U.S. AMATEUR CHAMPIONSHIP

August 12, 2026

Stewart Hagestad

Merion Golf Club

Quick Quotes

Q. You win 5 & 3. Talk to me about it.

STEWART HAGESTAD: We played well. I gave him a couple holes. He gave me a couple holes. Yeah, I played really well at the start of the match. A little sloppy in the middle, but we did a good job of putting the pressure on where he had to hit good shots to mount a comeback. It was good.

Q. Looking back to yesterday, you were right on the cut line, but you made a birdie on 8, your 17th hole yesterday, to get to +1. Talk about what it was like to get that and avoid the playoff.

STEWART HAGESTAD: I kind of knew where I was at. I asked one of the caddies in the group that had kind of been following it how important would it be to birdie one of the last two. He kind of said that would be really helpful. So that's what we tried to do.

Niall Sheils Donegan was in the same boat, so I feel like there was kind of this mutual trying to feed off each other to hit good shots and trying to kind of encourage each other to try and birdie one of the last two.

Yeah, hit a great tee shot on both holes, but made a nice putt on 8. So that felt really good.

Q. I understand you play a lot of golf in Palm Springs during your free time. The weather here, it's pretty warm. Do you think that gives you an advantage, you're just used to that heat? I know it's desert heat, not humidity.

STEWART HAGESTAD: It's a little bit different. I think more than that, I lived in New York on several stints. Like coming out of college, I lived in the city, and after school a little bit, as well, after that.

I love being in this area. I love northeast golf. The MGA has a very special part of my heart. I love just kind of everything to do with the northeast and the golf that's up here, and especially during the summer when the temperature does kind of go up a little. But yeah, it's a very different heat than home. I just love being up here.

Q. I'm curious, if you had to put on your Walker Cup captain's hat, I know for your selection it's a little bit different as a mid-am, but if you look at all the guys here this week trying to get one of these last sections for the Walker Cup, what would you want to see out of them this week? What do you think the selection committee is looking for? What do you think Nathan Smith is looking for? You've been a part of this so many times.

STEWART HAGESTAD: That was going down a very loaded path that I was going to have to dance around.

I think historically, if you look at the Walker Cup, the first six to eight spots are generally pretty clear, and then the last, we'll say, like two to three, maybe two to four, are a little bit more ambiguous and there's a discussion that's there.

I think that the international teams committee does a pretty good job with their picks, kind of going through the process and figuring out what makes the most sense from a playing standpoint, from a compatibility standpoint, from a representing the USGA and amateur golf standpoint.

I think that everyone that's in the conversation checks a lot of those boxes, and this is obviously the final week and the final push. They'll kind of go through everything, and I'm sure they'll put together a great team.

Q. You've obviously been at this for a really long time, playing high-level amateur golf. You're still in your prime --

STEWART HAGESTAD: Are you saying I'm old?

Q. What do you enjoy more about golf now than maybe you did five or ten years ago, or what's different about this game now?

STEWART HAGESTAD: I wouldn't say five or ten years ago. I think a different way to think about it would be, like, the irony of because you don't do it for a living makes what you do playing so much more fun. I think that if you look at it from now versus like 10 or 12 years ago, within reason -- obviously winning a U.S. Am would be a really big deal, but generally speaking, if you play really well or you don't, it probably doesn't change your life that much, and it's taken a handful of people to maybe help me see that. We don't need to take that to the most literal extent. But in the sense of maybe it takes a little bit of the pressure off or you're excited to kind of do other things, which in a weird, ironic way, makes you love amateur golf more and the things you play in more because instead of playing in maybe 10 things where three or four of those are two-day things, you're excited for the big ones.

It kind of goes back to the same answer that I've had for a long time of I love amateur golf, simply by nature of you have other things that give you satisfaction, that fill your cup, so to speak. And in an ironic way, if March or April rolls around, you're itching to go practice, and that's an exciting thing. So that's really cool. And if you played for a living, you may not have a lot of those same feelings.