Stewart Hagestad of Newport Beach didn’t have a victory over the last 12 months, yet played so well that he claimed the points-based 2019 AmateurGolf.Com Mid-Amateur Player of the Year Award.
The 28-year-old Hagestad, who played college golf at USC, also won the award in 2017, when he was low amateur in the Masters with a tie for 36th.
Hagestad, who also has worked for a real estate management company in New York and never played professional golf, finished even with Lukas Michel of Australia with 3,550 points.
However, Michel turned 25 to become a Mid-Amateur late in January, so his points earlier from the Australian Master of the Amateurs and the Australian Amateur did not count.
Caolan Rafferty of Ireland was third with 3,500 points, followed by two Canadians, Garrett Rankand at 3,450 and Joey Savoie at 2,750.
Hagestad finished in the top 10 on six occasions during the year, including second in the Players Amateur (opening with a course-record 61, but closing with a 75) and also was runner-up in the Northeast Amateur Invitational with four rounds in the 60s.
In addition, Hagestad wound up third in the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship and the Coleman Invitational.
Hagestad, who won the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship and the Metropolitan Amateur in 2016, made history in 2019 U.S. Open Qualifying at Newport Beach Country Club, making the field for the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.
In doing so, he became the first amateur to qualify for our national championship three straight years since Jay Sigel in 1983-85.
To top things off, he played well twice for his country.
Hagestad compiled a 2-1 record as the United States won the Walker Cup on foreign soil for the first time since 2007 by defeating Great Britain and Ireland, 15½-10½, at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in Hoylake, England. He also played for the winning American team in 2017 at Los Angeles Country Club.
Then he was a member of the gold medal-winning U.S. team at the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, and finished 13th in the individual competition.
