Pair of Arizona Sides, Florida, California Duos Post 63s to Share 18-Hole Lead at Desert Mountain

There’s no secret that Drew Kittleson and Drew Stoltz have come painstakingly close to putting their names on the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Trophy. Twice runners-up in consecutive years (2022-2023), the two Scottsdale, Ariz., residents know they have the chops to navigate two stroke-play rounds and then win five matches to claim the 11th edition of this USGA championship.

Playing in their backyard – both live 50 minutes from Desert Mountain Club – and under familiar desert conditions, Kittleson, 37, and Stoltz, 41, took advantage of being first off the tee Saturday morning on the Outlaw Course, the stroke-play co-host venue, to post an impressive 9-under-par 63.

They were matched in Round 1 at Outlaw by 2024 semifinalists Will Davenport, 33, of Boynton Beach, Fla., and Mike Smith, 35, of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., and Southern Californians Jared Abercrombie, 20, of Simi Valley, and Max Emberson, 18, of Thousand Oaks.

Davenport, a former Ivy League Rookie of the Year at Yale University who earned his MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, was a professor on the greens with nine birdies, five of which were 30 feet or more.

Also posting a 63 at the par-71 Cochise Course was the championship’s oldest side: fellow Arizonans Bryan Hoops, 57, of Scottsdale, and Jeremy Defalco, 53, of Tucson. The Cochise Course, site of the only other USGA championship held at Desert Mountain (1999 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur), will host all of the matches beginning on Monday.

A pair of California sides were one back. Kyle Dougherty, 24, of Irvine, and Justin Gill, 20, of San Marcos, and U.S. National Development Grant  athlete and incoming Pepperdine freshman Kailer Stone, 18, of Alameda, and University of the Pacific incoming freshman Liam Eyer, 18, of San Jose, posted 7-under 64 at Cochise.

Five sides posted 65, including last-minute alternates Craig Long II and his younger brother, William, 17-year-old high school junior who has verbally committed to play at Georgia Tech. The Alpharetta, Ga., duo carded a 7-under 65 at Outlaw after getting the call they were in the field nine days ago. Craig, 21, is a rising senior at Northern Illinois, the only Division I school that recruited him.

Also shooting 65 at Outlaw were Michigan State teammates Drew Miller and Lucas Pinili, while the 6-under 65s at Cochise included 2024 champions and fellow Scottsdale residents Brian Blanchard and Sam Engel; South Dakota State men’s golf coach Parker Edens, of Brookings, S.D., and Trey Kidd, of Scottsdale, Ariz.; Carolinians Josh Fickes, of Charleston, and Brandon Grzywacz, of Pinehurst; and Hong Kong, China teens William Lisle and Darren Zhou. 

The early tee time and nearly one-hour commute from their residences to the northernmost portion of Scottsdale created a little bit of a challenge logistically for Kittleson and Stoltz. So both stayed at Whisper Rock – both are members of the 36-hole private club – on Friday night to allow for an extra 30 minutes of sleep. They needed no extra caffeine to get their games going.

Stoltz registered four second-nine birdies, hitting it to 10 feet on No. 10, holing a 22-footer on the 212-yard, par-3 12th, converting another 10-footer on the 340-yard 14th and following up with a 9-iron to 3 feet on the 152-yard 15th. Kittleson then chipped it to 3 feet on the par-5 16th and wedged his approach to 5 feet on No. 17.

“It was just a good ham-and-egg day,” said Stoltz, who hosts a Sirius/XM Radio show, “Gravy and The Sleaze,” with two-time USGA champion Colt Knost as well as the “Subpar Podcast.”

As far as making another run at this championship, Kittleson, the 2008 U.S. Amateur runner-up and ex-Florida State standout who operates a family-owned kitchen and bath business, added: “That’s the idea. It’s all about the execution.”

Smith almost felt he was a sightseer watching his partner on the greens. Davenport, who works for  Boston Consulting Group and caddied for Lukas Michel when he won the 2019 U.S. Mid-Amateur at Colorado Golf Club, estimated he made about 250 feet of putts. He made five birdies in a row from No. 12, with his lone blemish coming on the 17th hole when his par putt stopped one revolution short.

“Incredible. Just played so loose and he’s always on,” said Smith, the founder of ForeCollegeGolf, a company that helps juniors with college choices. “It's fun to watch. I’m there for support and green reading.”

The duo also played in the most challenging of conditions as the mercury came close to 90 with winds in the mid-teens, a far cry from what the early morning starters endured.

Playing at 2,400 feet above sea level, coupled with the winds and elevation changes, put the former Ivy Leaguer’s math skills to the test.

“It’s a lot of math out there,” said Davenport. “We would go ground number, adjust for altitude, adjust for elevation change, adjust for wind, adjust for landing spot. Sometimes the numbers are hard to get to.

“We may misjudge some things, and we will certainly miss execution, but we will not make any bad decisions or miss any strategic decisions.”

Emberson, an incoming University of Oklahoma freshman who is a member of   Team Southern California, and Cal Baptist University sophomore Abercrombie, posted nine birdies and an eagle-2 on the 340-yard 14 th hole. They would have matched the championship record of 61 had it not been for a double-bogey 5 on the 152-yard 15th hole.  Abercrombie registered seven birdies and an eagle.

While the Four-Ball has crowned a number of mid-amateur (25 years and older) champions, no senior side has ever hoisted the trophy or even reached a final.

Defalco and Hoops, two of Arizona’s top 50-and-over competitors, could change that this week. Defalco, who played at the University of New Mexico and is now in medical sales, and Hoops, an Arizona State graduate who is the President and COO of Level 7 Technologies, edged 2015 champions Nathan Smith and Todd White by five years in combined ages this week.

Thanks to a back-nine 29, which included four birdies from Defalco, the “veteran” side put themselves in a good position for Sunday’s final stroke-play round at Outlaw.

“Target golf,” said Defalco. “Greens were softer a couple days ago. Playing today the greens have firmed up a lot. You're starting to get balls bouncing and run outs. It’s going to firm up. Contrary to popular belief, the desert is not flat. That was a stern walk today.”

What’s Next

Round 2 for all 128 sides will take place on Sunday. Those teams that played the Cochise Course will switch to Outlaw and vice versa. The first starting time is 6:45 a.m. MST. Following the second round, the field will be trimmed to 32 sides for match play, which begins Monday. If a playoff is required to determine the final spots in the draw, it will take place on Monday morning at Cochise. Admission is free and the public is encouraged to attend.

Notable

• Trey Kidd, boyfriend of LPGA Tour golfer and two-time Solheim Cup competitor Alison Lee, is playing in the Four-Ball this week with Parker Edens, the current head men’s golf coach at South Dakota State. The duo opened with a 6-under-par 65 on Cochise. He previously was the assistant coach at Colorado State, where Kidd, a venture capitalist, played his college golf with Edens (2013-14). Lee and Kidd, a Hawaii native, had their first child together in April 2025. The former UCLA All-American was the runner-up in the 2012 U.S. Girls’ Junior, a semifinalist in the 2013 U.S. Women’s Amateur and a member of the victorious 2014 USA Curtis Cup Team. She will be competing in next month’s U.S. Women’s Open Presented by Ally at The Riviera Country Club.
  
  
• Drew Kittleson and Drew Stoltz's first round 63 tied their lowest first round score in their fifth playing of the championship. The pair started the 2022 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at the Country Club of Birmingham with a 63 and went on to finish runner-up to Chad Wilfong and Davis Womble.
  
  
• Two sides featured solo competitors due to scheduling conflicts with weddings. Zach Foushee, of Lake Oswego, Ore., a quarterfinalist last year with partner and fellow University of Oregon alum Robbie Ziegler, of Tualatin, Ore., was the best man on Saturday. He was hoping to catch an early flight to Phoenix for Round 2 on Sunday for the side’s scheduled 9:21 a.m. tee time. Ziegler shot 79 on his own ball at Cochise. Christopher Bornhorst, of Boston, Mass., was a groomsman for a wedding, leaving partner and fellow Babson College alum John Baldwin, of Little Compton, R.I., to fly solo in Round 1. This is Bornhorst’s first USGA championship and he wanted to relish the opportunity, despite the stacked odds. He posted an 84 at Outlaw.
  
  
• Craig Long II never thought a Mid-America Conference rival would help him and his 17-year-old brother, William, get into the field as the first alternates from their Mason, Ohio, qualifier last Aug. 27. When Tyler Anderson and Liam Nelson helped Miami (Ohio) win the MAC title and get a berth in this coming week’s NCAA regionals, Craig Long, a 21-year-old rising senior at Northern Illinois, found himself with a tee time at Desert Mountain. They got the email on May 7, so the duo had a week to line up airline tickets, a hotel room and prepare. Nelson, by the way, is from Phoenix, so this championship would have been a “home” game.
  
  
• Nathan Smith and Todd White, the inaugural champions in 2015 and the only side to have competed in all 11 iterations, opened with a 1-under 70 at Cochise. This is the final year of their 10-year exemption (there was no championship in 2020).
  
  
• U.S. National Junior Team members and future Vanderbilt teammates Luke Colton and Tyler Mawhinney opened with a 68 on Cochise. Mawhinney won this championship in 2025 with Will Hartman, who is completing his freshman season at Vanderbilt. Mawhinney is trying to become the first back-to-back winner of the championship and obviously the first to do it with two different partners.
  
  
• Last year’s runners-up, Evan Beck and Dan Walters, carded a 67 at Cochise.
  
  
• Michigan State failed to qualify for NCAA regionals this year, but the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball proved to be a nice consolation prize for Drew Miller and Lorenzo Pinili. They qualified for this championship last fall, allowing them to keep their options open. Three years ago, University of California-Berkeley golfers Aaron Du and Sampson Zheng followed a similar path. They went to win the title at Kiawah Island. Miller and Pinili, who opened with a 7-under 65, hope for the same fate.
  
  
• The hole locations will remain the same for Round 2.

Quotable

“It’s not like it’s a disadvantage. But I haven’t played up here [at Desert Mountain] in like 20 years. [Stoltz] has never played Outlaw until two days ago [in the practice round]. Conditions, temperature, the grass and all that stuff I’m sure is an advantage…Being comfortable with desert golf.” – Drew Kittleson

“Being comfortable with desert golf. I would have friends from college come out here and freak out because they are from the East Coast. It’s a little bit of animal because we’re just used to it.” – Drew Stoltz

 “This is a cool day for us.” – Mike Smith on playing in the dry Arizona heat versus the stifling Florida humidity

“The ball sits. There is a lot of cushion under the ball here, which helps me because I sweep the ball. I don’t compress it very well. It’s a plush hitting surface, pleasant to play off and that’s been helpful.” – Will Davenport on the playing conditions

“I’m not going to lie, we probably didn’t even think about this tournament for like six months. Yeah, things were a little expensive, but it’s the time of my life hanging out with my [younger] brother” – Craig Long II on getting into the field as alternates nine days ago with after playing the Ohio qualifier last fall with his younger brother William

“It’s a real honor and was an awesome experience. We know a lot of people that are involved with running this championship, so very cool full-circle moment, especially with us playing junior golf here in Arizona to be able to tee off as champions.” – Sam Engel on being chosen with partner Brian Blanchard to hit the opening tee shot at Cochise. The two Arizonans won the 2024 title.

“Drew got hot on the back nine [with four birdies] and I was just riding him. It’s great when you have a teammate like that.” – Lucas Pinili on his fellow Michigan State teammate Drew Miller after shooting 7-under 65 on the Outlaw Course.

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