Goode Times Rolling for Olympic Club Member, U.S. Amateur Qualifier

Sometimes Jacob Goode will stop and stare at the impressive display. He calls it the Johnny Miller Shrine. It’s a popular spot for members and guests of The Olympic Club, a place steeped in golf history. Miller, the 1973 U.S. Open champion and former club member, made a lot of it. But others are featured in the dedicated display near the men’s grill.

There are items belonging to Ben Hogan, who was the (shocking) runner-up to Jack Fleck in the 1955 U.S. Open... Then there’s Yuka Saso’s golf bag from her 2021 U.S. Women’s Open triumph, and the caddie bib for Megha Ganne, the Stanford University star who earned low-amateur honors. Other one-of-one items like varsity jackets given to marshals, ticket stubs ... even yardage cards from the various USGA championships – five U.S. Opens, three U.S. Amateurs, a U.S. Junior Amateur and the inaugural U.S. Amateur Four-Ball a decade ago.

 “It’s all cool,” says Goode, the reigning club champion who will get to make his own Olympic Club history this week when he tees it up in the 125th U.S. Amateur. “You definitely get a sense of history when you walk into it. They did a great job…You really see the evolution of the [Lake] Course.”

There’s no counting the number of rounds the 22-year-old Goode has played on the club’s famed Lake Course – the companion Ocean Course will be the stroke-play co-host venue – since he and his family first joined more than a decade ago. But this will be the first time he sees it under exacting USGA championship conditions: high rough, lightning-quick greens and challenging hole locations, some he may have never seen.

“The course is so different [right now],” said Goode. “It’s a lot more penal because the rough is much higher. I’ve been dying for [our maintenance staff] to grow the rough out. I enjoy the challenge of it. It’s been nice to play [the course] recently. I feel I have an advantage of chipping out of the rough and [I] know what [the ball] is doing. It’s been great.”

Two months ago, Goode was unsure if he’d be teeing it up in his “home” U.S. Amateur. For the past four years, he’s been essentially a freelance golfer while attending the University of Washington. A self-admitted late bloomer, Goode was not recruited out of high school; he briefly chatted with the University of California-Davis coach, but they passed on him.

Goode decided to enroll at Washington – over the University of Colorado – with the hope of possibly gaining a spot on the team. At the time, his game was not Division I worthy, and he didn’t have any positive results to make the Washington coaches confident he deserved a look.

Things gradually evolved over the next 3-4 years. It started with him finding a swing coach in Southern California in February 2024. Wowed by Dana Dahlquist’s swing videos on Instagram, Goode sought out the instructor based at El Dorado Park, a popular public track in Long Beach. One visit on his way to the Titleist Performance Institute, in Carlsbad, convinced Goode that Dahlquist was the right guy. Dahlquist clientele includes a number of prominent players, including two-time U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau and multi-PGA Tour winner Viktor Hovland, among others.

Seven months later, Goode won the club championship, and in June, he claimed his biggest victory to date, the California Amateur, which earned him an exemption into the U.S. Amateur.

The transformation has been quite remarkable.

“I wasn’t smart enough to see how good he [actually] was,” said Washington coach Alan Murray. “Naively, I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have. It tells you about his passion for the game. Once you start peeling the layers of the onion back, you can really see how committed he is to being the best he can be.”

Goode’s story is not unlike that of Paul Chang, the former University of Virginia club player who incessantly begged the Cavaliers’ coaches for a chance until making a run to the quarterfinals of the 2023 U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills Country Club outside of Denver. Chang went from unheralded club player to helping Virginia finish runner-up in this year’s NCAA Championship.

Goode is hoping for a similar result, although he’ll only have one year of college eligibility as a fifth-year senior for the 2025-26 season. Murray and his staff tried to get Goode on the team last fall, but NCAA bureaucracy got into the way. Translated: the Huskies’ roster was full and Title IX compliance prevented the staff from adding another player.

Prior to that, Goode considered playing for the school’s club program, but he didn’t want to buy clothing or do fundraising. He took a job at Sahalee Country Club, site of the 2010 U.S. Senior Open, where he ran into the captain of the club team. He asked Goode why he didn’t want to play club golf. Goode, then a “tweener” between being good enough to play high Division I golf, responded that he had loftier goals.

A few months later, the two wound up playing Sahalee and the club captain saw the reason for Goode’s bravado. He shot a tidy 67 on one of the top tracks in the Pacific Northwest. The club golfer quickly saw why Goode never joined. Earlier this year, Goode considered entering his name in the transfer portal, even without a college résumé. His California Amateur win might have drawn some interest, but the Huskies would officially nab him at the conclusion of the school year – before Goode could consider the portal any longer.

“He’ll be a really good presence on the course and off the course as well,” said Murray, whose 2025-26 team doesn’t feature a lot of upper classmen. “We had a lot of freshmen last year and their tendency is to live and die with every shot. Jacob’s an older kid. He’s naturally mature. Just when you watch him play golf, he’s very sort of serene. He’s steady.”

Goode’s work with Dahlquist started showing major dividends last September during his run to the Olympic club championship. All five of his matches were relative blowouts – nothing closer than 4 and 3 – and he defeated two-time Northern California Golf Association Stroke Play champion Daniel Connolly in the final. Connolly, who played at Southern Methodist, had advanced to the Round of 32 in the 2013 U.S. Junior Amateur at Martis Camp and qualified for the 2022 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball at the Country Club of Birmingham.

“He’s a NorCal legend,” said Goode.

But Goode barely had time to celebrate the victory. One quick toast at the championship dinner, and he was bolting for the airport to fly back to Seattle for the first day of fall classes. The next morning, he was seated in a Polarization of Congress class as part of his political science curriculum.

“I wish I could have been there all night [to celebrate],” said Goode, who doesn’t get emotional over tournament victories. “I wasn’t playing on the U-Dub team [at the time], so I needed something. I figured I might as well play in [the club championship].”

With Washington on the quarters system, spring classes don’t end until early June. When most college kids are coming off of NCAAs and/or playing the Sunnehanna Amateur and Northeast Amateur – both in June – he’s just completing finals.

To prepare for the California Amateur at Granite Bay Golf Club outside of Sacramento, he entered the Southwest Amateur at Desert Mountain Golf Club, in Scottsdale, Ariz.

After missing the cut there, Goode, drove to Sacramento and not only advanced into the 32-player bracket from stroke play, but he quietly rolled through his opponents, eventually meeting 16-year-old wunderkind Evan Liu from Southern California in the 36-hole final.

“I had two days to practice for the state amateur,” he said. “I didn’t know where this was going to go. I knew I had the ability. I somehow know where the ball is going. Just swing hard and see where it goes. And my putting was OK. I was doing that all week. I think I was 1 under [par] every round, including the match play. I was just super consistent.”

That laissez-faire attitude paid off. Even while sitting in his hotel room yearning to be back home in the Bay Area, Goode stayed focused, knowing full well that a victory would land him a spot in the U.S. Amateur at The Olympic Club.

Against Liu, a rising high school junior who recently represented the West in the American Junior Golf Association’s Wyndham Cup, Goode thought his day might go well on the second tee when his 2-iron landed right next to Liu’s ball that was struck with a driver. Using length and experience to his advantage, Goode built a 3-up lead at the lunch break. By the 27th hole, he was 7 up. Laser focused, Goode still had to be reminded of the match’s status.

“I asked my caddie how many am I up by?” he said. “I had no idea.”

Three holes later, the 8-and-6 triumph was complete as Goode added his name to the prestigious list of champions that includes Miller, John Cook, and two-time major champions Mark O’Meara and Xander Schauffele. Plenty of text messages followed, and his name was circulated in The Olympic Club’s digital newsletter. His name was starting to make waves across the state, and the UW golf bag didn’t hurt, either. Goode, in typical fashion, remained non-plussed about the accomplishment. He was more concerned about getting a good meal that evening than popping champagne corks.

But the victory did validate all the work he put in. And it sent a message to those who doubted his abilities going back to when he first began competing as a high school sophomore.

“I proved a lot of people wrong in some regard,” he said. “There were other juniors and ams who didn’t think much of me when I started.”

Of course, around The Olympic Club, which features a state-of-the-art downtown athletic facility that involves a number of other sports, his triumph just added to its long championship pedigree. In 1964, club members Miller (U.S. Junior Amateur), Ken Venturi (U.S. Open) and William Higgins (U.S. Senior Amateur) all won USGA titles. And never mind all of the Olympic medals hauled in by members, a list that includes LPGA Tour Hall of Famer Lydia Ko and swimmer Ryan Murphy.

“When you are working out at the gym, you see the medal count and you’re like, ‘What am I doing here?’ Somebody is always winning something.”

Goode already has added his name to Olympic lore, even if it’s on a smaller scale. That could change at this week’s U.S. Amateur. In 2007, the club was represented by member Randy Haag and former junior member Joseph Bramlett, who is now on the PGA Tour. Goode should draw plenty of attention from the “home” folk, and if he can make a deep match-play run, expect the galleries to swell.

But pressure? Goode won’t let himself be bothered by the outside noise. It’s not part of his nature.

“The most pressure is on stroke play,” he said of the field that will be trimmed from 312 to 64 after 36 holes on Monday and Tuesday. In 2007, the cut for match play came at 7-over 147. “In match play, you can do whatever you want. It would be an unreal experience, even if I lose in the first round, third round or get to the final.

“Not many get this chance. It’s a huge privilege. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

David Shefter is a senior staff writer at the USGA. Email him at dshefter@usga.org.