SAN FRANCISCO – Every morning this week, Niall Shiels-Donegan has woken up in his own bed at home in Mill Valley, California, about a half hour north of San Francisco, put on his golf clothes, grabbed his clubs and headed across the Golden Gate Bridge to the Olympic Club.
It seems like half of Mill Valley has followed him there.
When Shiels-Donegan closed out a third straight match at this 125th U.S. Amateur on the Lake Course’s par-4 finishing hole, this one a 1-up victory over Oklahoma State standout Preston Stout on Thursday afternoon, the 20-year-old Bay Area product raised his hat to acknowledge his hundred or so supporters – easily the largest and loudest gallery of any player – who had followed every shot and helped pull him over the line once again. He then turned to his caddie, his former little league coach Todd Moutafian, and said, “That was pretty fun.”
The party was just getting started, too, as Shiels-Donegan was quickly mobbed by friends and family, who could probably be heard from across nearby Lake Merced.
They chanted his name. Niall! Niall! Niall!
They lined up for hugs and high-fives.
And they shook him so hard that his hat fell off.
“It’s the best thing in the world!” Shiels-Donegan said, nearly screaming so he could be heard in his post-round Golf Channel interview. “To be able to play on a stage like the U.S. Amateur and win in front of a home crowd like this, it means the world.”
Shiels-Donegan might’ve been born in Scotland, but he was raised by Mill Valley. His dad, Lawrence Donegan, was the golf columnist at The Guardian when Niall was born in Glasgow, on the Thursday of the 2005 Open Championship at St. Andrews. His mom, Maggie Shiels, worked for the BBC, but when she took a new job at Google when Niall was 3 years old, it led the family to the Bay.
Growing up, Shiels-Donegan played nearly every sport, including four in high school – baseball, soccer, volleyball and lacrosse. He was formidable on the bump as a kid, though Moutafian vowed never to mess up his golf swing, so poor Niall retired below the Mendoza line as a batter. He didn’t start getting serious about competitive golf until sophomore year, but a runner-up finish at the English Boys in 2022 put him on the radar of top programs, and he ended up signing with Northwestern, where he played the last two seasons before transferring this summer to North Carolina.
While Shiels-Donegan has an honorary membership at the Meadow Club, Alister Mackenzie’s first U.S. design, he hasn’t forgotten Mill Valley Golf Course, a modest nine-holer where golfers often play in T-shirts and flip-flops.
Shiels-Donegan estimated about 90% of his gallery were people he’s played with at Mill Valley.
“It’s a great group of guys who love golf and love each other,” he said.
He needed every bit of that adoration against Stout, the fourth-ranked amateur in the world who has already been named to the U.S. Walker Cup team and shined in stroke play at Olympic by capturing medalist honors at 8 under, 11 shots better than Shiels-Donegan, who was 3 over and needed to survive a 20-for-17 playoff just to qualify for the knockout stage.
Already buzzing from his 6-footer on No. 18 to beat Texas’ Christiaan Maas in Thursday morning’s Round of 32, Shiels-Donegan suddenly found himself 2 down through four holes. But Stout gave a couple back with bogeys, including at the short par-4 seventh, where he left a greenside bunker shot and a birdie putt short of a severe ridge protecting the left hole location, the ball rolling back to the bottom, right shelf both times.
Shiels-Donegan pounced on the opportunity, burying a 50-foot birdie putt at the par-3 eighth. As his ball rolled toward the cup, someone in the crowd could be heard screaming, “One time! One time!” When the putt dropped, the place erupted – and Shiels-Donegan soaked it all up.
“When I’m down, they’re up,” he said, “and that helps me get back into the moment, stay focused and just keep making pars, making birdies, making the other guy do what he needs to do to beat me.”
Stout appeared up for the challenge once the match turned, winning three straight holes, Nos. 11-13, with bookend birdies. But he just couldn’t shake Shiels-Donegan and his red-hot putter.
“Just fell back on my putter,” Shiels-Donegan said, “and luckily it was there.”
Shiels-Donegan tied the match by throwing a dart just over the bunker at the par-3 15th – amped up, he had clubbed down from the morning – and holing his 8-footer for birdie. At the mammoth, par-5 16th, both players laid up in the left rough before hacking third shots to about 20 feet; Shiels-Donegan made, Stout missed, and the overwhelming local favorite was leading once again.
When Shiels-Donegan drained another birdie, from 12 feet at the par-5 17th, he raised his putter in the air as his fans hooted and hollered. (Lawrence Donegan, before he was a golf writer, played bass guitar in two Scottish rock bands, including one called Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. Fitting.)
“I kind of black out whenever that happens,” Shiels-Donegan said. “I just do whatever feels right. I just try and hit the shots and see what happens.”
Both competitors hit the final green and had similar putts. Shiels-Donegan played first, his lightning-quick birdie try sliding about 3 feet by. Stout did the same, finishing just inside of Shiels-Donegan’s ball. But Stout wouldn’t get the chance to hit the next putt, as Shiels-Donegan rolled in the match-winner.
“I think I’ve done a really good job this week of controlling that adrenaline and using it only when I need to, just every shot refocusing, not getting ahead of myself, staying in the present,” Shiels-Donegan said. “But, yeah, it’s hard sometimes when you’ve got the crowd around this amphitheater of the 18th green; you’re shaking a little bit. That’s three putts now that I’ve holed to win my matches down 18. It’s been great.”
Hopefully, for Shiels-Donegan’s sake, Dean Robertson, this year’s Walker Cup captain for Great Britain and Ireland, was paying attention.
Shiels-Donegan spent about a month in the U.K. this summer trying to impress the powers that be. He tied for fourth at the St. Andrews Links Trophy, but after losing in the first round of match play at the British Amateur and not being selected to the GB&I squad for the St. Andrews Trophy, Shiels-Donegan’s prospects had taken a hit. Especially since he figured himself out of the U.S. Amateur, ranked outside of the top 100 in the world amateur rankings and having missed all qualifiers.
But in the final week, Shiels-Donegan somehow jumped inside the cutoff for an exempt spot in the 312-player field at Olympic, though it took a few days for him to find out as he’d blocked the rankings page on his devices.
Shiels-Donegan’s Walker Cup hopes were still alive, even if there’s a rule in the Donegan household that the event can’t be talked about.
“I’ve developed a good mindset of just working hard and knowing that all the extra stuff will take of itself,” Shiels-Donegan said. “It would obviously be amazing to play the Walker Cup at Cypress Point so close to home and with the support that I could get there, but anything can happen. I’m just trying to have a good time, and if that happens it would be amazing.”
Before he struck his second shot at No. 17, with a mini driver off the deck, Shiels-Donegan received some encouragement from Moutafian: “This is why you’re here.”
Shiels-Donegan is here at Olympic, chasing the Havemeyer Trophy, to put on a show, which will continue Friday afternoon in the quarterfinals opposite Notre Dame’s Jacob Modleski, whose dad, Matt, was a demonstration pilot for U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds. Modleski may need to organize a flyover to combat Team NSD.
But how does Shiels-Donegan come down from the emotional high that was Thursday and keep performing?
“My dad does a pretty good job of that,” Shiels-Donegan said. “He reminds me that I’m just human. Like at the end of the day, this is just golf – 10% of my life is golf, 90% percent of my life is my family, my friends. Just keep the 10% where it is and live the other 90 like anybody else.”
Only to those watching him this week at Olympic, Shiels-Donegan isn’t just anybody else.
He’s the pride of Mill Valley, and after Thursday, they were prepared to carry him back across that bridge.
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