Golf has been the focal point of Hamilton Coleman’s life since he was a toddler and his father got him a set of plastic clubs.
The Augusta native and Lakeside-Evans senior said he remembers the first competitive tournament he played as a kid, when he six putted from 15 feet on the first hole.
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From that humble start, Coleman has had a meteoric rise through the junior golf world. Coleman, who has signed to play at the University of Georgia, won the U.S. Junior Amateur last July at Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas when he beat Nguyen Minh of Vietnam 2-1 in the 36-hole final.
He already had established himself as one of the top young amateurs in the country in September of 2024 when he won the Junior Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass, where he beat his close friend Blades Brown on the second playoff hole.
Now Coleman is set to tee it up with the pros this week in Savannah as he received a special exemption to play in the Club Car Championship at the Landings Golf & Athletic Club. The tournament tees off on Thursday, March 26, with the final round set for Sunday, March 29.
“I’m super grateful for the opportunity to play here at the Club Car Championship,” Coleman said at a tournament press conference on Feb. 17th. “I think the best part about playing in the tournament that it is so close to home is seeing the familiar faces in the crowd. I know I’ll have a lot of friends and family coming out here to support me.”
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Coleman won the Georgia High School Association Class 6A individual title in 2024 as a sophomore when he shot 5-under par in two rounds at Chattahoochee Country Club as he helped lead Lakeside-Evans to the team title. Last year, he finished third individually in the Class 5A tournament as his team also finished third.
Those tournaments don’t compare to the intense atmosphere he experienced at the U.S. Junior last summer, a tournament that tested Coleman mentally and physically.
“Junior golf is great because it prepares you for college golf, especially in the summer when you’re playing in a lot of tournaments,” Coleman said. “Learning how to manage how much time you’re spending on everything and also just learning how to play under pressure. There are some long tournament weeks — at the U.S. Junior I played 195 holes of golf in the week. I can pull those experiences from my junior golf career into tournaments like this.”
Hamilton Coleman of Augusta, Ga. tees off on the third hole during the second round of The Junior Players Championship golf tournament at TPC Sawgrass, Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025, in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Miles Russell of Jacksonville Beach, Fla. finished atop the leaderboard heading into Sunday’s final round at 7 under par.
The Club Car Championship is in its ninth year and has already established a rich history. Sam Burns, a 5-time winner on the PGA Tour, won the title in 2018. In 2019, World No. 1 Scottie Schefller finished a stroke behind winner Dan McCarthy. Jeremy Gandon of France won last year in a playoff, and Georgia Southern alum Steven Fisk won the championship in 2024.
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Fisk was at the press conference last month and said his win at the Club Car Championship served as a springboard to his first PGA victory in October of 2025 at the Sanderson Farms Championship. He talked about closing out on the tough Deer Creek Course with three birdies on his last four holes and how he was able to think about his performance under that kind of pressure when he birdied his last three to win the Sanderson Farms championship.
Augusta native Hamilton Coleman, a senior at Lakeside-Evans and the 2025 U.S. Junior Amateur Golf champion, will play in the 2026 Club Car Championship at The Landings Golf & Athletic Club.
Coleman has a goal of playing on the PGA Tour, but already has a maturity beyond his years from his experiences at the highest level of amateur golf.
He looks up to players like Scottie Scheffler, Rickie Fowler and Rory McIlroy, who he called is “swing crush.” He said he admires how Scheffler is able to put his family first and not make golf his main identity as a person. Coleman said golf is a sport that as had an impact on him as a person, on and off the course
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“I try to think of golf as kind of like a massive puzzle,” Coleman said. “You’re trying to constantly find the little pieces that complete the whole picture. But the one thing that everyone has to understand is there are always going to be a couple pieces that are missing out of the box.
“I think the most important thing about golf is that it’s the most similar game that you’ll have to life. You get bad breaks and good breaks — and it’s not always about perfection, but more about managing misses. It’s about keeping expectations manageable and learning to love the process.”
The Club Car Championship at the Landings Golf & Athletic Club kicks off with a junior clinic set for Monday, March 23, at 5 p.m., with the Club Car Pro-Am set for Tuesday. Tickets for the tournament are available at https://www.clubcarchampionshipattlc.com/tickets/.
Dennis Knight covers sports for the Savannah Morning News. Contact him at Dknight@savannahnow.com. Twitter: @DennisKnightSMN
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Junior Am golf champ Hamilton Coleman to play in Club Car Championship
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