SAN FRANCISCO – Each morning this week, Niall Shiels-Donegan has woken up in his personal mattress at dwelling in Mill Valley, California, a couple of half hour north of San Francisco, placed on his golf garments, grabbed his golf equipment and headed throughout the Golden Gate Bridge to the Olympic Membership.
It looks like half of Mill Valley has adopted him there.
When Shiels-Donegan closed out a 3rd straight match at this one hundred and twenty fifth U.S. Newbie on the Lake Course’s par-4 ending gap, this one a 1-up victory over Oklahoma State standout Preston Stout on Thursday afternoon, the 20-year-old Bay Space product raised his hat to acknowledge his hundred or so supporters – simply the most important and loudest gallery of any participant – who had adopted each shot and helped pull him over the road as soon as once more. He then turned to his caddie, his former little league coach Todd Moutafian, and stated, “That was fairly enjoyable.”
The celebration was simply getting began, too, as Shiels-Donegan was rapidly mobbed by family and friends, who might most likely be heard from throughout close by Lake Merced.
They chanted his identify. Niall! Niall! Niall!
They lined up for hugs and high-fives.
And so they shook him so exhausting that his hat fell off.
“It’s the very best factor on the earth!” Shiels-Donegan stated, practically screaming so he might be heard in his post-round Golf Channel interview. “To have the ability to play on a stage just like the U.S. Newbie and win in entrance of a house crowd like this, it means the world.”
Shiels-Donegan would possibly’ve been born in Scotland, however he was raised by Mill Valley. His dad, Lawrence Donegan, was the golf columnist at The Guardian when Niall was born in Glasgow, on the Thursday of the 2005 Open Championship at St. Andrews. His mother, Maggie Shiels, labored for the BBC, however when she took a brand new job at Google when Niall was 3 years outdated, it led the household to the Bay.
Rising up, Shiels-Donegan performed practically each sport, together with 4 in highschool – baseball, soccer, volleyball and lacrosse. He was formidable on the bump as a child, although Moutafian vowed by no means to mess up his golf swing, so poor Niall retired beneath the Mendoza line as a batter. He didn’t begin getting severe about aggressive golf till sophomore 12 months, however a runner-up end on the English Boys in 2022 put him on the radar of high applications, and he ended up signing with Northwestern, the place he performed the final two seasons earlier than transferring this summer season to North Carolina.
Whereas Shiels-Donegan has an honorary membership on the Meadow Membership, Alister Mackenzie’s first U.S. design, he hasn’t forgotten Mill Valley Golf Course, a modest nine-holer the place golfers usually play in T-shirts and flip-flops.
Shiels-Donegan estimated about 90% of his gallery had been individuals he’s performed with at Mill Valley.
“It’s an important group of men who love golf and love one another,” he stated.
He wanted each little bit of that adoration in opposition to Stout, the fourth-ranked beginner on the earth who has already been named to the U.S. Walker Cup staff and shined in stroke play at Olympic by capturing medalist honors at 8 below, 11 pictures higher than Shiels-Donegan, who was 3 over and wanted to outlive a 20-for-17 playoff simply to qualify for the knockout stage.
Already buzzing from his 6-footer on No. 18 to beat Texas’ Christiaan Maas in Thursday morning’s Spherical of 32, Shiels-Donegan instantly discovered himself 2 down via 4 holes. However Stout gave a pair again with bogeys, together with on the brief par-4 seventh, the place he left a greenside bunker shot and a birdie putt in need of a extreme ridge defending the left gap location, the ball rolling again to the underside, proper shelf each instances.
Shiels-Donegan pounced on the chance, burying a 50-foot birdie putt on the par-3 eighth. As his ball rolled towards the cup, somebody within the crowd might be heard screaming, “One time! One time!” When the putt dropped, the place erupted – and Shiels-Donegan soaked all of it up.
“After I’m down, they’re up,” he stated, “and that helps me get again into the second, keep targeted and simply maintain making pars, making birdies, making the opposite man do what he must do to beat me.”
Stout appeared up for the problem as soon as the match turned, successful three straight holes, Nos. 11-13, with bookend birdies. However he simply couldn’t shake Shiels-Donegan and his red-hot putter.
“Simply fell again on my putter,” Shiels-Donegan stated, “and fortuitously it was there.”
Shiels-Donegan tied the match by throwing a dart simply over the bunker on the par-3 fifteenth – amped up, he had clubbed down from the morning – and holing his 8-footer for birdie. On the mammoth, par-5 sixteenth, each gamers laid up within the left tough earlier than hacking third pictures to about 20 ft; Shiels-Donegan made, Stout missed, and the overwhelming native favourite was main as soon as once more.
When Shiels-Donegan drained one other birdie, from 12 ft on the par-5 seventeenth, he raised his putter within the air as his followers hooted and hollered. (Lawrence Donegan, earlier than he was a golf author, performed bass guitar in two Scottish rock bands, together with one referred to as Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. Becoming.)
“I type of black out every time that occurs,” Shiels-Donegan stated. “I simply do no matter feels proper. I simply try to hit the pictures and see what occurs.”
Each opponents hit the ultimate inexperienced and had related putts. Shiels-Donegan performed first, his lightning-quick birdie strive sliding about 3 ft by. Stout did the identical, ending simply inside Shiels-Donegan’s ball. However Stout wouldn’t get the possibility to hit the following putt, as Shiels-Donegan rolled within the match-winner.
“I feel I’ve completed a extremely good job this week of controlling that adrenaline and utilizing it solely after I must, simply each shot refocusing, not getting forward of myself, staying within the current,” Shiels-Donegan stated. “However, yeah, it’s exhausting generally whenever you’ve obtained the gang round this amphitheater of the 18th inexperienced; you’re shaking a bit of bit. That’s three putts now that I’ve holed to win my matches down 18. It’s been nice.”
Hopefully, for Shiels-Donegan’s sake, Dean Robertson, this 12 months’s Walker Cup captain for Nice Britain and Eire, was paying consideration.
Shiels-Donegan spent a couple of month within the U.Okay. this summer season attempting to impress the powers that be. He tied for fourth on the St. Andrews Hyperlinks Trophy, however after shedding within the first spherical of match play on the British Newbie and never being chosen to the GB&I squad for the St. Andrews Trophy, Shiels-Donegan’s prospects had taken successful. Particularly since he figured himself out of the U.S. Newbie, ranked outdoors of the highest 100 on the earth beginner rankings and having missed all qualifiers.
However within the remaining week, Shiels-Donegan by some means jumped contained in the cutoff for an exempt spot within the 312-player discipline at Olympic, although it took just a few days for him to search out out as he’d blocked the rankings web page on his units.
Shiels-Donegan’s Walker Cup hopes had been nonetheless alive, even when there’s a rule within the Donegan family that the occasion can’t be talked about.
“I’ve developed a superb mindset of simply working exhausting and realizing that every one the additional stuff will take of itself,” Shiels-Donegan stated. “It could clearly be superb to play the Walker Cup at Cypress Level so near dwelling and with the help that I might get there, however something can occur. I’m simply attempting to have a superb time, and if that occurs it might be superb.”
Earlier than he struck his second shot at No. 17, with a mini driver off the deck, Shiels-Donegan obtained some encouragement from Moutafian: “For this reason you’re right here.”
Shiels-Donegan is right here at Olympic, chasing the Havemeyer Trophy, to placed on a present, which is able to proceed Friday afternoon within the quarterfinals reverse Notre Dame’s Jacob Modleski, whose dad, Matt, was an illustration pilot for U.S. Air Pressure Thunderbirds. Modleski may have to prepare a flyover to fight Workforce NSD.
However how does Shiels-Donegan come down from the emotional excessive that was Thursday and maintain performing?
“My dad does a fairly good job of that,” Shiels-Donegan stated. “He jogs my memory that I’m simply human. Like on the finish of the day, that is simply golf – 10% of my life is golf, 90% % of my life is my household, my associates. Simply maintain the ten% the place it’s and dwell the opposite 90 like anyone else.”
Solely to these watching him this week at Olympic, Shiels-Donegan isn’t simply anyone else.
He’s the pleasure of Mill Valley, and after Thursday, they had been ready to hold him again throughout that bridge.
