Mason Howell

How is your summer?

When he returns to Brockwood High School in Snellville, Georgia for class, Mason Howell will have enviable answers for anyone asking.

Howell opened at the Oakmont in early June with a two-qualifying round of 63, a month before receiving medal honors at Texas’s junior amateurs. These achievements alone will keep campus chatting endlessly. Now, though, Brockwood seniors have something cooler to talk to friends. On the Olympic Club’s Lake Route, Dickson’s Jackson Herrington on the Olympic Club’s Lake Route, Dickson, 18, defeated the 125th American Amateur Championship. The victory made Howell the third-year champion of the title, surpassing Tiger Woods and the first high school student to lift the Havemeyer trophy since Matt Fitzpatrick in 2013.

“It’s amazing to be ahead of the tiger,” Howell said. “I’m so grateful for everything this week.”

It is not news to say that Generation Z is full of Golf talents. But even before Sunday’s move began, Howell Hillington’s head-to-head pushed the game’s youth movement to a new extreme. At a combined age of 37 years and 6 months, the finalist is the youngest duo ever in the U.S. amateur closing match.

They punched their first holes in the first hole of the day like twins, bombed each other’s drives and did the same thing on the tough approach. But Herrington’s struggle soon sent two in the opposite direction. Howell is 4 to 9, which is the edge he breaks the lunch-keeping edge at 18 holes, with another 18 scheduled for the afternoon.

If Herrington was in a tough position, it wasn’t anywhere he hadn’t been before. When he was 6, Herrington bounced on a trampoline, his knee grabbed his eyes and required surgery and massive recovery to preserve his vision, which was still imperfect.

“The first thing he said after the incident was, ‘Mom, can I play golf again?’” Herrington’s mother Nikki said Sunday as her son marched into the club room, taking a breath and biting. “He knows how to deal with adversity.”

He is also used to spoiling characters. Over the past two days alone, Herrington, a rising sophomore at the University of Tennessee, had knocked off a pair of fan favorites: first, Jimmy Abdo, an underdog from Division III Gustavus Adolphus College in Minn, in the quarterfinals, followed by homegrown hero Niall Shiels-Donegan in a Saturday semifinal that drew what were believed to be the largest throngs at a US Amateur since In 1981, when Nathaniel Crosby’s son and a Bay Area native) won the championship on the Lake Route. Herrington cheered for another guy in a Crosby-sized contingent, earning him the nickname “The Refrigerator” with a cold-blooded bird that shut down Shiels-Donegan at the age of 18.

Meanwhile, Howell has proved his resilience, surviving the 17th quarter 17 playoffs early this week, just to reach 64 rounds. Once, he won a series of top contenders in brackets, including Ben James and Tommy Morrison, including No. 2 and No. 6 and No. 6, and No. 6, and No. 2 for John Daly II.

Howell played with a relaxed look of a young man on Sunday, looking forward to an ending soon. He said the night before, he had already received “the best sleep of the week” – despite his family bounced all the time, he was forced to switch Airbnbs three times due to limited occupation.

After building a healthy lead after the morning meeting, Howell retreated to the clubhouse and rested for two and a half hours, longer than planned (the afternoon TEE time was delayed by an hour to accommodate live TV coverage; no one was willing to end the match as soon as possible in the championship game). During lunch, he flooded a burger with the air of a casual kid enjoying lunch on his father’s label.

It happened that his father, Robert, stood nearby and discussed his son’s precocious gift, which he admitted did not extend to every aspect of his life.

Elder Howell said: “Let’s say his golf game is cleaner than his room.”

After the game resumed, Howell cleared a few more holes, then got stuck in a few other holes, and then ended the issue on the 30th.

Afterwards, the runner-up highlighted the positives.

“I’m full of confidence this week,” Herrington said, also getting kickoff time at next year’s U.S. Open and invited the Masters, a big enough man who has been dreaming about since waving the club.

Of course, Howell’s victory also won those invitations, plus others: the position of the Walker Cup team at Cypress Point next month. Seniors, who then enrolled at the University of Georgia, Howell has promised to compete. (Over the weekend, he received some support messages from the Bulldog Harris English at the Olympic Club.)

First, the first thing. Brockwood’s course is already underway.

“I missed the first week,” Howell said. But, he added: “At the end of the day, I still have to attend classes for the next six months.”

If his grades can keep up with his own competition, he will have good graduation speech materials.