U.S. Amateur Championship kicking off this week
The best amateur, or non-professional, golfers from around the world are gathering in Pebble Beach this week for the U.S. Amateur Championship.
It is the 118th year of the tournament, which was last on the peninsula back in 1999.
The field is featuring 312 players from 24 countries, most of them college-age. Legends like Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods are previous winners of the event.
KION had a chance to speak with one of these future stars on Sunday.
“The course is sweet. I mean the conditions are so good. I was actually kind of surprised how good they were,” said Sahith Theegala, a competitor coming from Pepperdine University in Southern California. “The grass is perfect, the greens are perfect, so for a course that gets a lot of play, it’s great.”
The tournament starts on Monday with the first round of stroke play. The championship match is on Sunday, and the winner earns an exemption into the 2019 U.S. Open which is also at Pebble Beach.
“10 years after Pebble Beach Golf Links opened, we hosted our first U.S. Amateur Championship. It put Pebble Beach on the map, it was the first time that the USGA had come to the western United States,” said David Stivers, the president of the Pebble Beach Company.
