Kingston amateur golfer Ashton McCulloch is having a busy summer this year. He’s already played in two North American professional golf championships and he’s getting a close look at how the best players in the world go about their business.
McCulloch, 21, a senior this fall at Michigan State University, qualified to play in both the Canadian Open at the end of May in Hamilton and the U.S. Open Championship in North Carolina in mid-June.
He qualified for the Canadian Open by winning the 2023 Canadian Amateur championship last summer. To get to the U.S. Open, McCulloch qualified on June 3 in Ridgeway, Ontario. He was one of seven qualifiers out of a field of 70. McCulloch played 36 holes that day and recorded a score of eight under par after rounds of 66 and 69.
“Obviously, it was super-cool,” McCulloch said in an interview a few days after the U.S. Open. “The fans, the golf course, everything was super awesome and I hope to do it again.”
McCulloch shot a pair of 75s at the Open and missed the cut by five strokes on the tough course at the Pinehurst Resort.
He was part of a field of more than 100 golfers, including eventual champion Bryson DeChambeau, runner-up Rory McIlroy and legendary PGA Tour icon Tiger Woods. McCulloch said his interactions with those type of players was limited to brief introductions, but “I got to meet all the Canadians – Nick Taylor, Mackenzie Hughes, Corey Conners and Adam Hadwin. All those guys came up and introduced themselves.”
Bryson DeChambeau won the tournament with a score of -6, edging out Scotland’s Rory McIlroy by a stroke.
At the Open, McCulloch had something in common with champion DeChambeau; they both found their golf balls many times in the Pinehurst No. 2 course’s infamous “native area” that runs alongside most of the course’s fairways. The area is a combination of sand, different types of tall grasses, other growth, and rocks which can cause a golfer’s ball to act unusually when hit.
“I definitely did end up in there; with the fairways being so firm, it’s hard to hit them because the ball just rolls farther than you expect,” McCulloch said. “When you hit it in there, it comes down to a lot of luck because there’s some open areas in there and there are some lies where you can definitely have trouble advancing the ball.”
McCulloch was asked what he learned about playing in professional tournaments. “How to deal with everything that you’re unfamiliar with,” he said. “It’s unfamiliar for me and unfamiliar for a lot of other guys too. You have to handle it a certain way… At a U.S. Open, a lot of it is mental because how hard it is. It’s not golf like we’re used to playing in Canada, where you can typically make a lot of birdies.”
At Pinehurst he was thirteenth in driving distance and nineteenth in greens in regulation for the week but had problems with his short game.
“I hit the ball good enough to be out there, I just didn’t putt and chip as well as I needed to at a major championship.”
He also missed the cut at the Canadian Open, scoring five over par after two rounds.
On his way up the golf competitive ladder as a college junior, McCulloch won many local senior amateur tournaments, including the City Match Play Championship twice, the Whig-Standard tournament, and the club championship at the Cataraqui Golf and Country Club.
McCulloch plans to play in a few more amateur championships and to defend his 2023 Canadian Amateur Championship August 5 to 8 in Saskatoon. He’ll also play in the United States Amateur Championship in Minnesota from August 12 to 18.
Then he’ll return to Michigan State for his fourth and final year in applied engineering sciences and after that, he plans to join the PGA Tour.
“I’m hoping to finish strong in my senior year and play well this summer to score on PGA Tour U so I can graduate with a tour card.” PGA Tour University bridges the worlds of college and professional sport: the very top players earn automatic access to PGA Tour-sanctioned circuits immediately after graduation. For those who don’t crack the top 25, there’s the highly competitive PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament, or Q-School. If McCulloch doesn’t graduate with a tour card, “then I’ll go to Q School and get my card that way.”
Either way, keep an eye out for Kingston’s Ashton McCulloch on a PGA Tour in the near future.
