After tragedy, Carter Maneth will go out on highest amateur stage at Merion

There was a span of about a year where Carter Maneth couldn’t buy a gimme. Subbed in just minutes before the second round of the 2023 Conference USA Championship, the little-used redshirt freshman would lead Middle Tennessee into match play by shooting a team-low 71 in the final round at his home club, Texarkana Country Club. The next day, Maneth was thrown out in the anchor match, and on the 18th hole, he faced an 18-inch putt that would send the Blue Raiders to the final.

But with family, friends and almost the entire club membership watching, Maneth couldn’t convert. He’d go on to lose in 19 holes, and for about a year Maneth couldn’t escape that miss. If it wasn’t the yips, it was close. Every match Maneth played, virtually no putt was given, even by his own teammates.

“It was the worst I’d ever felt for a player, ever,” McEntire said.

That is, until April 11, 2025.

That was the day that Maneth’s father, Jeff, and paternal grandparents, Marion and Myra Jean, were set to fly to North Carolina to watch Carter compete in the Tar Heel Intercollegiate in Chapel Hill. They never made it. The four-seat, single-engine plane they were flying crashed 13 minutes after takeoff into a densely forested area near the town of Reliance, Tennessee, killing all three onboard.

“I’ll never forget that call,” said McEntire, who received word of the crash before Maneth, who’d just checked into his hotel room. McEntire phoned Maneth and asked him to meet him in the lobby; Maneth said he’d be down in 15 minutes.

“I was thinking to myself like, man, this kid has no idea how his world is about to change.”

Maneth dreamed of being an NFL quarterback or MLB ace, but those early rounds with his dad, who played D-II golf, at Hope Country Club in southwest Arkansas changed those aspirations. Always circled on Maneth’s calendar were both his native Arkansas State Amateur and the U.S. Amateur.

Back in June, Maneth, now 23 and signed up for PGA Tour Q-School later this month, won the 111th Arkansas State Amateur, a landmark victory that also earned Maneth his first U.S. Amateur berth – and at Merion Golf Club no less.

The revered Hugh Wilson design is spelled a little different but pronounced the same as Maneth’s late grandfather.

“Wow, I hadn’t even made that connection yet,” said Maneth, who grew up with the iconic image of Ben Hogan hitting his famous 1-iron at the 1950 U.S. Open at Merion framed on his bathroom wall.

“If I could pick one U.S. Am to play in for my career, I think I picked a good one.”

Added McEntire: “He’s going out on the highest stage.”

Upon hearing the tragic news that he’d lost his dad and grandparents, Maneth withdrew from that week’s tournament and returned home to be with his mom, Erin, and sister, Ellie. That next Tuesday, McEntire and the rest of his team flew to Arkansas for the memorial, held at Texarkana Country Club. Two days later, Maneth was back in Middle Tennessee’s starting lineup for the conference championship at, of all places, Texarkana.

Maneth tied for 25th, though the Blue Raiders slipped from second to sixth on the last day, missing match play and ending their season.

“It was very emotional,” Maneth said. “I had a lot of really great support from my team, the members at TCC and my family. The golf wasn’t the best, but at that point I didn’t really care. I was playing because I knew that was what my dad would’ve wanted me to do, and I was just trying to enjoy being out on the golf course.”

For years, Maneth had admittedly squandered his potential because he cared too much, put too much pressure on himself. When Maneth failed to qualify for the season opener last fall, McEntire gave Maneth, who had already graduated with an accounting degree, the option to go home and turn the page on his college career. Maneth quickly asserted, “No, I’m coming back. I’ve got to get in the record books before I leave here.”

In his next start, Maneth won the Sandestin Collegiate Classic by breaking the program’s 54-hole scoring record (16-under 197).

“I’m not a quitter,” Maneth said. “And I know that my dad and my grandparents, they would not have approved of me quitting just because something bad happened in my life. I owed it to myself, and I owed it to them to do everything I could to give it my best shot.”

Maneth wrapped his final year with a team-leading five top-25s while qualifying for the NCAA Columbus Regional as an individual.

“It was a great year for him, and obviously we all needed it,” McEntire said. “I can’t speak enough just to how he handled everything. I learned more from him than he did from me.

He showed me how to be a man. You know, life is going to send some bad things your way, but he was so professional. There were times where I wanted to cry for him. But was a rock for our team and an incredible mentor to our young guys.”

McEntire still has the text messages with Jeff from Carter’s freshman year saved on his phone – Carter lost his debit card again! Four years later, Carter Maneth was sitting around the table at a team dinner, imparting advice to the current underclassmen.

“If you were these guys, what would you do differently?” McEntire recalls asking Maneth.

“I’d just take it for what it is,” Maneth answered. “I’d try hard every hole. I’d be disciplined. I’d make sure I could control what I could control, and whatever happens, happens. I put so much pressure on trying to perform that I just didn’t enjoy it.”

“This past year, I played more free, and that was the difference,” Maneth says now. “Whenever I’m playing free and letting my game be my game, that’s when things happen.”

Added McEntire: “He’s finally reaching that potential that we all knew was in there.”

The Jeff Maneth Memorial Open, a tournament to support Arkansas charities, including the scholarship fund named in Jeff’s honor, will take place Aug. 17 at Pleasant Valley Country Club in Little Rock. Carter is expected to participate, and he’d love nothing more than to bring the Havemeyer Trophy with him; the 36-hole U.S. Amateur final is scheduled for the day before.

Maneth’s championship will begin Monday at 7:11 a.m. ET off Merion’s first tee. Maneth will have former teammate and assistant coach Michael Barnard on the bag, which now has Jeff’s Texarkana bag tag hanging from its strap.

Maneth also uses a custom ball marker with his loved ones’ initials inscribed.

He hits putts much freer now.

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