News & Events

2025 US Amateur Championship at Olympic Club

Aug 19, 2025

It was old-time Fog City golf weather for the United States Amateur Golf Championship, August 11-17 at the Olympic Club. But the players were young and bright and up to the task. The winner of Sunday’s final match was 18-year-old Georgia high school senior Mason Howell, pictured above at the Lakeside Course 8th Tee. (USGA Photo) CLICK HERE for Geoff Shackelford’s full story in The Quadrilateral.

Fan favorite Niall Shiels-Donegan (center), Thursday, Aug. 14. USGA Photo.

Great Scot! The week’s biggest, most boisterous crowds, however, belonged to Mill Valley’s 20-year-old Niall Shiels-Donegan, a Glasgow, Scotland native who grew up in Marin, played varsity golf and football and graduated from Tamalpais High in 2023, and learned his golf at the 9-hole Mill Valley Muni and nearby Meadow Club, where he is a junior member. Over six days and 128 holes of tournament golf at Olympic, Niall survived a 2-day medal play qualifying test, then won four tight matches in three days on the Lakeside Course before losing 1-down in Saturday’s semi-finals to an 18th hole birdie by Tennessee’s Jackson Harrington. CLICK HERE for the full story.

Shiels-Donegan holes another crowd-pleasing putt at Lakeside. USGA Photo.

Son of Scottish journalist and one-time pop musician Lawrence Donegan, Niall has for several years competed and won junior and men’s tournaments in Europe and the US and played two years of varsity golf at Northwestern before recently transferring to University of North Carolina. Before departing for Chapel Hill, and as the US Amateur final match was being contested 20 miles south at Olympic, Niall played a farewell Sunday game on August 17 with the Mill Valley regulars. (See photo, below.)

Blue Sky and Niall on the Tee at Mill Valley GC, Aug. 17. Photo courtesy G. Shackelford.

Be of good cheer, golf fans. Shiels-Donegan shall return to NorCal in the first week of September. The Scotland native was picked by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club on August 18 to be a member of the Great Britain and Ireland Team for the 2025 Walker Cup at Cypress Point.

Play away, please . . . .

Volunteer Spirit Supports National Championship Golf in San Francisco

By Emmett Berg

San Mateo’s Ed Knowles (holding sign) at Olympic Lakeside’s 18th hole on Aug. 13

The contestants and small army of spectators that descended on the Olympic Club for the 125th United States Amateur Championship over the week of August 11-17 were outnumbered, until the thrilling weekend semi-final and final matches, by the roughly 800 tournament volunteers on and around the golf course.

Volunteers (Olympic members and fans from the wider golf community) spotted balls, walked with players to score each hole and to aid shot tracer technology, or held standards aloft to mark progress in the match.

And these on-course roles were only the most visible in a much larger effort that included ticketing, security, traffic and access control, refreshment stands, player and volunteer registration, and emergency teams, said Volunteer Services Director Bob Loback. “We have volunteers flying in to help, apparently including a Super Bowl champion,” Loback said. “This event requires a lot of hands, and we’ve got them.”

Strolling the cavernous volunteer headquarters tent, I visited the canteen and registration area, looked at some live scores and then plopped down to eat next to some diehards. One of them, Pat Murphy, had been the standard bearer at Lakeside for the 1966 U.S. Open playoff between Arnold Palmer and Billy Casper. Pat and his friend Dr. Patricia Cornett reminisced about volunteering in 2015 at the inaugural USGA Four Ball Championship at Olympic. Around the room it became clear that things may change in tournament golf but the volunteer spirit – and some of the volunteers -- remain the same.

“I’ve been a volunteer for at least twenty or thirty years, mainly in rules. I do rules,” said Sandra Hinzmann, a rules official who watched over the Cooper Claycomb-John Daly II first-round match on Wednesday and gave her age as “in the 80’s”.

On the 16th fairway, the first-round match between Davis Johnson and Kolton Crawford was, in the words of standard bearer Grayson Lawrence, “just a nice little walk” alongside talented, polite top-caliber amateurs. “It’s been a great match, and the players are really friendly.”

“I am having so much fun right now,” said Ed Knowles, standard bearer for the Daly-Claycomb match. He had just been stopped by spectators wanting to take their picture with him and his standard with the Lakeside Course 18th green and iconic Olympic Clubhouse looming above. “This was my first time,” said Knowles, 76, of San Mateo. “But I’m definitely volunteering again.”

Emmett Berg with Lily Achatz, Harding Park Women's GC