Dawgs & Dreamers: The allure of USGA Qualifying
By: Shane René, Administrator of Media & Communications
For most of my adult life, I’ve charitably described myself as a “scratch” golfer. My index tends to float from +1-ish to 2-ish these days — which, contrary to the popular imagination, means I fist pump a lot of par putts for 75. So, when I showed up to the 2025 U.S. Mid-Amateur Qualifier in Boise last month to compete against a field sprinkled with former tour pros and D1 dawgs, I knew I’d need a daydream to fill out my scorecard.
USGA Local Qualifiers have become some of my favorite days since I started working for the IGA as an intern in 2023. The “open” nature of national amateurs, to me, captures the soul of game — we’re all a few good breaks and one great round from the experience of a lifetime. And watching high school standouts give pros and pedigreed college players a run for their money in a playoff for the final spot is fantastic theatre for any golf nut. But the pressure to summon your best golf across 18 holes is a feeling you need to play with to understand.
Last year, my buddy Brien and I played in the U.S. Four-Ball Qualifier and realized somewhere around the turn that we were going to need more birdies than we had holes left to play. No helping of ham nor egg would save us. Still, it was fun to show up as a dreamer — a couple of men’s-league sticks with just enough game to (sometimes-vaguely) resemble the guys who paid their college tuition with good ball striking.
Even on my best days, I am not one of those guys — especially without a partner. I’m a life-long lover of the game whose college life detoured into a brief stint as an overwhelmingly average NAIA golfer. The most pressure I’ve felt on a golf course was in the moments before missing a four-footer in a horserace following an opening-round 104 in the White Tail Junior Invitational in 2013. It was never clear to me that I could be one of those guys.
When I left the first tee in the Mid-Am Qualifier, chasing a tee ball that flew mercifully in the direction I intended, I was feeling grateful to keep dreaming. And when I stepped on the tee at the short par-3 6th at Shadow Valley Golf Course at three-under par, I’d officially ventured into uncharted waters. The chunk-block nine iron and scramble for bogey brought me back to earth, but two more birdies over the next six holes hurled me back into dream land.
I was lucky to have my friend Jack on the bag that day. We met playing club golf at DePaul University and he has the personality of a river eddy. He is a calm and flat contrarian with an energy that naturally pulls you back to center — an ideal looper for an anxious golfer. I’d instructed him the day before to remind me not to “get cute” — needlessly shaping shots into needlessly tiny targets — which he did to great effect.
The direction I didn’t give him was to tell me to slow down. When you find yourself in contention on the final nine holes, it’s easy to look ahead — to try and race off the golf course like a poker player leaving the table after winning a big hand. Your process gets shorter; instead of aggressive swings at conservative targets, you make timid passes through reckless windows. Suddenly the hole becomes a lot smaller.
In the end, it was a string of bogeys from 13-15 that did me in, leaving me with three holes to play to make up as much as I could. A par-birdie-par finish posted a round of two-under 70, two shots out of a playoff at four-under for the last spot in the U.S. Mid-Amateur in September.
Part of me was feeling queasy that I’d successfully bottled the lightning I needed and let it escape down the stretch. But a much larger part of me was still high on the chase — still floating on that feeling that some far-fetched dream had danced across my fingertips, somehow restoring my faith that it was possible.
And even though I’ve never posted a round of seven or eight-under par like Joe Panzeri and Taylor Schmidt — two incredible talents who emerged from busy work and family lives to recapture their glory days and qualify ahead of the field — I will continue to mark these opportunities on my calendar moving forward. Because in a game that likes to humble us, USGA Qualifiers keep the dreamers dreaming.