The Most Fun it Will Ever be

I coach a 12U tournament baseball team here in Dallas. One of the things I say to our kids more often than they would prefer is that baseball will never be more fun than it is right now. Playing with your friends from the neighborhood when you don’t have any responsibilities other than showing up on time and remembering to bring your helmet.

I tell them ridiculous — but true — things like, Some of you may play in college eventually and even if that happens or even in the almost-impossible event that one of you plays professionally, baseball will never be more fun than it is right now.

I don’t know if they believe what I’m saying, but I think they believe that I believe what I’m saying. And someday they may look back on my very dad-like soliloquies and think, Oh, wow, that was definitely true.

That preamble is nothing more than a veiled reference to the run Niall Shiels Donegan went on at Olympic last week. Did he win? No. Did it matter? Also no. Not even close.

If you missed it, Shiels Donegan — son of golf writer, Lawrence Donegan — shot 73-70 over the first two days of the event, after which he …

• Got into match play by getting through a 20-for-17 playoff.

• Then won the last two holes to beat Ian Poulter’s son 1UP in R1.

• Then won two of the last four holes to win 1UP again in R2.

• Then won two of the last four holes to win 1UP against No. 1 seed Preston Stout.

• Then won two of the last three holes to win 1UP in 19 holes in the quarters.

• And finally fell in the semifinals 1UP despite winning 16 and 17 to tie the match.

All of it while competing within shouting distance of the place he grew up with a monstrous hometown crowd following him to prove it.

This has to be one of the greatest post-round interviews in U.S. Amateur history.

See you tomorrow, Niall!

— USGA (@USGA)
1:05 AM • Aug 15, 2025

There wasn’t really one singular moment. Only a week full of them that Donegan will cherish far more than the Masters bid he missed out on or the Havemeyer he failed to hold. Because golf — wherever it takes Donegan — will never be more fun than it was last week. Better? Maybe? More accomplished? Perhaps. But more fun? Outside of maybe team events like the Walker Cup team he’s on or a Ryder Cup team in the future, no, it will never be more fun than Olympic was.

It is difficult to understand this when you’re that age.

Or rather, it’s difficult to believe it when you’re that age (or maybe any age).

Because no matter what industry you’re in, you are forced to hope that the future will be better. If not, why would you keep going? That is a tricky balance. To trust that the future can and will be better than it has been but also to somehow understand that what you just experienced — the stuff of dreams — is as fun as it will ever be.

Donegan seemed to walk the line well. Here’s what he said after his Round of 16 win.

It was a show. The whole thing. One we joyously got to witness.

One he will never forget.