San Francisco, California, United States: Five members of the triumphant Asia-Pacific Golf Confederation (APGC) 2025 Bonallack Trophy team will be gunning for individual glory at this week’s 125th US Amateur Championship.
New Zealanders Joshua Bai and Zack Swanwick, Vietnam’s Nguyen Anh Minh, Singaporean Hiroshi Tai and Japan’s Rintaro Nakano all made vital contributions to the APGC line-up’s defeat of the European Golf Association in the latest edition of the Ryder Cup-style team match play event in the United Arab Emirates in January.
Seven months on and the Bonallack Trophy quintet are among a 15-strong Asia-Pacific contingent aiming for success at The Olympic Club’s Lake Course.
No fewer than 47 of the current top-50 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) are in the starting field, including Anh Minh (37th), China’s Paul Chang (45th) and Tai (46th).
An incoming Oregon State freshman, 18-year-old Anh Minh created history a fortnight ago when he became the first Vietnamese golfer to reach a USGA final, losing out to American Hamilton Coleman in the US Junior Amateur at Trinity Forest Golf Club in Texas.
The USGA accepted 5,245 entries for this year’s US Amateur Championship which is open to amateur golfers with a Handicap Index not exceeding 0.4. In 2023, the USGA accepted a record 8,253 entries. The previous record was 7,920 in 1999.
Among the 30 countries represented in San Francisco are Australia (four players), China, Japan, New Zealand and Thailand (two each) and Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam one apiece.
Declan O’Donovan will be on a high following his victory in last week’s Canadian Amateur Championship, which earned him a starting spot in the US Amateur and a PGA Tour debut in the RBC Canadian Open in 2026.
O’Donovan holed a 30-foot putt on the second hole of a sudden-death play-off to beat Canada’s Isaiah Ibit at Royal Ottawa Golf Club and become the first Australian to win the title.
A member of last year’s Australian team at the Nomura Cup in Vietnam, O’Donovan said: “There’s a lot of opportunity that comes with the Canadian Amateur. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about what could happen if I did win.
“I think rolling that putt (to win) really let the feeling sink in that I’m going to be playing in a PGA Tour event and I’m going to be playing my first US Amateur.”
Lining up alongside O’Donovan at The Olympic Club are fellow Australians Billy Dowling, Coby Carruthers and Arrow Aarav Shah and China’s Chang Xihuan who, like Anh Minh, represented the International Team at last year’s Junior Presidents Cup.
Also among the Asia-Pacific contingent are Thailand’s Pongsapak Laopakdee and Ratchanon ‘TK’ Chantananuwat. Now studying at Stanford University, TK won an Asian Tour event when aged 15 and has long been touted as one of the brightest prospects from the region.
The starting field of 312 players will play 18 holes of stroke play on Monday and Tuesday, one round on each of the two qualifying courses – the Lake Course and Ocean Course. The field will then be cut to the low 64 scorers. Six rounds of match play begin on Wednesday and the championship will conclude with a 36-hole championship match next Sunday (August 17).
The Olympic Club, originally called the San Francisco Olympic Club, is the oldest athletic club in the United States. It was established on May 6, 1860.
Designed by Willie Watson and built by Sam Whiting, the Lake Course opened in 1924. After sustaining damage from winter storms in 1925-26, Whiting redesigned the layout, which reopened in 1927.
The Lake Course underwent further renovations by Robert Trent Jones Snr ahead of the 1955 US Open. In 2009, Bill Love directed a restoration that featured the first routing change since 1927, highlighted by the creation of a new eighth hole in the natural amphitheatre below the clubhouse.
Most recently, in 2023, Gil Hanse led a restoration aimed at returning the Lake Course to its historical roots while adapting it to the modern game with larger greens, wider fairways, fewer trees and updated bunkers.
