From U.S. National Junior Team Members to Four-Ball Partners to Future College Teammates

Among the seven players in the 2026 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball field with ties to the USGA’s U.S. National Development Program, no duo is more closely connected than Luke Colton and Tyler Mawhinney. U.S. National Junior Team teammates since 2025, the pair will tee it up at Desert Mountain Club before playing collegiately at Vanderbilt University this fall.

Before their golf journeys became intertwined, Colton and Mawhinney began their junior careers in separate parts of the country. Colton, 18, grew up in Frisco, Texas, where he rose through the ranks of junior golfers in the Lone Star State. In 2025 alone, following extremely successful 2023 and 2024 campaigns, the southpaw won the Terra Cotta Invitational, was named to the Rolex Junior All-America First Team and made it to the Round of 64 at the U.S. Amateur at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, Calif. 

While Colton was tearing it up in Texas (and all around the country for that matter), Mawhinney, 18, was doing the same in Florida. The Fleming Island native secured notable junior victories, including the 2024 Canadian Men’s Amateur Championship, before finishing in the top five at the 2025 Junior Invitational and being named to the Rolex Junior All-America First Team that same year. 

2025 also saw Colton join the USNDP fold as a member of the National Junior Team, where, for the first time, he would team up with Mawhinney, a member of the USNJT’s inaugural 2024 class. As the year progressed, the newly minted USNJT teammates continued to find individual success, including a semifinal appearance at the U.S. Junior Amateur for Colton and a made cut in Mawhinney’s PGA Tour debut at the 2025 RBC Canadian Open with USNDP head coach Chris Zambri on the bag. 

Mawhinney’s PGA Tour debut in June came on the heels of what was perhaps his crowning achievement from the 2025 campaign, a victory at the 10th U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Plainfield Country Club in Edison, N.J., alongside 2025 Commodores commit and USNJT teammate Will Hartman.

In the championship, Hartman and Mawhinney defeated reigning U.S. Mid-Amateur champion Evan Beck, 34, of Virginia Beach, Va., and Dan Walters, 40, of Winston-Salem, N.C., 3 and 1 in the 18-hole final. 

Now, at the 2026 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship, Mawhinney sets his sights on going back to back with a different partner in Colton, who takes Hartman’s place on the defending side. 

“We’ve played a lot of golf together,” said Mawhinney. “We get along really well, and it’s more that than anything—you really want [to be paired with] someone you’re comfortable with when you’re playing four-ball.”

While the pair hails from the South, the 2026 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball will serve as something of a home game, as Desert Mountain Club and the Outlaw Course have hosted two National Junior Team training camps. 

“We haven’t gone over too much strategy; we’re trying to just go [have fun with it],” said Mawhinney on the side’s approach. “A lot of times you try to do work ahead of time on a yardage book or online, and then you get to the course and it looks completely different visually. So, we’re planning to prepare when we get to Desert Mountain.”

Following the Four-Ball, the duo—who helped the United States secure a victory over Team Europe at the 2025 Junior Ryder Cup—will shift their focus to the USGA’s other amateur championships before eventually making their way to Nashville to reunite with Hartman and begin their own collegiate golf careers.

In addition to a 10-year exemption into the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship, a win at Desert Mountain Club would earn Mawhinney and Colton exemptions into the 2026 U.S. Amateur at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa. The duo would also receive exemptions into the 2026 U.S. Junior Amateur at Saucon Valley Country Club, though Mawhinney is already exempt as one of the top 40 age-eligible players in the World Amateur Golf Ranking as of March 11, 2026.

Other USNDP athletes participating in the 2026 U.S. Four-Ball include USNDP Grant athletes Sam Terry, who is signed to play at Gardner-Webb University, and Kailer Stone, a Pepperdine signee who competes on the North Carolina State Junior Team. Also in the field are members of additional USNDP State Junior Teams, including Grayson Baucom (Team North Carolina), Max Emberson (Team Southern California) and Preston Hage (Team North Carolina).

Baucom, 16, joins Terry, a fellow North Carolinian, to make up one of the youngest sides in the field with a combined age of 34. In addition to playing in the USNDP’s recent April match against Team Sweden at the Vaquero Club (Texas), the AJGA All-American racked up four tournament wins in 2025: the AJGA Simplify Boys Championship, Dogwood State Junior Boys Championship, Scott Robertson Memorial, and Visit Goldsboro N.C. Junior Championship.

Emberson is a University of Oklahoma signee who plays out of Thousand Oaks, Calif. He’ll team up with Santa Clara University’s Jared Abercrombie before joining the Sooners’ nationally ranked college program in the fall. 

Hage rounds out the group of State Team players and will compete against his USNDP State Team teammate Baucom for a shot at the U.S. Four-Ball crown. The Raleigh, N.C., native teams up with fellow North Carolinian Will Cherry at the championship and is signed to play at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill later this year.

The 2026 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball begins Saturday, May 16, at Desert Mountain Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. The championship opens with two rounds of stroke play contested on the club’s Outlaw and Cochise courses. Following Sunday’s second stroke play round, the low 32 sides (64 players) will advance to match play beginning Monday with the Round of 32. The remaining teams will continue through the bracket until a champion is crowned in Wednesday’s final match.