national title at that small-college level.
Leng Jr., the No. 23 player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking®/WAGR®, already has beaten world No. 3 Tyler Watts, 2026 U.S. Open qualifier Reilly, 2024 U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Evan Beck and University of Florida star Jack Turner this week.
Two years ago, he beat Miles Russell in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Junior Amateur at Oakland Hills Country Club before falling to Watts, the eventual runner-up.
To beat Reilly, Leng Jr. delivered at clutch moments, including an 8-foot birdie on the 15th hole to take a 2-up lead.
On the par-3 ninth, with Reilly sitting just 7 feet from the hole, Leng Jr. curled in a 10-footer and then watched his opponent miss to grab a 2-up lead at the turn. This came after Leng Jr. hit a porous approach shot on No. 8 into the front bunker and made a 5.
In fact, Leng Jr. and Reilly, a semifinalist at the Western Amateur, only tied five of the 17 holes in the back-and-forth encounter, including the par-3 17th when Reilly found gnarly greenside rough with his tee shot. All Leng Jr. needed to do was two-putt from 35 feet, which he did.
“With not [having] my best stuff, I tried just slowing down a little bit, trying to reset before every shot, [and] not trying to go down a landslide,” said Leng Jr. “[I] just tried to take it one shot at a time and do what I know that I can do.”
Said Reilly, who wound up going 11-2 in match play since the Southeastern Conference Championship that included the deciding point in Auburn’s NCAA championship-match victory over UCLA: “Yeah, I played fine. I had a good stretch of holes there in the middle to keep myself in it but just didn't get off to a good enough start and was kind of behind the 8-ball and had to chase the rest of the way. Overall, proud of how I fought out there and finished the last nine.”
Loflin, who exhausted his eligibility at the University of Georgia this spring but still has to take a semester of classes this fall to earn his business degree, twice fell behind by three holes against Whaley.
But after winning the ninth with a brilliant tee shot to 4 feet to trim the deficit to 1 down, Loflin immediately lost the 10th to a short Whaley birdie.
Whaley would increase the margin to 3 up with a winning par on No. 12 before the two-time U.S. Amateur Four-Ball semifinalist (2022, 2023) mounted another comeback, this time tying up the festivities with some heroic shot-making.
Winning pars on 13 and 15 got it back to 1 down and then a remarkable 20-foot par save on No. 16 kept him within striking distance of Whaley, who would make a mess of the par-3 17th after finding greenside rough, sending the match to 18 all tied.
“I was going to make him earn it, and he totally did,” said a gracious Loflin, who endeared himself to members with 35-year Merion caddie Jack Hopkins on his bag.
“Eighteen is a really hard hole. I hated losing with a double [bogey], but it's pretty much impossible to keep it in the fairway there with driver. I haven't been hitting that 3-wood very good, but sometimes it's just the way the cookie crumbles. He played a great round of golf, and he's a really good guy.”
All week, the uphill par-4 closing hole had been a beast for the field. It played as the second-toughest hole in stroke play – only bested by the 518-yard, par-4 fifth – and the previous 17 matches that came to the hole made famous by Ben Hogan’s 1-iron approach to the 72nd hole of the 1950 U.S. Open had produced eight bogeys and seven double bogeys. In fact, Reilly was the lone competitor to make a birdie at 18 when he beat Emile Lebrun in 19 holes in the opening round on Wednesday.
Fans would witness more carnage on Saturday. Loflin and Whaley both missed the fairway and each failed to reach the green with their second shots. With his difficult lie, Whaley decided to lay up with a 7-iron.
Loflin was further back and his bold wedge third carried beyond the putting surface into thick greenside rough. Seeing how his opponents’ ball reacted, Whaley made sure he landed his ball short of the flagstick, but even his shot trickled to the back of the green, leaving him 40 feet for par.
Loflin’s pitch came up 15 feet short and he was unable to convert his bogey putt. After lagging his par attempt just right of the hole, Whaley had to make the longest 4-footer of his career.
When it dropped, he celebrated with his father/caddie, Andy Whaley, who is on his bag for the first time in a major competition.
“Honestly, my entire body was shaking,” said Whaley, who would become the first Seminole to hoist the Havemeyer Trophy. “Just got adrenaline pumping through me. That was one of the longest [bogey] putts I've ever had in my entire life, and there was a lot at stake, as well. I'm proud of myself for being able to get across that barrier and get it done. I feel amazing.”
Now Whaley and Leng Jr. face a marathon Sunday. Thirty-six holes. One trophy. A chance to make history at one of the most iconic layouts in America. Expect a huge crowd, and a chance for more epic golf.
But only one gets to put his name on the Havemeyer Trophy.
What’s Next
Saturday’s 36-hole championship match is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. and will resume after the lunch break at a time to be determined. Tickets are available by clicking here. Peacock and NBC Sports Network will have live streaming from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. ET, followed by two hours of coverage from NBC.
Notable
Both semifinal losers, Carter Loflin and Logan Reilly, received bronze medals and are now exempt into the next two U.S. Amateurs at Oak Hill Country Club and Whistling Straits.
Jay Leng Jr. and Jack Whaley each received a Merion history book with handwritten note from 2013 U.S. Open champion Justin Rose.
Jay Leng Jr. has been on the national stage before. In 2015, he captured the Boys’ 7-9 division of the Drive, Chip & Putt Championship at Augusta National Golf Club. He will now be the third DCP finalist to play in the Masters. Akshay Bhatia was the first and the man who beat him in the 2018 U.S. Junior Amateur final, Michael Thorbjornsen, will be a first-timer next spring with Leng Jr.
Two of Jay Leng Jr.’s ex-teammates at Torrey Pines High were among his support group on Saturday. Evan Liu, who was eliminated by Logan Reilly in the Round of 32 and is verbally committed to the University of North Carolina for 2027 was joined by University of Texas-Arlington golfer Matthew Broder, who took a red-eye flight from San Diego on Friday night. Torrey Pines won the Californian Interscholastic Federation State Championship in 2024.
Logan Reilly comes from an athletic family. His older brother, Cavan, is a fifth-year senior on the James Madison University men’s basketball team. Older sister, Lilly, played volleyball for the University of the South, a Division III school in Sewanee, Tenn. Another sister, Chloe, also attended Auburn University. His father, Terry, is an executive with the Wasserman Group and serves as a player agent for PGA Tour winner Chris Gotterup, 2015 USA Walker Cupper Denny McCarthy and past U.S. Amateur Four-Ball champion Frankie Capan.
Glenn Meyer and Tim Hulscher served as the referees for the semifinals, with USGA Executive Committee members Andrew Biggadike and Bryan Lewis acting as forward observers along with Jim Moriarty and Chris Roselle. USGA Executive Committee member Mike McCarthy, the chairman of the Championship Committee, was the first-tee starter.
Quotable
“I'm not going to sit here and say bogeying the last is a great score, but when you play match play, you're playing just to beat your opponent. I was just trying to get myself in a position where I could give myself a good wedge shot and then try and two-putt or give it the best putt I could.” – Jack Whaley
“To be completely honest, I wasn't even thinking about Walker Cup today. I didn't really think about the U.S. Open or the Masters at all either, to be honest, until it came down to that last putt. I said to my dad on the last, ‘We've come this far. We'd be very happy just to walk away now. But let's just see what happens.’ If this goes in, it goes in. If not, we're going down the [14th for extra holes]. I think standing over that [4-foot par] putt on the last, knowing what was at stake, but just thinking, well, I could have a potential another hole if I need to, so it honestly didn't really matter as much because I could prove myself on the next hole. So yeah, I was glad to get it finished before going down the extra hole.” – Jack Whaley
“Yeah, definitely the best week of my life, for sure, at a place like this and with how many people who came out, all the friends, family and just everyone screaming your name. I've never experienced anything like it. It was a week to remember and definitely a good boost of confidence.” – Logan Reilly
“Well, the Philly crowds were incredible. They're rowdy. They love Jack. I'm glad that they liked me as well. It was just so much fun to be a part of it. I'm so thankful that I got to do this.” – Carter Loflin
Article Link: England’s Jack Whaley to face Jay Leng Jr in US Amateur final at Merion - News - Irish Golf Desk