SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – How was your summer?
When he gets back to class at the Brookwood School in Thomasville, Ga., Mason Howell will have an enviable answer for anyone who asks.
In early June, Howell played his way into the U.S. Open at Oakmont with two qualifying rounds of 63, one month before earning medalist honors at the U.S. Junior Amateur in Texas. Those accomplishments alone would have made good schoolyard chatter. Now, though, the Brockwood senior-to-be has something even cooler to talk about with friends. With a 7-and-6 Sunday romp over Jackson Herrington, 19, of Dickson, Tenn on the Olympic Club’s Lake Course, Howell, 18, ran away with 125th U.S. Amateur Championship. The victory makes Howell the third youngest winner of the championship, surpassing Tiger Woods, and the first high schooler to hoist the Havemeyer Trophy since Matt Fitzpatrick in 2013.
“To be ahead of Tiger in anything is amazing,” Howell said. “I’m just so grateful for everything this week.”
It doesn’t count as news to say that Gen Z is brimming with golf talent. But even before Sunday’s action began, the Howell-Herrington head-to-head had pushed the game’s youth movement to new extremes; at a combined age of 37 years, 6 months, the finalists were the youngest duo to ever meet in the U.S. Amateur’s closing match.
They played their first hole of the day like twins, bombing their drives within paces of each other and doing the same with approaches to the rough and chips onto the green. They tied the first with bogeys. But Herrington’s struggles off the tee soon sent the two in opposite directions. A steady-going Howell was 4-up through 9, a margin he retained when the match broke for lunch after 18 holes, with another 18 slated for the afternoon.
If Herrington was in a tough spot, it wasn’t anywhere he hadn’t been before. When he was 6, while bouncing on a trampoline, Herrington caught a knee to the eye, an injury that required surgery and extensive rehab to save his vision, which remains imperfect.
“One of the first things he said after it happened was, ‘Mom, will I ever be able to play golf again?’” Herrington’s mother, Nikki, said on Sunday as her son marched toward the clubhouse for a breather and a bite to eat. “He knows how to handle adversity.”
He was also accustomed to the spoiler role. Over the past two days alone, Herrington, a rising sophomore at the University of Tennessee, had knocked off a pair of fan favorites: first, Jimmy Abdo, an underdog from Division III Gustavus Adolphus College in Minn, in the quarterfinals, followed by homegrown hero Niall Shiels-Donegan in a Saturday semifinal that drew what were believed to be the largest throngs at a U.S. Amateur since 1981, when Nathaniel Crosby (son of Bing, and a Bay Area native) won the title on the Lake Course. In front of a Crosby-size contingent cheering loudly for the other guy, Herrington, whose husky build has earned him the nickname “The Fridge,” had carded a cold-blooded birdie to close Shiels-Donegan out on 18.
Howell, meanwhile, had proven his resilience, too, surviving a 20-for-17 playoff early in the week just to make it to the Round of 64. Once in the bracket, he had taken out a series of top contenders, including Ben James and Tommy Morrison, the No. 2 and No. 6 ranked amateurs in the world, as well as John Daly II, son of the two-time major champ.
On Sunday, Howell played with the relaxed look of a young man who expected to end things early. The night before, he said, he’d gotten his “best sleep of the week” — this despite the fact his family had been bouncing around, forced to switch AirBnBs three times due to limited occupancy.
Having built a healthy lead after the morning session, Howell retreated to the clubhouse for a two-and-a-half hour break that was longer than originally scheduled (the afternoon tee time was pushed back an hour to accommodate live television coverage; no one wanted to the match to end as soon as the championship went on air). For lunch, he wolfed down a burger with the easygoing air of a kid enjoying lunch on his father’s tab.
As it happened, his father, Robert, was standing nearby, discussing his son’s precocious gifts, which, he acknowledged, did not extend to every aspect of his life.
“Let’s just say that his golf game is a lot tidier than his room,” the elder Howell said.
When play resumed, Howell cleaned up a few more holes, then got sloppy on a couple of others before ending matters on the 30th hole.
In the aftermath, the winner described text exchanges he had throughout the week with friend and fellow Georgian, Harris English.
“He just told me to keep the foot on the gas. It’s a long week,” Howell said. “If you let up, someone will slip through that door.”
The runner-up came away with positives of his own.
“I gained a lot of confidence this week,” Herrington said. Though he hadn’t had his best stuff in the finals, just making it that far had counted as a win, as it earned him a tee time in the U.S. Open and (bonus of bonuses for someone who has dreamt of playing in the Masters since he was old enough to swing a club) an invite to Augusta National next spring.
With his win, Howell, of course, has earned those invites, too, plus something else: a spot on the U.S. Walker Cup team next month at Cypress Point. A big senior year awaits, followed by enrollment at the University of Georgia, where Howell has already committed to play.
First things first, though. Classes at Brockwood are already underway.
“I missed the first week,” Howell said. But, he added, “at the end of the day, I still have to spend the next six months in class.”
Valedictorian? Maybe not. But he’s got great material for a graduation speech.
