ARDMORE, Pa. \u2014 At 63, Mike McCoy is the oldest player in the field at this week\u2019s U.S. Amateur, exempt thanks to his victory last year in the U.S. Senior Amateur.<\/p>\n
To help put this into context, consider that both his playing partners during stroke-play qualifying the last two days, 18-year-old U.S. Junior champ Noah Maclauchlan and 39-year-old U.S. Mid-Amateur champ Brandon Holtz, weren\u2019t alive when McCoy played in his first U.S. Amateur in 1984 at Oak Tree. (The average age of the 312 players in the field this week is 22.85.)<\/p>\n
Merion marks the West Des Moines, Iowa, native\u2019s 21st start in the U.S. Amateur and 74th in a USGA championship, easily the most of any competitor in Pennsylvania. He\u2019s also the only golfer among the 312 qualifiers to have played in the U.S. Amateur the last time it was held at Merion in 2005 (also before Maclauchlan was born).<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for McCoy, experience alone wasn\u2019t enough to make it to match play, 75 and 74, having him calling it a tournament on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
But that didn\u2019t stop McCoy from having more fun than arguably anyone. USGA cameras caught him during a practice round, Pine Valley hat, Seminole polo, enjoying a cigar.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a moment that captured the fancy of Golf Twitter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an honor to be here. You don\u2019t turn down a chance to play in the U.S. Amateur,\u201d McCoy said. \u201cI knew it was going to be hard coming in, but I wanted to give it my best.\u201d<\/p>\n
His last appearance was 2019 at Pinehurst, where he played in the field along with his son Nate. At that point, he figured his days competing in the USGA\u2019s oldest championship were over, something he was content with.<\/p>\n
A retired insurance agent, McCoy has been a fixture in amateur golf for decades, earning his status back in the late 1980s after a brief pro career. He\u2019s won the Iowa Amateur six times (and been the Iowa GA player of the year 11 times), the Iowa Mid-Am six times, the Coleman Invitational at Seminole three times and the Crump Cup at Pine Valley (where he is a member) four times. His play earned him a selection on to the 2015 U.S. Walker Cup team and his r\u00e9sum\u00e9 resulted in captaining the victorious U.S. squad at St. Andrews in 2023.<\/p>\n
How has the amateur game changed over time? The answer seems obvious but McCoy is direct with his observation.<\/p>\n
\u201cYounger and better. Stronger, too. There\u2019s much more power in the game. They\u2019re much younger and much more seasoned players. They\u2019ve got all the shots already at 18, 19, 21 years old. They\u2019re ready. Some of these kids will probably win Tour events within the next two or three years. You\u2019re seeing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCoy still loves playing and practicing. And with his victory at the U.S. Senior Amateur, he became the first player to win that title and the U.S. Mid-Amateur in his career. Plus, it also comes with a two-year exemption into the U.S. Amateur, which means McCoy already has a spot saved for next year at Oak Hill.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why wouldn\u2019t he be?<\/p>\n
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARDMORE, Pa. \u2014 At 63, Mike McCoy is the oldest player in the field at this week\u2019s U.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,755,138747,85],"class_list":["post-852164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-golf-digest","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}