Arakaki of Keaʻau, Downie of Hilo qualify for 2nd year in row for U.S. Amateur Four-Ball championship

Qualifying round for the 11th U.S. Amateur Four-Ball was hosted Monday (Dec. 22) at Wailuā Golf Course in Līhuʻe.

Calm and sunny conditions greeted golfers to the 18-hole, par-72, 6,962-yard municipal course designed by Toyo Shirai. The course has been voted by Golf Digest as one of Hawaiʻi’s best 15 golf courses and rated by The Golf Channel as Hawaiʻi’s No. 3 golf course.

Wailuā also has hosted 3 U.S. Golf Association Amateur Public Links Championships.

Big Island residents Anson Arakaki of Keaʻau and Shaun Downie of Hilo shot a 6-under-par total score of 66 to qualify for the second year in a row to compete next spring in the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball championship proper.

They finished one stroke ahead of Colorado residents Hunter Swanson and Maxwell Lange, who are the first alternates in the event Arakaki and Downie can’t make it to the championship, and fellow Hawaiʻi residents Matthew Ma of Pearl City, Oʻahu, and Casey Watabu of Līhuʻe, who are second alternates.

Arakaki and Downie advance for their second time in as many years to the four-ball championship May 16-20, 2026, at Desert Mountain Club in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Desert Mountain Club is a private community, offering the world’s largest collection of Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Courses with 6 and a distinct 18-hole, par-3 championship course — No. 7 at Desert Mountain.

Desert Mountain hosted the 1999 U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur, Regions Tradition from 1989 to 2001, Charles Schwab Cup Championship in 2012 and 2014-16, Southwestern Amateur since 2013 and is the annual host of Desert Mountain Collegiate

Arakaki and Downie are one of 128 teams that will play in the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Desert Mountain Championship Proper.

Championship winners get:

• A gold medal.
• Custody of the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Trophy for 1 year.
• A 10-year exemption into the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship.
• Exemption for each team member into the 2026 U.S. Amateur at Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa.
• Exemptions into the 2026 U.S. Junior Amateur, U.S. Mid-Amateur and U.S. Senior Amateur, if age-eligible.
• Their names engraved on the 2026 U.S. Golf Association Champions’ plaque that will reside in the U.S. Golf Association Museum’s Hall of Champions in Liberty Corner, N.J.

Four-Ball — also called Best Ball or Better Ball — is played as a duo. Each golfer plays their own balls, but the team score is the lower of the two individual number of strokes for each hole.

It’s a variation of stroke play, the most common format of scoring while on the links, where players count every stroke for each hole in a round and the lowest total at the end wins.

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Find additional information about the Desert Mountain championship at the U.S. Golf Association’s website.