A whirlwind week for Mason Howell started with 36 holes he’ll never forget. His performance put the 17-year-old’s name front and center in the golf world and had folks in his hometown of Thomasville scurrying to make plans to watch him tee off with the game’s best at the U.S. Open outside of Pittsburgh and PGA Tour players reaching out to him to set up practice rounds.
Howell made plans to do that at Oakmont Country Club on Monday June 9 with Harris English and Sepp Straka. The former Georgia golfers, who have combined for nine PGA Tour wins, texted him with invites.
Howell will have a chance to join the large contingent of players that went from UGA to making a good living on the PGA Tour, but he still has his senior year ahead at Brookwood School before he arrives in Athens. But first, he’ll be in the field starting Thursday with the likes of Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau.
“Absolutely crazy,” Howell said, describing the aftermath of shooting consecutive rounds of 63 for 18-under par on June 2 at Piedmont Driving Club in Atlanta to share medalist honors. “I’ve kind of been all over the place, scrambling a little bit. I’m just really excited for the opportunity I have in front of me.”
Howell committed to play for Georgia in September as a class of 2026 recruit and took an official visit for the football game against Tennessee in November.
“I have a lot of buddies there,” Howell said speaking from the locker room last week after a round at Glen Arven Country Club, his home course. “I grew up a Georgia fan. Every Saturday in the fall, watching the Dawgs play. The family has kind of run through Georgia.”
Mason’s sister, Meg, is a rising junior at UGA. His father Robb graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1994 after playing tennis at Valdosta State and his mother Lauren is a Terry College of Business grad from Georgia.
Howell liked the Georgia coaching staff “and what we’ve got cooking in Athens,” is friends with incoming golf freshman John Daniel Culbreth from Thomasville and already has plans to room with 2026 commitments Drew Woolworth from Oregon and Hamilton Coleman from Augusta.
Robb fell in love with golf while playing with law school buddies on the UGA Golf Course.
When Mason was 2 or 3, he’d sit on his father’s lap as he watched PGA Tour golf on TV on Sunday afternoons.
“He was glued to the TV, he loved it,” said Robb, a medical malpractice trial lawyer. “He’d get his little plastic clubs out and a ball and beat it around the house while the golf tournament was on.”
He swung real golf clubs at age 3 and was playing in tournaments by the age of 6.
As a sixth grader, he played on a high school golf team at Maclay School in Tallahassee.
“It really helped grow my golf game,” Mason said.
When he was 14, he set a course record of 59 at Glen Arven.
In 2023, Mason won the American Junior Golf Association’s Billy Horschel Junior Championships and in 2024, he advanced to match play at the U.S. Junior Amateur at Oakland Hills Country Club. He will play in his fourth straight U.S. Junior Am next month at Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas.
Last month, he won the GIAA Class AAA state golf title as Brookwood won its fourth title in the last five years.
“I’ve seen Mason play more than anybody, my wife and I,” Robb Howell said. “We’ve followed all of his rounds and we’ve known for a long time that he was a special kid who had a special talent for sure. …It’s really a wonderful thing as a parent. My wife and I talked about this a lot since (he qualified) — to watch your kid’s dreams come true right in front of your eyes, there is no better feeling than that.”
Mason Howell’s coach at Brookwood, Jimmy Gillam, will be on the bag for him at Oakmont.
“We’re going to figure out how to get yardages without the range finder,” Mason said. “It’s going to be different, not something I’m used to.”
Mason Howell is the youngest to qualify for the U.S. Open going through local and final qualifying since Cole Hammer in 2015 at age 15.
With Robb caddying, Mason made it through local qualifying by shooting a 64 on May 8 in Gainesville, Fla., where he said he played against members of the Florida golf team.
“I was deep in enemy territory,” he joked.
He said he was playing well back in Thomasville in the lead-up to final stage qualifying, where his ball-striking was precise, hitting greens in regulation again and again, which set him up for birdie opportunities. Putting is a strength of his game.
He came to the course with plenty of confidence.
“I think that’s the key,” he said. “You never want to step up on the first tee thinking you can’t do something. …I just got off to such a good start and kept it rolling all day.”
Mason Howell knows Harris English, who grew up in Moultrie, where Howell was born and lived at when he was younger, and said he is looking forward to meeting Straka.
Howell already played with Ping, his equipment sponsor, on his cap and last week gained more sponsors. He’ll wear logos for Thomasville National Bank, Feed the Party, which delivers meat and seafood, and golf apparel company Holderness & Bourne.
Robb Howell said as many as 15 family members and at least 20 others from Thomasville planned to make the trip to Pennsylvania to see Mason play in golf’s third major.
Howell would love to make the cut and get a chance to play on Father’s Day on Sunday.
“I’m just going to go and play my best,” he said, “and have as much fun as possible and see where that takes me.”
Read the full article here
