Bridges Cup player profile: Meet the best amateur you don’t know, Drew Kittleson

Drew Kittleson’s golf life can be traced through his nicknames.

Before he was Bridges Cup competitor Drew Kittleson, he was U.S. Amateur runner-up Drew Kittleson. He earned that title back in 2008, as a 19-year-old at Pinehurst No. 2. Kittleson was just a freshman at Florida State University then, but he climbed through a field of older and more battle-tested players to reach the final match of the most vaunted amateur golf event in the sport. You might not remember his role in that event — Kittleson lost to one of the few younger players in the field in the finals, 18-year-old Danny Lee, who became the youngest U.S. Amateur champ ever. But the ’08 U.S. Am was, he says now, the launching off point for an amateur golf career that carried him farther than he’d ever dreamed.

“I think I’ve played eight or nine USGA championships now,” he says with a chuckle. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool.”

Among those USGA championships are two other nicknames, U.S. Open competitor Drew Kittleson, and Masters competitor Drew Kittleson. Kittleson’s stints in those events — at Augusta National and Bethpage Black in 2009 — were short-lived. He missed the cut in both starts — the first and last two major appearances of his career.

“I thought to myself, you know, I’m gonna play in 20 of these,” Kittleson says with a laugh. “I wish I would have stopped to smell the roses.”

Still, the memories from each of those starts remain close to the surface.

“All the stories you hear about the little allures of Augusta National, they’re all true,” Kittleson says, reminiscing on his time in the club’s amateur-only Crow’s Nest. “It’s like staying in your own personal Four Seasons.“

After college, he tried out the title pro golfer Drew Kittleson for a while, playing on various feeder tours in the early 2010s, but something was amiss. He was more than talented enough, but he could never quite capture the same magic he’d taken to Pinehurst in the U.S. Am. He gave up golf and got into private jet sales, then branched out to start his own kitchen and bath business in the Scottsdale area.

Through his golf connections, he joined Whisper Rock, a well-known private club in the Scottsdale area, and soon, he’d tried out the simplest nickname of all: golf lover Drew Kittleson.

“We have this saying at Whisper Rock, ‘it’s all about the hang,'” Kittleson says. “‘The hang’ aspect of golf is the most special part to me. You get to know somebody, get to meet somebody, get to be with people you like, get to compete a little bit. My approach to the game has changed in every way possible since golf was a job, and it’s opened more doors for me than I could have ever imagined.”

It was at Whisper Rock that Kittleson began to fall in love with golf again. And it was at Whisper Rock that he found himself first saying something surprising: he wanted to start competing on the amateur circuit again.

As he tells it, two of his buddies had just finished in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball, which had caused Kittleson and another buddy, Drew Stoltz, to laugh.

“We were just giving them a hard time,” Kittleson says. “We were like, ‘well, if you guys can do that, then we would kill you guys.’ So the next year, Drew and I went and played the qualifier, and then all of the sudden, we were the runners-up, and then the next year we were runner-up, too.”

After notching his second and third runner-up finishes in USGA championships, Kittleson had the competitive bug again. He qualified for the U.S. Mid-Am and made it to the semifinals on his first try, and parlayed that into a slot in the U.S. Am in Denver — giving Kittleson the rarest kind of full-circle professional moment.

Soon after his Amateur return, Kittleson had another invitation waiting: the Bridges Cup, an annual Ryder Cup-style, high-level amateur event between U.S. and International squads. (GOLF’s holding company, 8AM Golf, hosts the event annually.)

After two successful runs with the Americans, Kittleson will be back on the U.S. side this week in Korea. He says the event is one of his favorite weeks of the year — not just for the competition, but for the camaraderie.

“Golf has opened more doors for me than I would have ever imagined,” Kittleson said. “I met some of my best friends in the world through the game, and still continue to meet great people and have these amazing experiences. I’m forever grateful.”