Nick Gross hadn’t quite turned 15 when he teed it up in the Pennsylvania Amateur Championship in the summer of 2021 at Merion Golf Club’s historic East Course.
The kid, going into his sophomore season of scholastic golf at Downingtown West, made the cut – a tough cut as only the top 40 and ties survived to play the final 18 holes of the 54-hole event – on the number at 8-over-par 148.
That experience will come in handy next month when Gross, now 19 going on 20 and a junior at Alabama, returns to Merion to tee it up in the U.S. Amateur.
Gross, returning to competitive golf after taking some time to get a left knee injury right and his mind a little better focused, carded a sizzling 5-under 66 Monday at Llanerch Country Club, the underrated layout in Havertown, only a little more than three miles from Merion, to share medalist honors with recent Princeton graduate Riccardo Fantanelli, a native of Italy, in a U.S. Amateur Final Qualifying administered by the Golf Association of Philadelphia (GAP).
It was in the U.S. Amateur that Gross made his biggest splash to date. It was just a year after his solid showing in the Pennsylvania Amateur when Gross earned a spot in the field for the 2022 U.S. Am at Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J. and proceeded to reach the quarterfinals a week before his 16th birthday.
Gross struggled to make the lineup for Southeastern Conference power Alabama last fall, then dislocated his left knee in a workout during college golf’s midseason pause.
Gross gutted it out in the spring, the Crimson Tide ending up one frustrating shot out of advancing to the NCAA Championship with a sixth-place finish in the Marana Regional at the Gallery Golf Club in Arizona.
But Gross decided to shut it down for the summer, preferring to work out some kinks in his game. I’m guessing most of that work happened at Kennett Square Golf & Country Club, where he became a member a couple of years ago and played in a couple of BMW GAP Team Matches in the spring of his senior year in high school in 2024.
Gross had played very little competitive golf in that 2023-2024 winter, but showed up for the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s George Dressler Memorial at LedgeRock Golf Club that spring and erupted with a spectacular 10-under 62 in the opening round, going on to beat a pretty strong field by eight shots.
The script was very similar Monday. Despite not playing a competitive round this summer, Gross made six birdies against a lone bogey over the 6,825-yard, par-71 Llanerch layout, home of the 1958 PGA Championship, to grab one of the coveted eight tickets to the U.S. Amateur at Merion that were up for grabs.
Making a U.S. Amateur is pretty special in any year, but for a local player to make it to a U.S. Amateur at Merion is next-level special.
I can vividly recall covering the local qualifier for the 2005 U.S. Amateur at Merion in my previous life at the Delaware County Daily Times back when it was a one-day, 36-hole test. The qualifier that year was at Rolling Green Golf Club and Llanerch.
Really wanted to get down there Monday, but I was busy shooting a million in the Caddy Tournament at Stonewall’s Old Course. It is the social highlight of the summer for me and my fellow Stonewall loopers.
Starting off the 10th tee at Llanerch Monday, Gross nearly drove the green at the par-4 15th hole, chipped to 13 feet and dropped the putt for his first birdie of the day.
With his high school coach Rob Coyne, the best player in the history of Downingtown West golf before Gross arrived on the scene, on the bag, Gross got a second birdie on Llanerch’s incoming nine by hitting a pitching wedge to eight feet and rolling in the putt.
Gross’ game heated up on Llanerch’s front side as he rattled off three straight birdies at the first, second and third holes.
A 56-degree wedge to 12 feet on Llanerch’s opener was quickly converted into a birdie. Gross stuck a 9-iron from 162 yards to three feet at the second hole and made that putt. Gross hit a pitching wedge to 25 feet at the 465-yard, par-4 third hole and watched the birdie bomb fall.
Suddenly, he was 5-under for the round.
Gross’ sixth birdie of the day came at the 559-yard, par-5 fifth hole as he wedged his approach from 90 yards to six feet and made the birdie putt.
The only blemish on his card came at the 365-yard, par-4 seventh hole as Gross laid back with a 3-wood off the tee, caught a flyer in the rough and eventually missed a six-footer for par.
“I’m super excited,” Gross told the GAP website. “It was hard not to put pressure on myself for this qualifier, knowing where this U.S. Amateur is. It’s a fun opportunity to play at home. It’s a 35-minute drive to the course. You can’t beat that. And Merion is obviously a top-notch golf course.”
Fantanelli was the best player in the Ivy League during his time at Princeton, earning Player of the Year honors in the Ancient Eight in 2024 and again in 2025. He was a semifinalist in the Royal & Ancient’s Amateur Championship a year ago at Royal St. George’s Golf Club.
Chuck Tragresser III, the PIAA Class AAA runnerup as a senior at Franklin Regonal in the pandemic fall of 2020, finished a shot behind Gross and Fantanelli in third place, punching his ticket to Merion with a 4-under 67.
Tragresser began his college career at Rhode Island before transferring to Robert Morris to finish it out.
Liberty junior Michael Lugiano, who capped his scholastic career at Lake Lehman by finishing in a tie for second place in the PIAA Class AA Championship in 2023, is headed for Merion as he finished in a tie for fourth place with ChiChun Chen, another international invader from Chinese Taipei, each posting a 3-under 68 at Llanerch.
Lugiano played some tremendous golf in capturing the individual title in the NCAA Corvallis Regional at the Trysting Tree Golf Club by three shots in the spring. He competed as individual in the NCAA Championship at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif.
Anyone who followed last week’s Philadelphia Open at Lancaster Country Club wouldn’t be surprised to see the two participants in the playoff for that title, Drue Nicholas, the former Drexel standout, and Josh Ryan, a teammate of Lugiano’s in his final season at Liberty in the spring, among the three players who nabbed the final three tickets to the U.S. Amateur available at the Llanerch qualifying site.
Nicholas was a member at Galloway National Golf Club when he won the Philadelphia Open a year ago, but he has moved to Merion and will be playing on his new home course in the U.S. Amateur. Nicholas defeated Ryan in the playoff to repeat as the Philly Open champion last week at LCC.
Ryan, a Norristown native, won the GAP Junior Boys’ Championship three straight years from 2020 to 2022. He said last week he plans to turn pro, but he would delay the start of his professional career for a few weeks if he was able to qualify for the U.S. Amateur at Merion. Well, he’s in.
And, as I mentioned in my Philadelphia Open post last week, Ryan was in the field for that 2021 Pennsylvania Amateur at Merion and was very much in contention right to the very end.
Ryan, who will represent The 1912 Club at Merion, had just earned his high school diploma from Commonwealth Connections Academy when he finished in a tie for fourth place in the Pennsylvania Am with a 2-over 212 total for three rounds at the East Course.
Rounding out the trio tied for sixth place at 2-under and earning one of the final spots in the U.S. Amateur out of the Llanerch qualifier was another local favorite in Huntingdon Valley Country Club’s Patrick Isztwan.
That gives the Inter-Ac League a second representative in the U.S. Amateur at Merion as Isztwan was a standout at Penn Charter, capturing the title in the Bert Linton Invitational for the Inter-Ac’s individual crown on his home course at Huntingdon Valley as a freshman in the fall of 2017.
Another Bert Linton winner, Aronimink Golf Club’s Hunter Stetson, the 2021 champion as a sophomore at Episcopal Academy, punched his ticket to the U.S. Amateur by capturing the title in last month’s Delaware Amateur Championship at Rehoboth Beach Country Club.
Isztwan went on to have a solid college career at Richmond and has twice been a beaten finalist in the BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship, most recently falling to Nicholas a year ago at Aronimink.
The battle for somebody to have his name inscribed on the Havemeyer Trophy begins with the first of two rounds of qualifying for match play at Merion’s East Course, in the Ardmore section of Haverford Township, and Philadelphia Country Club, in the Gladwyne section of Lower Merion Township, Monday, Aug. 10.
Philly Country is a William Flynn design and anybody who knows the history of Merion is aware that Flynn, the first greenkeeper at Merion, had a lot to do with how the tricky green complexes at the East Course turned out.
Match play will get under way Wednesday, Aug. 12 at Merion. It is the seventh time a U.S. Amateur will be contested at the East Course.
If you’re a golf fan, I can’t more highly recommend getting over there to watch some golf that week. You can feel the history oozing out of the ground while the present and the future performs right before your eyes.
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