For some, the North & South Amateur can be the win of a lifetime Bryson DeChambeau won the biggest prize at Pinehurst. But one player beat him here. This is that story.

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Day 1 Recap: The Quiet Grind of the North & South Amateur

By Alex Podlogar

The enduring image of Bryson DeChambeau at Pinehurst will forever be one of utter elation and triumph. As it should be.

It’s either his dusty blast from the bunker on 18, or his arched-back guttural roar after making the ensuing short putt to win the 124^th U.S. Open. Take your pick.

Or don’t. Take both. There’s a plaque and everything.

But there was another moment for DeChambeau at Pinehurst. One few people know. One that came in the solitude of the clubhouse’s hallway. One that happened well before he was a two-time U.S. Open champion. Before he turned pro. Before he won the U.S. Amateur. Before he won the NCAA title.

Before he was even a freshman at SMU.

It was the summer of his high school graduation – July 6, 2012, to be precise. And on that day, it was a very different mood than the triumphant one more than a decade later.

An 18-year-old whirlwind of taut energy, DeChambeau came off the same 18^th green of Pinehurst No. 2 and bounded up the veranda steps swift in motion. He stormed into the clubhouse, and one thing was abundantly clear.

Young Bryson DeChambeau was furious.

All because of one guy, and one round – at the North & South Amateur.

***

Peter Williamson is forever the 2012 North & South Amateur Champion. Fourteen years later, he is married with a 2-year-old boy, Simon. Peter doesn’t golf much anymore, even though he is just 35. But the competitive juices do still flow from time to time, and he entered a U.S. Open local qualifier this year because it was just down the street from his home in Ellicott, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore. “I could sleep in my own bed at night,” Williamson says, and then sums up his attempt with a sarcastic laugh, “There were moments of brilliance, though!”

No doubt, it was a far cry from what Williamson had built himself into a decade-and-a-half earlier. Because in the summer of 2012, the lanky recent graduate out of Dartmouth went on a run for the ages in amateur golf.

And the North & South Amateur sparked all of it.

“I really thought, coming out of that college season that, I guess I should give this amateur circuit a shot,” he says.

Williamson didn’t play a lot of junior golf growing up in Hanover, New Hampshire, but as he neared graduation he began to think he might have the game to compete at a higher level. At the end of his senior season, Williamson led the NCAA in scoring average. But even though he was a three-time Ivy League Champion and a 3^rd Team All-America in his senior season, Williamson was virtually unknown among the elite amateur circles in 2012.

“I won in the Ivy League, but, well, that’s Ivy League golf,” he says.

If he were recognized, it might’ve been for his insistence on eschewing shorts for golf slacks even as the summer amateur season heated up.

“They don’t wear shorts on Tour,” Williamson would quip, often with a knowing smile. He wasn’t cocky, per se, but he was confident in, and comfortable with, himself. Mostly self-taught and clearly smart – Williamson never had a formal golf lesson as a kid – he continued his family’s legacy by enrolling at Dartmouth, where his father and grandfather matriculated before him.

But success in collegiate golf allowed him to start to dream of playing professionally one day.

And then his game in 2012 added rocket fuel to those dreams.

Before the end of the college season, Williamson placed 5^th in an NCAA Regional. A week before winning the North & South, he tied for 15^th at the Sunnehanna. It all came together for a magical week in Pinehurst, and after he won, he tied for 8^th at the Trans-Mississippi Amateur before winning the Southern Amateur. Later in the summer, before reaching match play at the U.S. Amateur, Williamson reached the semifinals of the Western Am.

It was an all-time run.

“I just felt like everything kind of fell into place,” he says. “It was just a neat, wonderful experience.”

After turning pro in 2013, Williamson took his stabs at PGA Tour Qualifying School, and eventually attempted to qualify for the European Tour as well. He earned an exemption at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, but hurt his hand while practicing on the range. The injuries continued with his wrist and hand, which Williamson tried his best to deal with over the course of three-to-four years. Despite a tireless work ethic, the dream of ascending to the top echelon of professional golf never materialized.

“After the injuries, I never quite had the same hands,” he says now. “With the nerve damage, I feel like I lost some of the specialness to my game.”

That specialness was real. It was not imagined.

It was evident in the championship match when Williamson didn’t make a bogey on No. 2 as he defeated Clemson’s Thomas Bradshaw 4&3 to win the North & South Amateur.

But it was truly on display in his Round of 16 match.

In 2012, the North & South had three rounds of stroke play on Pinehurst No. 8 to determine the 16 players who would advance to match play on No. 2. With a birdie on the par-3 15^th hole, Williamson won a playoff with Albin Choi and Michael Cromie to earn medalist honors and the No. 1 seed in match play.

During that playoff, another one was going on. This playoff would eliminate the last of the hopefuls vying for the 16^th and final seed. As Williamson was milling about back at the No. 8 clubhouse, a sun-kissed and wide-smiling Bryson DeChambeau burst inside. He had survived and advanced.

No. 1 vs. No. 16 would start first on No. 2 the next morning.

***

The match itself was electric.

Partly for the personalities involved.

But especially for the golf.

DeChambeau, at that time one of the top and certainly most interesting recruits in the country, was already making a name for himself. The emotions, too, were already well-worn on his sleeves.

Williamson, though, could quietly match that intensity. And most of all, could keep it inside – and in check.

But on the outside matters, too. And what was happening between them as they traversed No. 2 that sticky July morning was, in a word, transcendent.

“There wasn’t a better round of golf that week between two people than the rounds we put together that day,” Williamson recalls. “I think as we got to 18, collectively, we were 13 under. It was a crazy match.”

Williamson, though, led 2-up as they reached the 17^th tee. But DeChambeau prevailed at the par-3, sending the match to 18 while down by the slimmest of margins.

That very same 18^th hole.

“I had played a really strong round, and I didn’t leave any shots out on the golf course,” Williamson says. “But I do remember thinking, ‘This kid…this kid’s pretty good.’”

The scene at 18 was set up to be a dramatic finish. Both players missed the green to the left and faced difficult pitches up the green. DeChambeau, though, was away – and yes, potentially needing an up-and-down to continue and perhaps potentially win the match in extra holes – and knock off the top seed.

But before Williamson played his own third shot, DeChambeau was suddenly lying 6. He played three shots over and back the green. When it was finally Williamson’s turn again to play, a demoralized DeChambeau motioned to him and told Williamson that if he played his third anywhere onto the green, the putt and the match would be conceded.

Williamson hit his chip to 1 ½ feet.

After a quick and firm handshake, DeChambeau picked up speed as he walked off the green.

Inside the clubhouse, still in stride and hands to his SMU cap, he said out loud to no one in particular, “I can’t believe I lost that match! I can’t believe I lost TO THAT GUY!”

Some of the greatest names in golf over the last 126 years have won the North & South Amateur. Legends like Nicklaus, Ouimet, Strange, Kirk and Zaharias alongside major champions like Pavin, Love III, Sutton, Tseng and Pressel.

Arnold Palmer never won the North & South, despite memorable battles with the great amateur players of his day like Harvie Ward and Frank Stranahan. “I would’ve liked to have won that one,” Palmer told us of the North & South during the 2014 U.S. Open. “I came close a few times.”

But for all the recognizable names on the Perpetual Wall in the clubhouse hallway, there are many other champions whose stories are not known so well. Williamson’s is one of them.

And that’s OK. It still means something to him.

“It will be interesting when my son grows up,” Williamson says. “Obviously, I won’t be on TV playing this game. But there will definitely be stories and fond memories of hard work put in. And anytime you have a trophy in a trophy case that’s from a place as special as Pinehurst – and I have two Putter Boys, one for the medalist and one for the championship – being able to tell some of those stories just gives you something additional to a conversation. It’s been a springboard for me, convincing people in my orbit – parents and friends and other supporters – that this was worth a shot.”

While his clubs today may gather occasional dust, Williamson has put his well-known intellect and Dartmouth degree to good use. He is an entrepreneur, having co-founded Barometer XP, a venture that uses the power of play to help people thrive at work. He also leads Game Genius, a nonprofit which provides play-based services and experiences to support leaders, organizations and socially beneficial initiatives in the greater Washington DC region. He has co-founded a local giving circle for early- and mid-career professionals while serving on several nonprofit boards, including his family’s six-generation foundation.

***

Even though playing golf isn’t a big part of Williamson’s life anymore, his win at the North & South endures as something much more than just a memory.

It is a reminder.

Not just for him, though.

His victory is a reminder for every player remaining in the field, or anyone hopeful to come back and try again. It’s a reminder for everyone who qualifies in the future for this venerable championship. In a way, it’s a reminder for everyone who has ever played in the North & South Amateur.

A special week could always be the very next one.

And along the way, you might even beat a future major champion.

Even if you don’t become one yourself.