By Jim Bebbington
Parker Edens, a Greeley native and regular contender in the Inspirato Colorado Open, is making a habit of making it into the quarterfinals of the USGA Mid-Am championship.
Edens moved into the quarterfinals of this year’s Mid-Am tournament Tuesday by winning a marathon match-play round of 23 holes. He had won a match earlier in the morning, and overall played 41 holes Tuesday to move ahead.
Edens has become one of the most consistent Mid-Am competitors with Colorado ties in recent years, playing in the last four and reaching the quarter finals – the round of eight – in 2025.
The U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship is being contested this week in Wisconsin. It is for amateur golfers age 25 and over. Edens reached match-play in this year’s Mid-Am by shooting 2-under over two rounds of stroke play competition this past weekend. He and Ryan Schmitz of Washington Park are the only two Mid-Am competitors with Colorado ties to make it to match play.
Schmitz was knocked out in the round of 64, losing 1-up on Monday.
Edens won Monday 3-and-1 and a Tuesday morning round 5-and-4. In the afternoon round he was down 2 holes to Sean O-Donnell of Pinehurst, S.C., going into the back nine. He tied the match with back-to-back wins on holes No. 12 and 13, and the two battled for five additional holes. Edens won with a birdie 3 on the 23rd hole of the match.
Edens is playing Wednesday against Nate Smith of Idaho, with the winner moving on to the final four.
Edens played briefly as a professional after college but had his amateur status reinstated and works as the head golf coach of South Dakota State University’s men’s team. Edens, 36, grew up in Greeley and played collegiate golf at Colorado State University. He turned professional in 2014 and won six times on mini-tours and had Web.com conditional status. But by 2017 he left professional competition and began his coaching career – first as an assistant coach for the University of Tulsa women’s team then on the staff at his alma mater, Colorado State. He moved to South Dakota State in 2022 and is entering his fifth season as head coach.
Edens won the low-amateur title at the Inspirato Colorado Open in 2023 and 2024, finishing second overall in 2023. He has played in the last four Mid-Am’s.
The tournament is being played at The Lido, one of the new signaturecourses at Dream Golf’s Sand Valley Resort in Nekoosa, Wisc.,
The course is part of Michael and Chris Keiser’s Sand Valley Resort complex. It was built as a replica routing of The Lido Golf Club, a Long Island course famous in the 1920s and 1930s which was destroyed to make the coastal area it sat on useful for the U.S. military during World War II. The Wisconsin version was built using historical archives and digital modeling to recreate the lost course. The Lido opened in 2023.
Qualifying for the Mid-Am has become a source of contention in recent years as former professionals have sought to regain their amateur status in order to compete.
The USGA rules about who can switch from becoming a pro back to competing as an amateurs are intended to be slow and to discourage people from taking the step lightly. They “encourage amateurs to carefully consider the decision to become a non-amateur and ensure golfers are not able to move easily between amateur and non-amateur status.”
On Sept. 1 the USGA paused “select applications” that had been submitted as it continued a review of its rules governing how former pros can return to amateur status. The debate heated up during the 2025 Mid-Am when the eight quarterfinalists included six former pros.
Colt Knost, the golf commentator, is among those who have applied to be reinstated as an amateur but whose applications are currently on hold. Knost played in more than 200 PGA Tour events and won more than $4.3 million between 2007 and 2020. Knost has said his application is among those that have been paused.
Colorado AvidGolfer Magazine is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it, publishing eight issues annually and proudly delivering daily content via coloradoavidgolfer.com.
Colorado players holding their own in 2026 USGA Mid-Am By Jim Bebbington Parker Edens, a Greeley native and regular contender in the Inspirato Colorado Open, is making a habit of making it into the quarterfinals of the USGA Mid-Am championship. Edens moved into the quarterfinals of this year’s Mid-Am tournament Tuesday by winning a marathon
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