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Photo: 2025 - Year of the Amateur in Northern California

Coming soon to a NorCal track near you!

2025 - Year of the Amateur in Northern California

Feb 2, 2025by - San Francisco Public Golf Alliance

2025 will be a big year for big-time national and international golf championships in San Francisco and Northern California, with the US Amateur Championship scheduled for mid-August at Olympic Club and the Walker Cup scheduled in early September on the Monterey Peninsula.  Both tournaments are administered with no gender or age restriction, subject to a 2.4 handicap limit by the United States Golf Association.

The USGA has announced Bay Area residents Joe Montana and Condoleezza Rice as honorary co-chairs for the Amateur, to be competed August 11-17 at the Olympic Club’s Lake and Ocean courses.  The Amateur is open to all amateur golfers, with no gender or age restriction, subject to a 2.4 handicap limit by the United States Golf Association.


Cypress Point, 15th Hole, Par 3

The biennial Walker Cup, a match between 10-man teams representing the US and Great Britain-Ireland. will be competed September 5-7 on one of the World’s greatest and most iconic courses – The Cypress Point Club, built in the late 1920’s by Alister MacKenzie. 


Alister MacKenzie (R), at site of 15th Hole Tee, Cypress Point (under construction, 1929)

Tales of Great Bay Area Amateurs and Golf Championships


Johnny Miller at 1976 Open Championship, Royal Birkdale

San Francisco and the Olympic Club previously hosted the US Amateur in 1958, 2007, and 1981 -- when the winner was 19-year-old Olympic Club Junior Member Nathaniel Crosby, a Burlingame resident and son of the crooner Bing Crosby.  In 1966 at Olympic Club, San Francisco native Johnny Miller, who was then a 19-year-old sophomore at BYU, was Low Amateur and 7th Place finisher in the 1966 US Open.  He had won the 1963 USGA Junior Amateur Championship at Eugene, OR. All of this preceded his World Golf Hall of Fame professional career (including wins at the 1973 US Open and 1976 British Open, and a 30-year star turn as a TV golf broadcaster). 


Juli Inkster with daughters Haley and Cori

A discussion of Northern California’s Amateur Golf champions would be incomplete without Santa Cruz native Juli Inkster, San Jose’s Kay Cockerill, and golf pioneer Marion Hollins. While a San Jose State student, Inkster won three consecutive US Women’s Amateur championships (1980, 1981, 1982) before going on to a World Golf Hall of Fame professional career with seven Women’s Major Championships, including US Women’s Opens in 1999, 2002 and LPGA Championships in 1999, 2000. Cockerill, now a San Francisco resident, won consecutive US Women’s Amateur championships in 1986 and 1987 while a UCLA undergraduate, followed by careers as an LPGA Tour player and a still-active career as a TV golf broadcaster. Marion Hollins was 1921 US Women’s Amateur Champion and playing captain of the inaugural Curtis Cup Team in 1932. She was founder of  Pasatiempo, and was golf developer for the Pebble Beach Company, including The Cypress Point Club, where she hired Alister MacKenzie as architect. 


Harvie Ward (L), Ken Venturi, San Francisco City Championship, Harding Park, 1956

Finally there are Harvie Ward and  San Francisco native Ken Venturi, the legendary San Francisco amateur golfers – and preeminent amateurs in the Country -- in the early-mid 1950’s.   Ward won the British Amateur at Prestwick in 1952, then won back-to-back US Amateur Championships in 1955 and 1956, and famously beat a young Jack Nicklaus in the second round of the 1958 Amateur at Olympic Club (a tournament ultimately won by Charlie Coe).  

Venturi played college golf at San Jose State, and was runner-up in the 1956 Masters Tournament (losing by 1 stroke – the best Amateur finish in Masters Tournament history).  As a professional, Venturi won the 1964 US Open Championship in dramatic fashion at Congressional Country Club in Washington DC.  Venturi’s and Ward’s personal friendship and amateur golf rivalry in the San Francisco City Golf  Championship, and their famous 1956 Cypress Point money match against Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, is the stuff of San Francisco golf legend.

Sign-up for the Tournament Committees at the 2025 US Amateur Championship or Walker Cup, anybody? 

 


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