Through 36 holes at the U.S. Senior Amateur, the No. 1 seed on the match-play bracket clearly separated himself. Trae Cassell ended the first two days at Baltimore Country Club in Lutherville, Maryland, as the only player with a red number beside his name. Cassell dove to 5 under with rounds of 68-67 then had to wait to find out his first-round opponent as a 13-for-3 playoff loomed to fill the bottom of the bracket.
Cassell, of Rancho Santa Fe, California, was seven shots ahead of the next-best players. Three men – Brian Quackenbush, Mike Fritz and Louis Brown – were all at 2 over. Brown won this championship in 2024.
“I hit the ball well and . . . I thought my way around pretty well,” Cassell said. “This time of year, I get to play a lot of golf.
Sometimes in the winter, I don’t play too much golf, so it felt pretty good. There weren’t that many shots that I’d love to have back. It worked out kind of like I hoped it would.”
In Monday morning’s playoff, Marc Ehudin, D. Scott Mackesy, and Niketan Desai (who immediately drew Cassell in the first round) played their way onto the bracket. Among the players eliminated in the playoff were defending champion Mike McCoy, winner of last year’s Yancey Ford Award presented by USA Today Sports/Golfweek; Todd Doss, recent winner of the Golfweek Senior Amateur; and Rick Cloninger, who was part of the winning team at the 2025 International Senior Invitational.
The 156-player field included nearly 50 players who have competed in at least one event on Golfweek’s senior amateur circuit. Three notable players landed in the top 10. Kevin VandenBerg has spent nearly all of the past three years atop Golfweek National Senior Amateur Rankings. He tied for fifth and took the No. 6 spot on the bracket.
Bryan Hoops has won multiple Golfweek events as well as the British Senior Amateur earlier in the summer. He tied for eighth with Jack Larkin Sr., a standout player from Georgia, and five other players.
Other notable players near the top of the leaderboard include former professional motorcycle racer Jason Pridmore, No. 11 in Golfweek’s rankings and winner of the Trans-Miss Senior Amateur earlier this year, who tied for 15th in his second U.S. Senior Am appearance.
Howard Clendenin, recent winner of the Golfweek Pacific Northwest Senior, tied for 21st.
After stroke play, Hoops, a favorite in almost any tournament he tees it up in, was asked what type of player he thought would prevail at the end of match play.
“A smart player, by far,” he said. “Somebody who can control the ball and control their distances into the greens. That’s it. You can play out of the rough. Don’t get me wrong, it’s high and it’s good. But if you can control your distances out of there and stay below the hole, that’s the guy.”
Match play will continue through Thursday, when a champion is crowned.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: U.S. Senior Am: Trae Cassell medals; defending champ out; match-play begins
