The U.S. Mid-Amateur, often called the Mid-Am for short, is the leading annual golf tournament in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

for post-college amateur golfers, organized by the

USGA The United States Golf Association (USGA) is the United States national association of golf courses, clubs and facilities and the governing body of golf for the U.S. and Mexico. Together with The R&A, the USGA produces and interprets the rules ...

. It was first played in at

Bellerive Country Club Bellerive Country Club is a golf country club in the central United States, located in Town and Country, Missouri, a suburb west of St. Louis. With the Old Warson, Westwood, and St. Louis country clubs, it is considered one of the "big four" old ...

Creve Coeur, Missouri Creve Coeur is a city located in mid St. Louis County, Missouri, United States, a part of Greater St. Louis. Its population was 18,834 at the 2020 census. Creve Coeur borders and shares a ZIP code (63141) with the neighboring city of Town and ...

, near

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

. The Mid-Am was the first new USGA championship in 19 years, since the U.S. Senior Women's Amateur was added in 1962. Qualifications for the Mid-Am are similar to those for the

U.S. Amateur The United States Amateur Championship, commonly known as the U.S. Amateur, is the leading annual golf tournament in the United States for amateur golfers. It is organized by the United States Golf Association and is currently held each August ov ...

, except for the following: *Competitors must be at least 25 years old as of the opening day of the main tournament. *Competitors must have a USGA handicap index of 3.4 or lower, as opposed to 2.4 or lower for the U.S. Amateur. The U.S. Mid-Amateur does not have a gender restriction, but there has never been a female champion. The USGA's analogous event for women only is the U.S. Women's Mid-Amateur, first played in 1987. The USGA specifically intended the Mid-Am as a championship for post-college golfers who were not pursuing golf as a career, as virtually all golfers who pursue a professional career decide to do so no later than their early twenties. This was most likely a response to the fact that less than half of all U.S. Amateur qualifiers are 25 or older, and most older golfers found themselves disadvantaged in competing against college golfers who typically play much more often. Like the U.S. Amateur, the Mid-Am consists of two days of stroke play, with the leading 64 competitors then playing a knockout competition held at

match play Match play is a scoring system for golf in which a player, or team, earns a point for each hole in which they have bested their opponents; as opposed to stroke play, in which the total number of strokes is counted over one or more rounds of 18 h ...

to decide the champion. The profile of Mid-Am champions, with respect to age, is somewhat similar to that of U.S. Amateur champions before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. In that era, more top-level golfers chose to remain amateur, and the average age of U.S. Amateur Champions was higher. While the list of winners is considerably less illustrious than that of the U.S. Amateur, one notable winner was

Jay Sigel Robert Jay Sigel (born November 13, 1943) is an American professional golfer. He enjoyed one of the more illustrious careers in the history of U.S. amateur golf, before turning pro in 1993 at age 50, when he became a member of the Senior PGA Tou ...

, a three-time winner of this event and a two-time U.S. Amateur champion who went on to play the Champions Tour. The winner receives an automatic invitation to play in the Masters Tournament and the U.S. Open (starting in 2018).

Winners

* ''Match was conceded due to injury''

Multiple winners

*4 wins: Nathan Smith *3 wins:

*2 wins: Tim Jackson,

Spider Miller John "Spider" Miller (born c. 1950) is an American amateur golfer. He represented the United States in the 1999 Walker Cup and was the captain of the team in 2015 and 2017. He won the U.S. Mid-Amateur in 1996 and 1998. Miller owns Best Beers, I ...

, Jim Stuart,

Stewart Hagestad John Stewart Hagestad III (born April 10, 1991) is an American amateur golfer. Golf career Hagestad played his college golf for the USC Trojans. Hagestad won the 2016 U.S. Mid-Amateur at Stonewall, in Elverson, Pennsylvania, earning a spot at ...

Future sites

References

{{reflist

External links

Official site
(most information is in the archive sections) Amateur golf tournaments in the United States Mid-Amateur Golf Championship