Lake Day: Preston Stout reels in U.S. Amateur medal at Olympic

NBC Sports

3 days ago

SAN FRANCISCO – If Preston Stout had a choice, he would've spent more time at the lake this summer. As a junior, it wasn't uncommon for the Richardson, Texas, native to skip tournaments, including the premier AJGA invitationals, to fish or hunt. Even now, he winters at his family's property, a few hundred acres of land inside the Tishomingo National Wildlife Refuge in southern Oklahoma.
'That's my therapy,' Stout says. 'For other people, it might be something else, but for me, it's hunting and fishing.'
Right now, though, Stout has just been playing too, dang well to take much time off.
And yet, he still made it the lake on Tuesday – the Olympic Club's Lake Course, that is.
The rising Oklahoma State junior's hot stretch continued with a 4-under 66 in cool, breezy conditions to solidify U.S. Amateur medalist honors. Paired with Texas senior Tommy Morrison, who finished stroke play at 6 under and two shots back of Stout's 8 under, Stout turned it on late with four birdies in his last six holes as he left Morrison and the rest of the field in his wake.
'You always want to win, right?' said Stout, who will have the top seed for the Round of 64, which begins Wednesday. 'Especially the last few holes, me and Tommy were pretty close, and I'm pretty competitive, so I wanted to beat him.'
Stout, Oklahoma State's first medalist at this championship since Hayden Wood in 2017, has Cowboys head coach Alan Bratton on the bag. Bratton is trying to become the first caddie to loop for three U.S. Amateur champions after caddying for Peter Uihlein (2010) and Viktor Hovland (2018); two other recent caddies with two U.S. Amateur winners are Jay Brunza (Tiger Woods twice) and Devin Stanton (Andy Ogletree and Tyler Strafaci).
If he wins Sunday, Stout would be the sixth U.S. Amateur champion from Oklahoma State and also the sixth medalist to claim the Havemeyer Trophy, joining names such as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, and the most recent to do so, Ryan Moore, in 2004.
But as Bratton and Stout both noted: 'The tournament starts over tomorrow.'
If anyone can break the drought for the medalists, however, it's the red-hot Stout.
Stout's scorching summer began with a ton of momentum from his junior season, where he garnered first-team All-America honors, won a second straight Big 12 individual title and led the Cowboys to another NCAA Championship. His stellar play earned him an Arnold Palmer Cup berth, and he also won the Northeast Amateur before the calendar turned to July. He then debuted on the PGA Tour at the 3M Open, missing the cut by just one, before tying for 23rd at the Western Amateur, a few out of match play there. And then he's already on the 10-man U.S. Walker Cup team that will compete at Cypress Point next month.
'I didn't want to play that much this summer, and then it kind of just happened,' said Stout, up to fourth in the World Amateur Golf Ranking. 'But it's sharpened my game, and I'm playing nicely.'
Stout doesn't know his opponent for the first round of match play yet – that will likely be decided after a playoff on Wednesday morning. But he will be joined by plenty of big names in the knockout stage, including five other top-10 amateurs in the world – Morrison, No. 1 Jackson Koivun (T-8), No. 2 Ben James, No. 7 Jase Summy, and No. 9 Christiaan Maas. A sixth, No. 5 Filip Jakubcik, is in the playoff at 3 over to fill out the bracket.