An unexpected U.S. Amateur semifinalist has his very own Merion cheat code

ARDMORE, Pa. — Carter Loflin doesn’t know the answer to the question. He’s standing outside the Merion clubhouse, having just punched his ticket to the U.S. Amateur semifinals after a 3&2 win over Brandon Knight, but unlike the rest of this week at Merion, he doesn’t have a cheat code that’s available only to him.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” Loflin said. “I feel like I’m a good player. I feel like I’m definitely capable of doing this type of stuff, but I can’t say that it hasn’t helped me having like a positive voice on my shoulder the entire time. Yeah, it’s hard to say.”

All week, when Loflin has found himself in a spot of bother or flummoxed by the tough questions Merion has asked of the world’s top amateurs, he has leaned on his caddie, Jack Hopkins. Hopkins started caddying at Merion when he was 12 years old. He is now in his 35th year carrying bags at the famed Hugh Wilson design and has helped guide Loflin to an unexpected semifinal berth in the Georgia senior’s first-ever U.S. Amateur appearance.

As other top amateurs struggled to get out of stroke play, Loflin shot three under over the first two days of stroke play to claim the No. 8 seed. He easily dispatched Greyson Wood in the Round of 64 and rolled up Wolfgang Glawe in the Round of 32, while Hopkins helped unearth all of Merion’s secrets to keep the 22-year-old in the fight.

It’s a superpower to have someone like Hopkins on the bag. A superpower that Loflin acquired thanks to a stroke of fate. During a scouting trip to Merion in July, Hopkins was added to Loflin’s group. After the round, Loflin went to the Merion caddie master and asked if there was any way he could get Hopkins on his bag for this week’s grueling U.S. Amateur exam. Getting to walk with Hopkins this week has been an unquantifiable advantage for Loflin, helping him go from under-the-radar contender to one of Merion’s Final Four.

“He’s helped me immensely,” Loflin said on Saturday. “I was telling somebody out there, I was like, this must be what Scottie [Scheffler] feels like having Ted Scott on his bag. Before he even tees up his ball, he knows he’s going to save two or three strokes somewhere today. Maybe. It might not be that much if you just stripe it. But you feel like you’re saving shots before you even start, which is like just such a big confidence builder because it takes so much pressure off of you feeling like you have to play your A-game.

“But he knows this place so well. He’s an incredible green reader, and he’s a very calming influence. He doesn’t talk very much. He’s very quiet, which I like because I talk a lot. I’ll talk to you if I’m pissed off or if I’m happy. It’s nice for me to have a caddie that doesn’t quite talk as much because he’s more — just like whenever he says stuff, it really means something. If he tells me no, then I’m not going to do it, type of thing. It’s been a lot of fun.”

Jack Hopkins knows every nook and cranny of Merion. He understands the mystique, knows where to miss it, where to take your medicine, and, maybe most importantly, his personality blends perfectly with Loflin. It was that part of the Hopkins-Loflin pairing that helped Loflin avoid a collapse in his Round of 16 match against William Jennings. Loflin was 3 up through 13 holes, but his lead shrunk to one after 17, and when his approach shot into the 18th green landed in the rough, Loflin started to spiral. He saw that his U.S. Amateur run was about to end in a horrific meltdown.

Except Hopkins wasn’t going to allow Loflin’s mind to lose him the match.

“He’s, like, endlessly — he’s kind of a foot in your ass a little bit,” Loflin said of Hopkins. “But yesterday on 18, I’m 2 up with two to play. I lose 17 hitting a horrible shot. Hit a horrible tee shot on 18. I hit a good punch shot, but I’m over the green. Jennings is on the green. All he has to do is two-putt basically. I’m in the rough, and Jack is like, ‘How are you feeling?’ I’m like, ‘Man, I can’t believe I feel like I’m just blowing this thing.’ He’s like, ‘You haven’t blown it yet; chip the ball in.

“That was one of those moments he helped me out a lot, being super short, straight to the point, no, you’re not out of this. He’s a fighter.”

Another moment arrived on Friday during Loflin’s quarterfinal match with Brandon Knight. Loflin admitted to being “shell-shocked” by the bigger crowds on Friday at Merion, and he immediately fell 2 down through four. What turned out to be the decisive moment in the match came on the fifth hole. Lofflin snap-hooked his drive left, chipped out and then duffed a wedge short of the green. Sitting 25 yards away and staring at an early 3-down hole in the face, Hopkins walked to the green and pointed out the line where Loflin wanted to land his chip shot on to get up-and-down for bogey and hopefully halve the hole. Lofflin pulled his 58-degree wedge and landed the shot right on Hopkins’ line; the ball took the right-to-left slope and found the bottom of the hole. Knight missed his par putt and Loflin won the hole en route to a 3&2 win.

After he finished off Knight on 16, Loflin, now one win away from a Masters and U.S. Open invite and two away from the Havemeyer Trophy, faced the hardest question of his week because this time he didn’t have a Merion encyclopedia to lean on: Would he be here if he hadn’t been walking with Hopkins this week?

He has hit the shots and rolled in the putts, but he also has something no one else does. A guide through the Merion fog — one that’s a calming presence when the white-knuckle U.S. Am pressure gets ratcheted up.

“I don’t think so. I just can’t see it,” Loflin said. “There’s been too many situations where he’s helped out to — it’s like small stuff, but those small things add up. A tenth of a shot here, a tenth of a shot there, a quarter shot there. That really makes a difference.”

That difference has Loflin — and Hopkins — on history’s doorstep at Merion.